Nul Points

by Tim Moore

  As we left Europe behind I plugged in my MP3 player and clicked forward to the now familiar introduction to their nation’s 1981 Eurovision entry. Aldri i Livet (Never in My Life) was a self-penned, folk-pop love song, crisp and clear as a Norwegian summer’s morning. The promo video I had fondly imagined over many listenings featured a rucksacked Finn striding alone across the lower slopes of a sunny green mountainside, perhaps pausing to refresh himself from a chuckling brook; it wasn’t hard to transpose this solitary bucolic paradise from Scandinavia to a palm-fringed beach.

  Again, there was nothing in the musical make-up to warrant its fate, and again I’d enjoyed learning the chords, clumsy as they sounded alongside Finn’s delicate picking. Despite Jahn’s fulsome pooh-poohing of my mooted duet, I’d still hoped to coax Aldri i Livet’s creator into a singalong: how could he object when we were sitting there side by side on the empty sand? It was a deflating moment when Thai Air advised me that the modest gap between arrival at Bangkok and the departure of my connecting flight to Koh Samui forswore anything beyond cabin luggage; the Fender hadn’t come along for the ride.

  My head filled with the impressively lush introductory backing vocals, then a brain-snagging keyboard hook, which segued into Finn’s sonorous plucking as his sweet, choirboy tones picked up the melody. Nulpoints.net cited the song in describing what it called ‘the scandalous treatment of Norwegian Eurovision entries from the mid-sixties to the mid-eighties’. So too did the EBU’s veteran voting scrutineer Clifford Brown during a 1992 BBC documentary: ‘On several occasions back then I chose Norway, because I thought theirs were very catchy, very beautifully orchestrated little songs.’ However else it upset the Eurovision jurors, it can’t have offended their ears.

  It’s two weeks earlier, and I’m in bed watching a logo jerkily rotate to the grandly ceremonial Eurovision fanfare, Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Te Deum being put to a use he probably didn’t imagine when composing it in 1692. My Andreas-sourced commentary for the 1981 Dublin final is by France’s TF1, which should at least give me the chance – as it transpires my last chance – to decode some of the voiceover asides. As well as the compere’s utterances: thanks to Johnny Logan, the Irish are staging Eurovision for the first time since the days of Dana.

  The introductory overview poignantly betrays a nagging fear that in the ten years that have since elapsed, the continent might have forgotten that European life existed west of la Royaume Uni. Watching the Ireland-by-numbers helicopter flypasts of forts and fields, the postcard snapshots of Guinness and Gaelic, I’m once again obliged to consider how stubbornly parochial Europe remained just a quarter of a century back.

  By supplementing the usual French and English with Gaelic, the hostess imbues her opening pronouncements with the multilingual tedium of a flight-safety briefing aboard the USS Enterprise. It’s a relief to find this sagging ordeal ended with the triumphant return of the pre-act postcards from abroad, those introductory vignettes of each nation’s performers interacting with their host city’s tourist infrastructure. First up are the Austrians, beaming at a waiter as he pours cream over the back of a spoon into their Irish coffees. Accessorised with legwarmers and American football helmets, their ensuing performance builds on this promising start: vintage, double-matured Eurovision cheese.

  A Fawcett-flicked German (63 kilos, reports the voiceover, and a ping-pong enthusiast) coyly leading her beardy band-members around a war memorial, five Israelis feeding ducks in a park, two Danish couples meeting on a canal bridge: it’s becoming more and more difficult to avoid the similarities between these films and the half-hearted scene-setting preambles to the era’s continental pornography. How thankful I am that this is not the case when the squatly hirsute Seid Memic-Vajta, ‘winner of the prestigious Sarajevo festival’, meets up with two leering associates and a frail ginger consumptive outside the National Gallery. At least until they start singing.

  A number entitled Layla is followed by one called Leila: after half a dozen entries it’s clear that it will take something special to stand out above or below the thick layer of gooey dross being slathered across the screen. Finland handsomely manage this with the accordion-driven reggae that follows.

