Postcards from the edge
What’s another year for Ireland’s chances in the Eurovision Song Contest? Donal O’donoghue reports
All kinds of everything reminds me of the Eurovision Song Contest. Snowdrops. Daffodils. Johnny Logan’s white suit. Michael Flatley’s manly chest. Jedwards’ mighty hair. ABBA. Dustin the turkey. Turkey the country. All the other turkeys. That band with the scary monster faces. Cliff Richard’s two-time losing face. Big trousers. Bucks Fizz’s miniskirts. Milking cows. A dancing tinfoil dervish with a star perched on her head. Singing flight attendants. Vampires. And, of course, the part where each country gets to tell its neighbours what it really thinks of them. Of course there’s also the music but that’s, as they say, incidental.
In 1995, I was charged with putting words in the mouths of the Song Contest’s co-hosts, Gerry Ryan and Cynthia Ní Mhurchú. One of the trickiest bits as scriptwriter was finding the precise phrase to introduce the interval act. “Ladies and gentlemen, Riverdance” was what it finally boiled down to. Even trickier were the postcards, those short videos that introduce each performer, selling not only the song but a whole nation’s culture, creed and the rest in a few snappy moments. With so much likely to be lost in translation, and fearful of creating an international incident, that euro-pudding bowl was passed elsewhere.
Since its beginnings in 1956 (the year when countries could vote for themselves), the Eurovision Song Contest has been arguably the greatest single unifying event in the continent of Europe and beyond (Australia joined the shindig in 2015). Every country wants to be part of the action if only to see who likes them most or least and duly return the favour. It is said (in Wikipedia) that the contest can attract a global TV audience of 500 million but have you actually met a real, live person who has sat through a full show from the opening strains of Charpentier’s Te Deum (the only decent bit of music you’re likely to hear all night) to the closing reprise? I rest my case.
Sure, we have the Song Contest nights where everyone dresses up like a pavlova (the dessert not the dancer) and parties like it was the 1990s when Ireland couldn’t lose. Back then, it was such that the national broadcaster was very nearly brought to its knees by the cost of repeatedly staging the epic event; surely it’s no coincidence that the Celtic Tiger became extinct soon after the nation’s last ever win in 1996. Since then, the most successful country in the history of the EVSC has been chasing its tail, that secret winning formula proving increasingly elusive as every trick in the songbook (pop, ballad, trad, turkey) was turned. Nowadays we’re lucky to squeeze into the Grand Final on Saturday night.
But hope springs. And fashions change. But try telling that to the Eurovision Song Contest, a show where all kinds of everything can be put on a postcard and into a song.