Friday, May 28, 2010

From the sublime to the ridiculous

How does one follow the Fab Four?
Tomorrow night is the Eurovision Song Contest, live from Oslo, Norway (how can I get this blog back onto photography?). It's a time when the Europeans enter a period of weirdness.

It's been on the TV, every year since 1956 and I believe that a lot of Europeans do take the contest very seriously. You hear of tactical block voting where countries vote only to express their opinion on another country's foreign policy. An example would be Bosnia & Herzegovina giving the Serbian song "Nil Poi", and visa versa.

The United Kingdom doesn't have a strong record in the event despite trying hard to win. This is probably due to the fact that we've ruffled a few European feathers over the years by going to war with most of the other countries taking part. But the Eurovision Song Contest is still a big event for us because we celebrate the campness of the contest and pretend not to take it seriously. The host in the UK (anchorman), is the very funny and camp Graham Norton who before last years event in Moscow said "I can't wait to get to Moscow. With a combination of cheap vodka and a language barrier what could possibly go wrong?".

The build up started weeks ago when the song was chosen and since then we've been drip fed with Eurovision news and re-runs on a regular basis. Tomorrow night pubs throughout the UK will broadcast the contest on large screens, people will dress up, place bets and get drunk.

So for everyone who has never seen the event, the video below is an example of what you've missed. This is Sir Cliff Richard (yes he was knighted), performing the UK's 1973 entry in the contest, he came second!






2 comments:

  1. There is a name I haven't heard in years ~ Cliff Richard. I remember listening to some of his music in the 80s when I was a young adult (I could not tell you which songs), and then he just seemed to disappear.

    I followed the link and read about him. I didn't know most of what I read.

    Sounds like an interesting event.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey, how about that choreography.

    ReplyDelete

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