by Tim Moore
‘Ish,’ adds a dismal companion.
No time for a post-mortem. Distracted by a new and burgeoning fear that my seat is about to be reclaimed by Kiev’s hardest man, I’m only aware that the full-figured Maltese soprano and her Disney ballad have been and gone when an overheard coo from my right-hand neighbour (‘Oooh, this looks interesting!’) alerts me to the on-stage presence of half a dozen Romanians wielding angle grinders.
And so it marches unflaggingly onwards, this confusion of noise, light and spangled, frenzied choreography. My Scottish neighbours’ swaying enthusiasm is banging me against the Ukrainian on every off-beat; the Brits behind are inadvertently tickling my ears with their Union Jacks. Slow down! Even the between-act pauses offer no respite, as the scene-shifters toil with practised urgency, rolling away oil drums, hoisting amps and drum kits into split-level position, almost losing control of a huge grand piano they’re wheeling at speed down a ramp. The pub-glam Norwegians, the boldly ethnic Turks … and there’s Norman Bates’s mother in a wicker rocking-chair, belabouring a lap-mounted drum of improbable diameter as beside her a topless man screams, ‘Let’s make love!’ At last – the true spirit of Eurovision (the Moldovans responsible will come home a handy sixth).
A dozen songs or so in I flick through the programme and establish that the opening Hungarian entry is one of just five to lack an English element – clearly a boon to the Scotsmen, who I note with astonishment are singing along to every word, but surely rather an insult to the inclusive spirit of Eurovision. And as tickled as Marcel would surely have been to see the Euro ousting the dollar as the Ukraine’s street-preferred foreign currency, it would hardly have atoned for his disappointment at the end of bilingual Eurovision compering. Farewell Royaume Uni, and though it was only ever there in spirit, farewell nul points.
More big drums, a couple of pole dancers, a lot of shouts of ‘Hey!’ and an air violinist … it sounds both bad and funny, but from this distance at least, it isn’t. Indeed the overall impression, beyond the overblown theatricality, is one of honed professionalism. I’d learnt that U2 had already bought up the 2005 Eurovision stage-set for their forthcoming tour; it’s not easy to imagine the Stones or David Bowie competing to acquire the mirror-ball technology of Eurovisions past. The contest, perhaps Europe in general, has squeezed out the last traces of parochial idiosyncrasy in its drive towards polished, metropolitan competence. We don’t do silly any more: no more accordion reggae, no more brace-twanging and aerial splits, no more joke Skodas or 8-0 mismatches at the European Championships. I probably shouldn’t be as gladdened as I am by the appearance of the national-hero Klitschko brothers during a brief halfway interval. ‘Eh-ooro-vizzion eace seemlah to barksing,’ intones white-suited Vladimir, displaying all the expressive articulacy we’ve come to expect from experienced heavyweights.
‘Of course,’ replies Vitali, ‘but let us hope there are tonight no nackouts!’ Yes, let’s. Really.
I get talking to the Scotsmen during this soothingly inept lull. We get as far as sharing our fears for Javine before a huge army of horned helmets stands to attention in the facing grandstand and begins to clap in robotic unison. ‘Ah, now this isn’t bad,’ confides the nearest Scotsman when the Swedish smoothie on-stage starts up, ‘but the one that came second in their national final was a cracker.’
The moment he’s departed the stage, the chap to my left, along with perhaps two-thirds of the auditorium, leaps to his feet and embarks on a rolling roar that doesn’t let up for three minutes. Halfway through it my pocket buzzes. It’s a text from Zhenya: ‘Do you agree, GreenJolly not bad?’ I wish I could. Though it’s hard to make anything out above the throat-shredding singalong beside me, the Ukrainians clearly aren’t going to win. They’re chubby, middle-aged and male, and what little I can hear of their dirge-like plod-rap goes in one ringing ear and straight out the other. ‘Good luck!’ I text back.
Germany’s entry painfully activates the nul-point alarm that’s now embedded deep in my skull. The Scotsmen and I exchange pained expressions, and looking around there isn’t a single German flag being waved in Gracia’s honour. Come to think of it, I haven’t spotted a single French tricolour, either – if there’s a common theme that unites the Brits, Scandis, Greeks, Turks and ex-Warsaw Pacters who have commandeered this place, it’s that we’re all from Europe’s peripheries, born the wrong side of the track that runs from Berlin to Paris (change at Brussels).
Events of the previous hour have confirmed that the strange alchemy by which a winning Eurosong is forged remains to me an unfathomable enigma, but these days I’m poking about the bottom of the Eurovision barrel with the practised sagacity of a tea-leaf reader. Sorting the wheat from the chaff is beyond me, but I can confidently declare Gracia the chaff de la chaff. ‘Wasn’t that awful?’ says a voice from behind with undisguised glee. A year ago I’d have turned round to join in the laughter; now I just sit there, thinking, Get on the phone, good people of Austria, and help out your old mates in their hour of need. All I ask is that tonight no one goes home empty-handed.
