Just finished my tea.  I'm at Shamila's so it was all cooked for me.  I'll give her a hand with the pots but that's all I'll have to do. 

She's watching Comic Relief in Zambia.  I can't watch it.  It goes without saying that I can't abide the cretinous celebrities but that's not the only reason why I can't watch.

What was that quote "To be born an Englishman is to win first prize in the lottery of life".  Per WWW it was either Rudyard Kipling or Cecil Rhodes.  Whoever it was, it was a different age and they weren't talking about life in the Tax Office on Teesside but let's be honest for many of us in this country life's a piece of piss.

I finished off the bottle of wine I opened last night, thus my talking daft again. 

Anyway, Bonnie Tyler.  Have you heard it? 

 

 
Sadly, it's no Puppet On A String nor Boom Bang A Bang and in recent years for every Beg Steal or Borrow there's been a Scootch and Engelbert  and as Mike Harding said on Facebook what chance has she got in Sweden when she lost in France.

We loved Eurovision when we were kids.  Me, Ian and Russ used to watch the whole show and our mam and dad used to come in from the pub and watch with us for the scoring (the best bid).  We always did well and usually winning was great but to be fair we always had good songs.  The football team was crap but at least we were good at Eurovision.

Of course it's a bit of a joke now, certainly in this country.  There are conspiracy theorists about why Britain doesn't do well but as a student of pop music for over 40 years I can tell you it's nothing to do with that to do with politics.  Countries vote for other nearby countries for cultural rather than political reasons.  And the people of Europe generally vote for the best songs and they don't vote for us because ours are crap.

And it's no coincidence that it's often those little fancied strange sounding songs  (often from the Balkans' countries funnily enough) ridiculed by philistines Wogan and Norton do really well when the voting starts because they're usually the best songs.

Bonnie Tyler's song is the epitome of AOR mediocrity but I can see a top 10 finish which circa 2013 will be a bit like when a British tennis player (pre Tim and Andy) got to the second week of week of Wimbledon.

Then again, apparently she's popular in Europe (no doubt why she was selected) so you never know.

May 18, be there or somewhere else.. 

Tomorrow?