So, that’s it. Another year over with congratulations to Norway with their entry Alexander Rybek, and (if you believe the way the results were reported this morning) the UK were shat on from a great height again. But you see, I don’t agree with this idea. I don’t think that Jade should have won just because the song was written by Andrew Lloyd-Webber. In fact I think that’s probably why I don’t think that It’s My Time was a Eurovision hit. You see it’s just too much like a song from a show. It reminds me of With One Look or Tell Me On a Sunday.
That’s no bad thing, it managed to get lots of votes, and the Europe-wide campaign that Jade and Andrew did certainly seems to have helped so well done to them, douze points for effort!
But that wasn’t the point of this post, you see this year I decided to spend the evening at home. Andy was in from work and (because he was up early in the morning) wasn’t going out so I stayed in with him. Now Andy’s one of the type that I hate when it comes to Eurovision – You know who you are! You sit there and spit vitriolic bile all through the run up. You see someone who enjoys the show and understands that the comedic put downs are meant to be just that, comedic, and you decide to deride them. And no, “Eurovision’s shit hur hur hur!” is not a comic comment, and “You must be really sad wanting to watch that” doesn’t count as witty banter.
I don’t like football, planting myself in front of the TV for 90 mins (plus breaks) every week, sometimes 2 or 3 times a week doesn’t interest me. 22 men running round a garden, kicking a bag of wind and earning enough each year to pay the staffing costs for my whole department makes me more angry than excited. But I know what the football fans are feeling, you see I am a Eurovision fan.
For one week of every year I know that a spectacle is being finalised. I know that Europe-wide (and in Israel & Azerbaijan too) acts are preparing, votes are being cast, sequins are being sewn and the wheels of the ESC roll on in preperation for that week. I know that, for that week, I will have 7 or 8 hours of TV that I will enjoy. Yes, even the songs I don’t like I can still enjoy because I can let lose my inner bitch.
So, this year I was at home instead of the party that I wanted to go to, with a partner who openly scorns the show in public and yet avidly watches it when in the house with me. What can I do? Last year I was able to have a text conversation with one of my friends, but too much of that was spent explaining the rules, why don’t they read out all the scores? Why aren’t Ireland in it anymore? What, there are semi finals now? And so on.
But this year was different, I’d seen people watching Britain’s Got Talent using the hashtag #BGT and I’d tweeted through the semis using #Eurovision (which was what others were using it seemed via the trending topics) so I set myself up a few tabs (one with a Eurovision search, one with a search set for @ThoroughlyGood who I’d been tweeting with earlier and who was a great host! and one for my own @replies) and sat down to enjoy.
And do you know what? It was great fun! I tweeted at people, I was DM’d, I made sweeping statements and got feedback instantly, I saw other people’s comments and answered back. It was just like being at a Eurovision party with all my friends, except I didn’t need to dress up or have to find my way home at silly o’clock in the morning.
So, thank you to all the people that joined in with the twitter Eurovision party, and I’m looking forward to doing it all over again for Oslo 2010!
