OK, so I'm a sad middle-aged bloke with nothing better to do on a cloudy Saturday night than watching Eurosong 2008. The truly strange thing is that I found myself actually agreeing with Dana (Rosemary Scallan) for the first time in my life. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool secularist, liberal leftie with a confusing capitalist streak and a hint of libertarian idealism thrown in so she and I would not be natural soulmates at the best of times, but she is SO RIGHT about turkeys.
The point of entering a competition is to win and that should drive the criteria used to select acts for the Eurosong competition. Unfortunately there was only one grown-up act among the six chosen by RTE's panel of 'experts' for tonight's competitions and that was Act 4, performed by Leona Daly from Dublin. Neither the turkey nor the other four singers had anything that compared to her vocal performance. But at best Leona (who I've never met or even heard before) will come in second because the generation who grew up watching The Den will vote for the turkey.
Dana was right. If the darn turkey wins RTE should give up the ghost and never enter a song for the Eurovision contest again. They will have proved once and for all that they don't deserve the privilege and in fact I hope that the EBU rules it/him/whatever ineligible on the grounds that the competition is for music, not puppetry. And if they do decide to have another Eurosong contest next year I sincerely hope that RTE will pick a panel of judges made of grown-ups under the age of 35 who have some musical sensibility, because if the selection presented to us was anything to go by this year's usual suspects lost the plot.
John
Better that old people should die of talk than to have young people die in war.
  