Musings Over The Sunday Toast

Both the daughter and I get very excited over Doctor Who. She also gets very excited over the Eurovision Song Contest - me, not so much. But yesterday I was struck by the spooky symmetry between the two.

Here we have Rory, beloved of Doctor Who companion Amy, and Josh, beloved of the nation after winning the choose-the-Eurovision-singer thingy earlier this year. Both bright, pleasant lads, trying to do their best for everybody. One got slaughtered by a female adversary, surrounded by bright light and obliterated from everyone’s memory. The other got shot by a Silurian. But whereas I’m thinking we have not seen the last of Rory, when it comes to Josh…

Only joshing, Josh. He’s nineteen, for heaven’s sake. Give it a while for the dust to settle, and he’ll pop up in a provincial revival of Grease or Joseph or JC Superstar. Which is where he should have started, allowed to make his mistakes in front of the OAP’s Wednesday matinee in the Civic Theatre, Perishing-on-Sea, rather than in front of the entire population of the Balkans on a Saturday night.

Coming last this year, we didn’t even have the excuse of the Eastern European block vote. Nowadays there is a panel of so called experts whose incisive opinions are supposed to balance out the demented shrieking of the populace. And we had a song by Pete Waterman. I mean. WTF?? Don’t these people know a classic pop anthem when they hear one?

The problem is, we have outgrown Eurovision. The sort of plinky plonky ra-ra singalong stuff that wins is the sort of thing we ruled the Eurovision world with forty-something years ago. We have changed. We have evolved, as the Doctor was trying to explain to the Silurians. Okay, now and then one of us lets the side down and kills a reptilian hostage or genuinely tries to win Eurovision but, by and large, we are better than this.

No established act in this country is going to touch Eurovision with a barge pole. So here’s what we need to do. We need to stop trying to win Eurovsion. We need to say to our brightest, freshest, most original new talent: Look, we all know it’s camp crap. But it is a live showcase for your stuff all over Europe. See it as a massive audition which might get you some bookings. Give it welly and impress whoever signs bands or singers these days. Show the rest of Europe that we have more originality in our little fingers than they have in their entire repertoire of leaping fiddlers and somersaulting clowns. Of course we’ll lose. But we’ll lose with honour.

And remember Lordi. Yes, you do. The Finnish heavy metal outfit which won the 2006 contest. I bet that when the viewers of Finland voted for that as their entry, all the experts said they’d signed their own Eurovision death warrant, but Lordi won with what was then a record number of votes. Maybe the Eurovision audience is actually starving for something a bit different.

Unlike Doctor Who, of course, Eurovision doesn’t matter. With the world going to hell in a handcart, who gives a sod? It doesn’t even give us a fantasy father figure who is going to come and put everything right. But it could, and for what it costs should, just provide some unknown, raw talent with a chance for the future. Before the big glowing crack in the universe swallows us all.