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9:10am on Sunday, 18th May, 2025:
Anecdote
Well, the UK did badly in the Eurovision Song Contest (or "ESC" as the hosts kept calling it) as usual. We managed a respectable 88 from the juries and 0 from the public. If it were all on the public, we'd have come joint last with the hosts, Switzerland (and the winner, Austria, would have been fourth behind Israel, Estonia and Sweden).
Austria seems to have won because they had a counter-tenor who could only sing about six notes, but did so exceptionally well. The staging was also good, although it was more like a video than a person on a stage.
One of the questions I ask after Eurovision is whether, if the singer had been representing the UK, they would have done as well as they did. Of the top ten, I don't think Austria, Estonia, Sweden, Italy, Greece or Albania would have even been in the top half of the results table; only Israel, France and Switzerland would have been (and maybe not even Israel, given that most of their votes came from the viewers).
Our entry had a catchy chorus, unobtrusive staging and likeable, presentable, experienced singers who could sing very well. It wasn't too similar to any other entry except perhaps Latvia (because of the close harmonies). Sure, the song's composition might have been too complicated for a Eurovision audience, but was it worth zero? There were other countries with mish-mash songs that nevertheless managed to scrape together a few marks — Norway and Poland, for example. We might have suffered because our song was immediately followed by the eventual winner; then again, the eventual winner may have benefitted from immediately following our song.
It's easy to find explanations for why the UK does badly, but which don't seem to apply to other countries. Many of the singers couldn't actually sing very well (such as Estonia, Lithuania, Italy, Ukraine) and there seemed to be a surfeit of overweight women wearing armoured bodysuits and thigh-high boots (Denmark, Malta, Finland, Spain). If we'd put forward any of those entries, we'd have lost not only the public vote but the jury vote, too.
I actually liked the two entries that came bottom (San Marino and Iceland), so understand that I am somewhat out of line with the views of industry professionals and the European voting public.
Oh well, perhaps next year we'll enter the same group and give them a song that will appeal to the audience as well as to the jury, and scrape our way into the top half of the results table.
I thought two of the presenters, Hazel Brugger and Sandra Studer, were pretty good, by the way. The third, Michelle Hunziker, was free of all personality. Petra Mede from Sweden is still my favourite though!
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