Suddenly all the scary fat gangsters and their teenage blondes vault to attention. ‘It’s the Russians,’ hisses a Scotsman. So efficiently has the Awakening theme been pushed, it’s easy to forget that a fifth of the Ukrainian population is of Russian origin, and that when the discredited election was rerun, Yushchenko triumphed by a margin of just 8 per cent. On the way here from the metro station I’d passed a small demonstration, shunted away by police down a sidestreet: ‘Europe – GreenJolly is not Ukraine!’ read one banner. The big Ukrainian beside me is not alone in whistling and jeering; for a horrid moment it seems that Svante Stockselius’s worst fears are about to be realised in Eurovision-fuelled civil unrest. And that’s before I find out what Natalya Podolskaya is singing about. ‘You think you’re having fun,’ reads my nearest Scotsman from his programme at the end of three tense minutes, ‘till a child shoots your gun.’
A trio of bouncy blonde Bosnians put us back on track with a bit of pseudo-ABBA; when they go off my neighbour leans back with a big smile and blares, ‘Aw, too much! I wish I had a pair of tits.’
‘You have,’ deadpans his friend.
After the worst run of results in Eurovision history, Switzerland has called in that Estonian girl group; two pretty-boy Latvians (get off those stools, boys, I shriek silently, then cheer as they do), a pointy-faced, bored-looking Frenchwoman and suddenly it’s all over.
There’s some kind of floor show incorporating a contortionist and more of the over-sized percussion that is the evening’s theme, but I can’t look: my overloaded visual cortex has almost shut down. Instead I liberate one of the two half-litres of complimentary beer from my Eurovision satchel, hack it open with a key and offer the Scotsmen a swig they graciously decline. ‘Greece will walk it, but I’d love to see the big Maltese girl do well,’ says the nearest in response to my request for a final prediction. Greece? Beyond a lot of flags being waved somewhere to our left, I can’t remember them at all. And was that Maltese flesh-hill really so special? To hold my Eurovision own I idly invoke her similarly diva-sized compatriot from 1998, year Gunvor. ‘Same woman,’ says a Scotsman, sounding a little disappointed in me.
The brown bottle in my hand is empty when Vladimir Klitschko comes back on in his white suit to bang a little gong. ‘You cannart vote no more!’ he cries, a little reedily.
‘Well, here we go,’ murmurs my neighbour, chewing a fleshy lip. The gigantic flat-screen scoreboard comes to life, sparking an involuntary beer-churning clench deep in my abdomen.
‘Khallo, Vienna!’ shrieks a compere, and after an exchange of stilted pleasantries, it begins. Nichts for Germany, nowt for Javine – in fact, consulting the animated point-totals as we head off to the headquarters of Lithuania Television, zilch for anyone west of Salzburg.
‘Obviously a lot of Slavic expats in Austria,’ mutters a voice from behind; the results that unfold will later inspire some commentators to suggest the retrog
rade step of splitting Eurovision in two.
Twenty-four nations qualified for the final, but with the unsuccessful semi-finalists now also enfranchised, this is the most gruelling vote-a-thon in Eurovision’s fifty years. Vilnius, Lisbon, Monaco (go Andreas!) … after Minsk, a Scotsman wearily informs me that we still have thirty-four capitals to visit. ‘Is this really worth an hour and a half of primetime television?’ he sighs rhetorically; when my second beer comes out, they both hold out plastic cups with expressions of frail exasperation.
But the complicit huff of boredom I attempt to expel comes out as a half-stifled dry retch. It does so because with five – ‘… and Turkey, twelve points!’ – with six voting rounds complete, the bottom of the scoreboard is mired in a horrible, deathly stasis. Monaco has sorted Germany out with a couple of points (half their eventual total), and with Greece yet to vote Cyprus are hardly going to be left to die on the start line (so traditional is the twelve points from Athens that when they’re announced, Constantinos unfurls a pre-prepared ‘thank you Hellas’ banner in the green room).
Rather more of a challenge, though, to imagine who can be relied on to rescue the two old enemies grovelling pointless beside them. The prospect of seeing the French strung up by their feet from the drivel monument may be a consolation-in-waiting for some of my countrymen, but as first Iceland, then Belgium, then Estonia fail to offer either Touch My Fire or Chacun Pense à Soi even a single point, I can’t count myself amongst them.
The Scotsmen only have eyes for the top of the scoreboard – as well they might, given the unfolding prescience of their predictions – but as the Finnish fail to include the words ‘United Kingdom’ or ‘France’ in their address to the Palace of Sport, I’m including the words ‘come on’, ‘please’ and ‘pissed-up elk-shaggers’ in my muttered equivalent. We’re beginning to run out of juries. Say it ain’t so, people of Andorra. A minute on, it ain’t: with practised diplomatic aplomb, they chuck five points over their northern border (followed by twelve – almost half Spain’s final total – to the south). And then there was one.
