How to break Britain's Eurovision curse

“Over the past five years, Britain has produced some of the biggest chart-topping acts on the planet from Adele to One Direction, Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith. But in nearly two decades, it has failed to produce a single winner of Eurovision.” – BBC 1 News, 24 May 2015.

That’s one way of putting it. Another way is to say the BBC has failed to produce a Eurovision winner: its bureaucrats are the ones choosing the British entry, and they get it wrong every time. Graham Norton and Paddy O’Connell are superb, funny and knowledgable hosts; I have nothing but praise for how the BBC actually covers Eurovision. But it’s time the BBC subcontracted the job of actually picking the UK entry, because it’s horribly clear that, as an organisation, it just does not know how. It can’t be bothered to run contest or a televote conducted in so much of the continent. It’s all done by bureaucrats.