Your Country Doesn't Need You

OK, so I'm quite a big Eurovision fan.

I never used to be, but in the last 10 years or so I have fully embraced it to the point of someone needing to shoot me in the face I get so excited about it. Every year we have a big Eurovision party at our house, and there are home-made little flags and scoresheets and a sweepstake, and all guests are compelled to show excessive enthusiasm, or feign enthusiasm, or get out.

So, pretty much I don't think anyone could be more pro-Eurovision than me.

But what. The. Fuck. What the fuck was that they gave us on Your Country Needs you last Friday?? It was APPALLING.

First of all, we had half an hour of 'oo let's all spunk over Pete Waterman', which in itself isn't a particularly attractive image anyway. Admittedly, he has co-written some excellent songs in the 80s and 90s. But take note of that last bit, THE 80s AND 90s . His music has a very particular sound to it, which I enjoy and grew up with, but which is quite dated now.

And in any case, he hasn't actually written a new song for us anyway. He's just smooshed Kids In America and Better The Devil You Know into a single song, which does give it a familiar feel, but also makes you think 'er, this is a total rip off of something else'. Maybe he's hoping the foolish Europeans won't notice.

But that brings us on to our choice of act. They trotted out six unknowns (well, one of them I knew), who then proceeded to sing Pete Waterman songs out of key and of a quality that would get you three quick Xs on Britain's Got Talent.

I really REALLY wanted Miss Fitz to do well, as I remembered them from this year's X Factor where they'd had an AMAZING first audition. But alas, blame it on the microphones or the acoustics or whatever, they weren't in key and it sounded terrible.

So his highness Queen Pete eliminated three acts, although sadly not 'eliminated' in the Terminator sense, but in the thank you now get out sense.

This left us with one boy with a girl's name (Alexis - WTF? Would you not shorten it to Alex?), one boy with a big face, and girl with a good voice. The girl's going to win then, we thought.

But no. Even with only two songs to learn and perform, she somehow managed to forget the lyrics half way though (she could have just made them up, they were quite generic anyway) and the public quite rightly binned her.

And so now we're left with Josh from Basildon (Basildon for fuck's sake) as our Eurovision entry for 2010. He's got a fucking cravat on on the BBC Eurovision website! What the hell??

He'll be singing the instant not-classic That Sounds Good To Me, but I'm afraid it does not sound good to me, or to Europe, or to anyone else.

It was a disaster, a DISASTER I say. Bring back Michelle Gayle, she kicked ass with the song she wrote for Eurovision and would piss all over "Josh". I'm picking some other country to support, maybe Switzerland with their entry 'Il pleut de l'or', or 'Golden shower' in English (my own translation).

Fuck you, Pete Waterman.