Eurovision why bother

It would have been more accurate to say that the BBC has failed to produce a winner. This is nothing to do with a lack of national talent; Britain is an exporter of talent contests as well as talent.

In May , a discussion was held at the Swedish Embassy in London about where Britain went so wrong. I had the honour of moderating the talks. The keynote speaker was Katrina Leskanich, the singer who with her backing group the Waves won for Britain in by the highest margin in Eurovision history. She put her success down to Jonathan King, the pop impresario who was perhaps the last person the BBC hired who knew how to win competitions.

The corporation now seems -utterly lost. The corporation is useless at entertainment, he said, and no longer has anyone in its hierarchy who understands it. If it sends dreadful acts to compete, and then holds the entire contest up to ridicule, then our successful singers will not be seen dead on a Eurovision stage.

The BBC is not the first to try to ask an anonymous bureaucrat to choose a song that is expected to be popular with the masses. This happened every year with Intervision, the Soviet equivalent of Eurovision, which ended in abysmal failure.

The difference between the formats epitomised why the West won: ours was colourful, humorous, raucous, and even in the s produced some of the most memorable popular tunes. The BBC evinces the same bureaucratic snobbery and lack of comprehension. When it did run a contest, the whole thing was a farce. Already, there is optimism. The contest was postponed because of Covid.

Fraser Nelson, the editor of the Spectator, dismissed the idea of a Brexit pushback. So every year, Britain sends some unprepared soul to perish on the world stage. As for Newman, now he shines in the light preserved for plucky losers.

Nul points again: how exactly can the UK win Eurovision? Did Newman really deserve to come last, the only act out of 26 to fail to win a single point from the juries?

For Gould, since the BBC took the public's choice to select the UK act away from them, promise was shown when they gave Andrew Lloyd Webber the responsibility for composing Jade Ewan's song in and when they gave an opportunity to rising star Molly Smitten-Downes. However, with this year's candidate, Electro Velvet, it's been another step backwards.

Vignoles writes that the UK, and its neighbour Ireland, have to come to terms with how the competition has changed: "the contest has moved on in so many ways: musical taste has evolved, other countries invest more in their participation and the contest has more status in many of these countries.

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