Miss a hastily arranged live Eurovision tribute from the Netherlands? Norton your nelly
THE Olympics? I’d forgotten they were even due, to be honest.
Wimbledon? Couldn’t care less.
Glastonbury? I was genuinely thrilled to hear the environment would be getting a break from all those thousands of marauding BBC staffers.
But Eurovision? That one stopped me in my tracks with a “say it ain’t so?” when I heard it was cancelled.
It’s nearly always my favourite TV event of the year and the BBC’s most entertaining live broadcast by some distance.
Disappointment turned to hope, however, when I learned the BBC was going to fill several blank hours with a night of Eurovision programmes.
A four-pronged assault, if you include Rylan’s A to Z, on BBC2, that began badly with a Pointless special and a top 20 rundown of songs on Eurovision: Come Together, where the only new thing we learned was that Britain’s 2020 entrant, James Newman, looks “a bit Fred West” after two months of lockdown.
The night’s success or failure, though, was always going to hinge on a hastily arranged live broadcast from the Netherlands called Eurovision: Europe Shine A Light, in honour of Katrina And The Waves, which had me in the palm of its hand from the moment Graham Norton introduced it as “well meaning”.
He did not lie.
It was as well meaning as hell, with three very earnest Dutch hosts plus Norton, on his usual voiceover duties, introducing a 30-second burst of all 41 entries, followed by the artists’ thoughts and reflections on the global coronavirus pandemic, which were everything and anything you wanted them to be.
Some were sweet and to the point, like Azerbaijan’s Efendi: “Stay hellzy!”
Others were easy to misinterpret, like Moldova’s Natalia Gordienko: “A penis is wad surrounds you.”
And Austria’s Vincent Bueno was just a self-serving berk: “At this time we should listen to a lot of music. Especially my track, Alive.”
The music didn’t disappoint, either, ranging all the way from the excellent Icelandic entry, Think Of Things, to knock-kneed techno from some Russian live-wires called Little Big.
My personal highlight, though, was the nutty Latvian bird, Samanta Tina, who turned up for her promotional video wearing a PPE mask and squirting a bottle of disinfectant everywhere.
NO MOOD TO SPARE FEELINGS
If ever it got a bit too “Eurovision”, though, there was a special guest on hand to calm the mood down.
Sweden’s Mans Zelmerlow sang Heroes in his back garden (nice wisteria), Italy’s Diodato slowly murdered Volare in a CGI amphitheatre and Ireland’s Johnny Logan had either aged quite dramatically or had to be replaced, right at the last second, by Julian Assange on the poignant What’s Another Year.
The one constant, though, was Norton, who handled Eurovision’s new socially-distanced, time-delayed, non-competitive format as brilliantly as he did the old one and was in no mood to spare feelings.
“Samanta Tina. She’s tried to represent Latvia six times, Lithuania twice and now she’s got through it’s been cancelled. You’d think she’d take the hint, wouldn’t you.”
“Serbia’s answer to The Pussycat Dolls, when the question is — name a group that isn’t as good as The Pussycat Dolls?”
It was a joy to watch after seeing so many hosts and shows fail spectacularly with “the new normal” and my only real complaint was that there wasn’t enough of him or the event.
I wanted a vote as well, of course. But by the time I was ready for Norton to annihilate the regional juries, it was all over.
Lesson learned, though. If I ever take this event for granted or complain about the running time again, you have permission to shoot me down in righteous flames.
Meantime, stay hellzy.
Delusions of the week
GREAT TV lies and delusions of the week. I’ll Get This, Fleur East: “I feel like you’re all very grounded, humble people.”
The Real Marigold Hotel, Britt Ekland: “I look in the mirror — it’s OK. I’m not going to scare the children.”
Channel 4 continuity introducing The Last Leg: Locked Down Under: “Two comedy geniuses coming right up here, Aisling Bea and Kevin Bridges.” So, one comedy genius then. And Aisling Bea.
Britt's a piece of work
BACK in southern India, on BBC1’s hugely enjoyable series The Real Marigold Hotel, Duncan Bannatyne has just bottled the eight-hour overnight train journey to Madurai.
It could’ve been the heat, it could’ve been the food and a dodgy stomach.
