If Britain doesn't win Eurovision tonight, we should pull out of this trashy camp fest
Basel is this year's city under siege. The Swiss cultural capital, built around the banks of the river Rhine in the north-west of the country, landed the chalice of Eurovision after Nemo won the 2024 contest with the song The Code.
Thus, the narrow cobbled streets and the city's trams are now crowded with the colourful cohorts of fans of a song contest that has been held annually since 1956.
With a few exceptions, Eurovision is famed for its terrible music. Indeed the movie Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, written by and starring Will Ferrell, had a touch of genius as its pastiche of songs were an uncanny match of the real thing.
'Who knows what hellish future lies ahead?' asked Terry Wogan, as he began commentating at the start of Finland's 2007 show, adding, 'Actually I do. I've seen the rehearsals.'
Britain, one of the finest song-writing nations in the world, often finds itself in an awkward position, submitting music to adhere to the strictures of cheesy and painful, but which tends to misfire. We've achieved nul points on two occasions.
We win, however, when we have the temerity to offer proper talent and the juries and public can't find some political reason to punish us. Thus our five past winners are Sandie Shaw, Lulu, Brotherhood of Man, Katrina and the Waves and (yes, OK) Bucks Fizz. And Sam Ryder would have triumphed in 2022 were it not for Ukraine understandably taking the crown three months after the Russian invasion.
So this year, based on song quality, Britain should win it. We should all, by the end of Saturday night, be screaming: 'What The Hell Just Happened?' For the song of that name by pop group Remember Monday is theatrical, pacey, original, funny, spirited, musically diverse, beautifully structured and brilliantly sung. The three women who make up the band, Charlotte Steele, Holly-Anne Hull and Lauren Byrne are great performers, their band is the result of a natural, real friendship and they must win.
Because by winning, Remember Monday can also rescue the Eurovision concept, which has gone from lightweight, fun entertainment to a full-on festival of camp.
It's no wonder last year's winner, Nemo, was non-binary and pan-sexual. Nothing else would be appropriate. The 1981 Bucks Fizz line-up of two heterosexual couples, with their 'see some more' skirt-ripping seems now as out of touch as Alf Garnett.
Today's Eurovision is a confederacy of camp vulgarity, whose ultimate manifestation is to be more catastrophically kitsch than the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics of 2024, when an LGBTQ+ version of Da Vinci's Last Supper achieved the impossible of uniting the world in its revulsion of the spectacle.
So here's hoping that Remember Monday can reclaim the show. Except that, whoops, we'd have to host the damn thing the following year. In Brighton, presumably.
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