  In the thunderstruck aftermath of Reggae OK, the commentator’s voice cracks and wavers like a bum-fluffed adolescent, and in sympathy I start to wonder if all this relentless abuse is permanently damaging my critical faculties. After another couple of finals, I think, I’ll have undergone a full musical lobotomy, able only to process pop sounds of childish inanity, grunting my incoherent appreciation through sagging, moist lips, confused by and even sometimes afraid of more complex or challenging melodic forms. With mild horror I look down at my notes and see that next to Humanahum, sung by a Henri Leconte-alike and France’s last entry before their monument-to-drivel boycott, I’ve put a double tick and the words ‘best yet’. (That evening, my youngest daughter asks me what the tune is I’ve been humming since she came back from school. I don’t know what she’s talking about, I tell her; five minutes later she blurts, ‘That! That one!’ A snatch of chorus is lodged between my pursed lips, and in disbelief I let it escape: it’s Zoom, by the Commodores.)

  The Spaniards present what sounds like the theme to an unsuccessful daytime soap; the Dutch chug down Baileys throughout their introductory film before performing an entry that owes a great deal to Chiquitita. ABBA released what would be their final album in 1981, and rumours of a split had clearly encouraged the continent’s performers to fantasise about plonking their satinette arses down on that vacant throne. For seven years the group had cast a mighty shadow over Eurovision, their astounding achievements eclipsing all subsequent winners. In 1981 that shadow loomed larger and darker than ever, as I discover when Cyprus split the chorus of Monika: ‘Moni, Moni, Moni,’ chant the members of Island, a little too pleadingly.

  The Irish hosts perform with the volume blatantly cranked up, and then here’s a sprightly young blond man in a fishing jumper, grinning shyly as he leads his backing vocalists (beards, blondes) along a windswept Dublin dockside. Though already thirty-four, he looks like a venture scout on a sponsored walk. ‘Un artiste complet,’ trumpets the voiceover, before detailing Finn Kalvik’s sole responsibility for writing, arranging and – conductor Sigurd Jansen’s putting on his headphones, so here we go – performing Aldri i Livet.

  The Melodi Grand Prix final, two months before, had been a coronation more than a contest. The cravat-wearing presenter, having stumblingly welcomed each preceding act with the help of a handful of prompt cards, dropped them in his lap while hailing, in tones of sombre unworthiness, the performer and composer of Aldri i Livet.

  From the opening bars of that lovingly crafted keyboard intro, it was clear that we’d entered a different league: as if to prove the point, Finn performed at the MGP in what looked like a Coventry City shirt, along with complementary scarf. Once again, I didn’t need to convince myself of its musical merits: sitting up in bed, I tapped my foot, nodded along and generally exhibited all principal symptoms of male-pattern musical appreciation. This, though, was more than Finn managed. Guitar round neck, mouth to mike, for three minutes he stood rooted to the spot. My thoughts, watching him bow and rise with a slight applause-acknowledging smile, were that for Dublin he’d need to work on his on-stage mobility, and perhaps think about a wardrobe change. Particularly when a tantalising freeze-frame suggested, if not quite conclusively, that his shirt was bearing an unhelpfully auspicious squad number. Having squinted at the fuzzy, over-coloured smudge for long minutes, I was obliged to conclude from the available evidence that Finn Kalvik had just performed his Eurovision entry wearing a huge number 0.

  Perhaps concluding that having won him the national qualifier his performance wasn’t broke, he doesn’t fix it. He steps on to the Royal Dublin Society stage still wearing that white scarf and pale blue team shirt, and his hair remains coiffed in that wispy, extra-length David Soul cut. The one obvious departure is that instead of standing with
his acoustic guitar, he’s perched cross-legged on a tall white bar stool.

  Next year the combo would work for Germany’s Nicole: so huge seemed her guitar and so frail her physique that it would have been almost inhumane to force her to bear it aloft. But as a full-grown Norseman, whatever his hair might say, sitting down makes Finn look effete, inadequate and yet somehow unwisely smug. Get up, you big blond ponce, you want to shout, get up and let one of those singing girls behind you take the weight off their white-booted feet.

