About 200 million people tuned in to the Eurovision Song Contest last night, and will have seen Britain finish third-last. The country of Adele, Ed Sheeran, the Mumfords and The Beatles was defeated by countries with a twentieth of our population (and musical talent) – so what’s going wrong? The answer is fairly simple: the UK entry is controlled by the BBC. Asking it to choose a Eurovision Song Contest winner is like asking the Parliamentary Culture Committee to choose a Christmas No1.
I’m a huge fan of the BBC and its Eurovision coverage is generally first class, as are Paddy O’Connell and Graham Norton. But choosing a winning musical act is a another skill. This year, the BBC lined up two contestants left over from The Voice, its talent show, and paired them up (Joe & Jake) and their song wasn’t bad. They were perfectly nice guys singing a perfectly nice song – but this isn’t enough for Eurovision.
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