Eurovision tonight. YAY!!!
Now normally I couldn’t give two shiny rats arses, but this year is different. This year it will be about more than the annual twitter chatter with my Serbian friend who loves the whole razzle-dazzle (or cheesy-queasy) of Eurovision.
As a nation I think it’s safe to say – we don’t really get Eurovision anymore. Sure it was grand in the 70′s when we only had three channels on the television to choose from. It was great in the 80′s when we won for the first time and the nation had something to celebrate, because lets face it, were weren’t going to win the fecking football now were we? And it was OK in the 90′s when we had are winning streak and the majority of the songs that came out of the Eurovision were good, catchy songs that you’d bop along to – remember Gina G’s Ooh Ahh Just a little bit – but by the 00′s we just couldn’t give a shit anymore.
It went mental!
The whole nation watched and thought ‘what the fuck is that?’
I’ll admit it. We Irish we take our lead from England and America. That is our main stream stuff. The clothes, the music, the films. We aren’t European influenced much at all. So when all the Eastern European countries entered their acts we just didn’t get it. We still don’t really get it.
They seem happy. They seem glittery. They seem like a fun, crazy lot.
Which is everything we Irish don’t generally get. Yes we are all for the craic, but our humour is very self deflating. Yes we can be happy, but not generally, it rains far too much over here and it soaks are good humour and dulls our spirit. We are generally happiness when we’re having a damn good moan about something.
Imagine our surprise then when these two over hype, gas (that means funny, my non Irish friends) and glittery twins come along. We just didn’t know what to do with them.
Then someone got the bright idea of putting them in the Eurovision and then *bam* all of a sudden we got these two lads.
Of course there are still begrudging bastards out there, putting them down, saying they are making a show of us. What I say to them is – they are a sight fucking better than Dustin.
We put “proper” acts into the Eurovision before. Micky Hart, Brian Kennedy. They got nowhere! (my Eurovision knowledge is sketchy, didn’t Micky Hart finish third from bottom or something?) We might as well put Jedward out there and let them try there hand because they ARE Eurovision.
I wish the lads the best. I’m not stupid, I know they won’t win. Eurovision was never really about the acts or the songs or even the glitter. It’s not even about ‘sorry for invading you that time, here, have twelve points’. Its about who gets who. And as it stands Ireland gets England. England gets Ireland because both our influences are very American. Mainland Europe vote for their neighbours because they get that more than they do anything else.
Though I know they won’t, I hope Jedward do win. Not only as a two finger salute to those naysayers out there, but because they make me smile. In a time when we owe our fuck out and there isn’t a penny to be found in the country – those two insane feckers make us laugh out loud!