  And being delivered from a chair makes his song seem somehow less consequential: its gentle plucking and background warbles grate and simper rather than soothe. I’m suddenly picking holes that went unpicked throughout the Melodi national final – Finn’s irksome habit of singing out of one side of his rather small mouth, along with a certain overcrowded feel to the song’s chorus. Nonetheless, as Aldri i Livet trills and plings towards its climax, it’s hard to imagine 300 million Europeans gawping at their screens in harrowed silence as they did three years before when Jahn snapped those braces and launched himself off the stage. Friends of mine, friends with only a passing, culture-nostalgic interest in Eurovision, could all remember Jahn Teigen; Finn Kalvik meant nothing to them.

  Almost immediately, here are Bucks Fizz on a cabin cruiser: being sandwiched between the hosts and the winners can’t have helped Finn’s case. Particularly as Making Your Mind Up highlighted his drably static performance with a vigorously physical routine incorporating much hand jiving, and of course that synchronised removal of the lower halves of the two girls’ outfits. Just as Finn’s stool cemented his pointlessness, so with that savage rip of Velcro Bucks Fizz earnt the votes that brought them victory: the ping-pong German wound up only four points adrift in second. It occurs to me that it’s possible to spot a Eurovision loser – and perhaps even a winner – with the sound off.

  From now on I’m just looking for sub-Finn performances. No shortage: straight up are a deranged Portuguese quintet, wearing pastel-coloured plastic boiler suits that suggest they’re on a lunchbreak from the poultry abattoir. Playback seems to go on rather a long time – so long, indeed, that I do as they repeatedly order, this time with an eye on the DVD’s time-elapsed counter. Well, look at that: 3.04, a full four seconds over the maximum permitted length. Consider yourself lucky, I think, at the same time forced to accept that I’m starting to know and care far too much about the minutiae of this whole idiotic business.

  Belgium’s Samson, the last dying embers of those Boney M-inspired disco eulogies to historical legends; a Greek duo with a rose on their piano and a performance so dreary that the Cypriots only give it six. A Swiss trio nudge their homeland into the style decade they haven’t yet felt the need to leave; in gloves and tailcoats, the power-balladeering Swedes clumsily trample on ABBA’S legacy. Then Björn Skifs takes his bow, and after six minutes of tin whistles and floaty dancing it’s ‘Good evening, Austria, could I have your votes please?’

  After four rounds Finn still has company at the foot of the scoreboard, but then to lonely cheers Israel give two to Finland and five to Cyprus, and he’s alone. There’s a great Eurovision moment when the Yugoslavian jury forewoman is asked for her votes and screams back, ‘I don’t have it!’, and another when Turkey’s total is inadvertently downgraded to zero (the error is not corrected for three long rounds).

  There’s no green-room coverage to tell us how Finn is taking all this, but the French commentator seems aware that Eurovision history is tragically repeating itself: from the halfway point on he begins mumbling, in a sort of wan gloat, about the looming fate of ‘la Norvège’. He snaps out of it, though, when the UK jury awards France a single point. ‘Oh, la la,’ he says, adding ‘la la la la la’ to emphasise his scorn and outrage as jeers ring out around the auditorium. (To explode the Eurovision conspiracist’s most sacred cow – incoming udder shrapnel! – the French have proven far happier to vote for the British than we have for them.)

  Bucks Fizz have to wait until the last round to sew up their victory, and as the beaming quartet trot back on-stage like over-eager children’s TV presenters, they’re joined by all the other acts to wave and smile and teach the world to sing. All the other acts but one – even on frame-by-frame slo-mo, there’s no sign of a blond man in a football shirt. The credits roll across the irrefutable scoreboard evidence: nine points adrift from the penultimate pair of Turkey and Portugal, Aldri i Livet has by statistical inference just been voted – as indeed it remains – the worst Eurovision song of all time.

  Naturally enough we land at Bangkok to discover the Koh Samui flight delayed. Down the quiet end of the transfer lounge, backpackers idly squish mosquitoes on each other’s arms and necks; up at its breathlessly commercial hub, businessmen are slumped alarmingly over oxygen inhalers or prostrate on benches having their feet manipulated by surgical-masked masseurs. Each of the many retail outlets is manned by an idiotic surfeit of staff. How many Thais does it take to sell a pallid Westerner a bag of peanuts? Seven: one to take the cash, one to put them in a carrier, and five to clear up what happens after he discovers they’re lobster and coconut flavour.

