I had the sudden suspicion, at about ten o’clock on Saturday night, that I was the only straight male in the United Kingdom watching the Eurovision Song Contest. Or perhaps the only one watching it voluntarily. A little later a Dutch presenter, when reporting her country’s scores, said: ‘Hello girls and gays.’ It wasn’t a slip of the tongue but an accurate summation of the audience – the one in Liverpool and the rest of us, sitting in front of our televisions.
There was a merciful absence of all faux-seriousness and any song which got political didn’t do well
Eurovision, like Crufts, has been a gay domain for the best part of a quarter of a century, of course, but it is so gay now that it doesn’t even need to advertise its credentials with rainbow flags. Gays and women were in the audience, gays and women were watching at home. Both of these sections of society have a certain thing about hedonism and this was the most gleefully hedonistic contest in years.
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