I was at the hall of Swedish Church in Marylebone last night to watch the final of Melody Festival – the bar was selling dill crisps, pear cider and plenty merriment. As I expected, ‘Heroes’ won. But the show itself was a masterpiece of entertainment, an example of how Swedish TV is now vastly superior to the BBC in spite of having a fraction of its entertainment budget.
The show was played to a 28,000-strong crowd (a panel of six BBC bureaucrats choose the lamentable UK entries) Melody Festival opened with a version of Final Countdown (a Swedish anthem) sung in swing time by Conchita, last year’s Eurovision winner.
As the votes came in, MelodyFestival laid on this wacky but brilliant act by a Norwegian comedy duo, Ylvis, called ‘What’s the meaning of Stonehenge’. So Swedish TV was sending up the very Eurovision schlager music it was serving up – a brilliant musical form of self-deprecation.
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