  Refreshed by a nap and not yet familiar with Bangkok Airways’ entry on www.airdisaster.com, I enjoy the quick hop to Koh Samui. Deep green, white-fringed and afloat in the softly glittering blue, the island announces itself from some distance as an unarguably wonderful place. Even the airport seems enticingly tropical, its single runway lined with bougainvillea and hibiscus, the largely unwalled arrival and departure halls sheltered by coconut-mat roofs. With a trip to Norway recently stuffed under my belt, and Finland next up, I step out into the blood-warm breeze feeling half in love with the man who has brought me here. Finn has even arranged a minibus pick-up for me, the splendid fellow, and as it crumps and clanks through the dusted shanties of the island’s western coastline I again marvel at the triumphant non-nulness of his lifestyle. After twenty minutes we bump off the concrete-sectioned road and into the forecourt of an address I can read off the T-shirt my youngest daughter now wears as a nightdress: Big John Beach Resort, Tongyang Beach, Koh Samui.

  A girlish young man identified by a badge on his chest as ‘Gob’ arrives with a glittering smile and a luridly orange welcome cocktail; as he hands it over I note the residents’ blackboard on the wall behind him. Almost two-thirds of the thirty-odd slots are empty, making the two names near the top all the more conspicuous. ‘P10 – Mr FINN. P11 – Mr TIM.’

  A moment later I’m being shown into P11, a straw-roofed, marble-bathroomed hexagonal chalet twenty yards from Big John’s compact stretch of beach. Stoutly eschewing the lure of a huge double bed – I’ve been in transit for eighteen hours – I change into my trunks and shuffle down to the sea. A dozen white plastic sun loungers are lined up under the palm trees on a slim arc of soft sand, but only one is occupied. Small mirrored shades, a magnificent head of burnished hair, a thin smile and a bead necklace that I recognise from his website photo. How very splendid to see you, Mr Kalvik.

  The smile broadens; Finn pulls his trim and richly sun-seasoned body upright to greet me. ‘Tim, yes?’ he says, in the boyish, slightly tremulous tone familiar from our phone calls. ‘We can talk right here.’ And so begin the three days of my professional life that, until the memorable alarums of the third, I would have most trouble in describing as work.

  Side by side on our loungers, Finn’s bronzed, lithe feet form an uncomfortable contrast with mine, pallid and very quickly blotched with red from the shock of this sudden exposure to the sun mid-way through their under-sock hibernation. I can’t help inaugurating our debut chat by paying homage to Finn’s astounding physical condition: he could honestly pass for a man in his mid forties. ‘I’ve only got one face,’ he says, ‘and I don’t want to look like a wreck. I cycle 30km a day, I do a lot of sit-ups and push-ups … Right now I had five weeks without alcohol.’ Though I’ll witness him making up a little lost ground in that department, it’s clear that for Finn this wholesome lif
estyle is a professional prerequisite. ‘Most of my earning is through concerts now, not so much records. I hope I don’t sound big-headed, but if my gigs are mostly good ones, it’s because I put all my energy into them, alone up there with a guitar on-stage for two hours. Norway is a country with only four and a half million people, and very often I play the same places over and over again … If you want to be asked to come back, you have to give your best.’

  He hangs a leg off his lounger, tracing his toes idly through the warm sand. ‘I work really hard for six or seven months, doing those gigs in Norway,’ he says. ‘So when I come out to here, or Fiji, or New Zealand, I feel I deserve to do nothing, just diving and stuff, for maybe two months. Then for three or four months I write songs, maybe I paint, constantly on the move to new islands, new places. I’m just going to get a beer.’

  Beyond my feet, a tiny silver wave effortfully rises, furls and falls wearily on to the sand with a wet hush. Out in the smooth, shallow Gulf of Thailand, a Norwegian couple of Finn’s acquaintance are spreadeagled face down on lilos, rotating gently in a light breeze. Further still, waveless gulf meets cloudless sky in a line interrupted by the hazy silhouettes of craggy, densely rainforested islands. We’re at the centre of a bay that curves out towards the horizon in both directions; I look left, and spot a distant fisherman lazily hurling a net out into the shallows, and right, where two children are bent over the lapping wavelets, collecting washed-up coconuts. There is no one else in sight; it is a scene of gaudy perfection.