Can this really be happening? Scrolling back through three kaleidoscopic hours of carnival mania I try and bring up a mental screen-grab of Javine Hylton; all I get is strappy boots and distant dance moves, bathed in dim orange light. What I need is the look in her eye, to see what she’s made of. Would she take it on the chin, or in the teeth? Was she a Kojo or a Kalvik? A Seyyal or a Celia?
We’re halfway through the Bulgarian voting; at this stage that’s enough to rule out any points from them. Why does ‘Javine’ have to share so many letters with ‘Jemini’? I snatch up the programme and flick through to her biography on the United Kingdom page. ‘Controversial exit from the hit show Popstars: The Rivals … devastated … six months out of the limelight …’ My scalp tautens. She’s got form! But … but maybe that isn’t such a bad thing. Jahn’s fallow year in Jerusalem with The Lions of Judea, the injuries that put paid to Kojo’s keepy-uppy career, Seyyal’s rise and fall from Brynner and Bronson to photo-love stories – all those who’d emerged from the nul-points wreckage with the fewest open wounds had been previously inoculated against future professional disappointment.
Goodnight Sofia, hello Dublin. It’s Dana! Give us a break, Rosemary: I’m not asking for all kinds of everything, just any kind of something. Bosnia, one point; Greece, two points; Switzerland, three points. Sagging in my seat, I vacantly survey the Greek flags already being hoisted in triumph. All those violent sensory recollections seem to drain away. So this is it, then. Unbidden, a scene takes vivid shape in my hollowed head: there I am, ringing a bell marked ‘Hylton’ outside a flat in Ladbroke Grove, West London.
Could Javine make a career out of her disaster, as Jahn Teigen had done, or reinvent herself so effectively, à la Daniel, that her countrymen would forget it ever happened? At twenty-three, might she settle into Remedios-model self-imposed exile, pending a glorious metamorphosis into majestic diva-hood a decade and a half later? Or just knuckle down to a workaday career in bread-and-butter entertainment, like Tor or the Ov?
Norway four, Romania five, Israel six. I find I’m grateful for that UK meltdown at Riga 2003: two short years on, the lake of tabloid bile could hardly have been refilled. What am I saying? It’s going to be concentrated by bitter experience into a viscous puddle of black spite: countries don’t come much nicer than Norway, and look what they did to Finn Kalvik three years on from Mil Etter Mil. I see Javine open the door, unkempt head bowed, then cravenly count out the 100 quid I’ve handed her as my voice recorder starts running: ‘So you’re, um, backstage at the Palace of Sport, the scores are coming in …’
‘Denmark, 7 points.’ Would I get the Wilfried brush-off, or would she simply vanish like Thomas and poor Çetin? Was there – by the grace of all that is Benny, please no – some Gunvorian cupboard full of skeletons waiting to tumble out on me? Ten years on there’d be a divorce, perhaps a forsaken child, certainly an improbable venture or two. A naturopathic brewery, the teachings of Prem Rawat, an aquatic archery range on the Grand Union canal. I let my dull gaze fall to the programme biography. Maybe – well, what have we got? – maybe she’d be asked to reprise her triumph as Nala in the West End production of The Lion King; maybe she’d find productive solace in her mother’s collection of soul and reggae albums. Or maybe I’d just find myself being punted back down Ladbroke Grove by burgundy-boot power.
What a strange privilege to meet the extraordinary people I’d met, to uncover the wayward sagas of those I hadn’t. Yet cheering as it was to have restored some reputations, to have scrubbed off a little of the stubborn nul-points stigma, the fearsome emotional toll had left me exhausted. The highs had been a little too high, and the lows much too low; I was grateful it was over. But I only realise quite how grateful when the gentle voice of Ireland’s 1970 Eurovision winner, amplified to a godlike boom, blasts out around Kiev’s Palace of Sport: ‘United Kingdom, eight points.’
A travesty in the contest’s grand tradition, a shameless, love-blind expatriate vote harvest. As I haul myself upright hoisting both arms wanly aloft, somehow that makes it all the sweeter.
Jahn Teigen, Paris, 1978.
Finn Kalvik, Dublin, 1981.
Kojȯ, Harrogate, 1982.
Munich, 1983. Çetin Alp.
Remedios Amaya.
Seyyal Taner, Brussels, 1987.
Wilfried, Dublin, 1988.
Daníel, Lausanne, 1989.
Thomas Forstner, Rome, 1991.
Ovidijus Vyniauskas, Dublin, 1994.
Celia Lawson, Dublin, 1997.
Tor Endresen, Dublin, 1997.
Gunvor Guggisberg, Birmingham, 1998.
Jemini, Riga, 2003.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Birna, Jane Awdry, Andreas Schacht, Martin Faulkner and Chris Barrow of doteurovision, John Thompson at www.nul-points.net, and the bewilderingly tireless compilers of diggiloo.net and esctoday.com. Also to OGAE Turkey, Frida Thorsen, Sissel Bryggman, Øistein Wickle, Alan McCarthy, Tinna Traustadottir, Cicely and Jack.
And I shouldn’t forget all my nul-pointers, even those I sometimes wish I could.
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