Or it could’ve been the fact Britt Ekland is all over him like a cheap sari, no matter how many times the multi-millionaire businessman mentions his “young wife”.
A woman who will not be denied, Britt needs male validation and constant reassurance.
So, during one of the brief moments she wasn’t pestering Duncan to within an inch of his life, Britt visited a vedic astrologer, in downtown Puducherry, and hit him with this loaded question.
(Brace yourself, Vikram.) “Am I going to have work?”
Work? Are you ever, Britt. “The sun is in the constellation of Hasta,” apparently.
So I’d expect work on your face, work on your eyelids, work on your rear end. A work frenzy, in fact.
As for actual employment, though?
I think we can safely say Venus’s transit is currently “resting’ and her earth signs will be “aspecting”, until the panto equinox. So I’d go with Plan A) Duncan.
Hypocritical luvvies
INCIDENTALLY, when Laurence Fox made some vaguely un-PC remarks on Question Time, actors’ union Equity immediately branded him “a disgrace”.
Yet when Miriam Margolyes told The Last Leg she wanted Boris Johnson to die from coronavirus they said nothing.
So do you think this is because A) Equity’s learned its lesson about rushing to judgment? Or B) The thought she’d said something wrong never entered their thick, hypocritical luvvie heads?
No need to reply.
Great sporting insights
Ian Wright: “I refuse to put Messi and Ronaldo up against each other. But Ronaldo pips him as the top man.”
Danny Murphy: “Spurs have always been consistently inconsistent.”
Joe Root: “We have to make sure players don’t get ill, or even unwell.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
Famous five fail to fit bill
WORST TV show of the lockdown? I’ll hear your pleas on behalf of Have I Got News For You, Gemma Collins: Diva On Lockdown, The Mash Report, The Steph Show and Mo Gilligan, whose All Star Happy Hour on Channel 4 makes Rob & Romesh look like Abbott & Costello.
But they can, I suppose, all use technology as an excuse. Only stupidity and a tin ear for the public mood can explain my own choice for that title.
It’s BBC2’s credit card roulette series I’ll Get This, which concluded last week with Fleur East, Johnny Vegas, Mike Tindall, John Barnes and Sue Perkins taking part in a series of minor challenges and guessing games, in a roped-off area of a London restaurant, to settle a £760 dinner bill.
Not the sort of guessing games that might have engaged viewers, like “guess the appearance fee” or “guess how many TV presenters would have to die before Sue got another stab at hosting the Baftas”, but a game of “Guess the weight of the waiter”.
A task more suited to the Bullingdon Club, you’d imagine, but this lot prodded him, lifted him and generally talked about him like he was invisible.
“I can squat it.” “Oh God, he’s big boned.”
Having established, beyond reasonable doubt, there was almost nothing the five celebrities wouldn’t do to get on television, it was the response to the next question – “Do you like or dislike being famous?” – that sealed its place in lockdown hell for me.
Unanimously they went for the latter, not with any self-awareness or sarcasm, but with a genuine sense of hurt that anyone could think otherwise and former Celebrity Big Brother contestant Sue Perkins apparently speaking for them all when she very solemnly replied: “I love my job, I dislike being famous.”
Some job, Sue. Some bloody job.
Coronavirus latest
ON the BBC World News bulletin Jenny Hill reveals: “The Frankfurt team have said they’ll be disinfecting their balls at half time.”
Lookalikes of the week
THIS week’s winner is ABC’s Martin Fry and Kate Green MP, as seen in C4’s excellent The Truth About Traveller Crime.
Sent in by Francis Harvey. Picture research Alfie Snelling.
Unexpected morons in the bagging area
HARDBALL, Ore Oduba: “An Irish stew is traditionally made using which meat?”
Leath: “Potato.”
The Chase, Bradley Walsh: “The young of what flying mammals are called pups?”
Jim: “Seals.”
Tipping Point, Ben Shephard: “Which famous British vet wrote If Only They Could Talk and It Shouldn’t Happen to a Vet?”
Amos: “Doctor Doolittle.”
(In association with Andy Jacobs off TalkSPORT).
TV gold
GENUINELY brilliant comedy illusionist Hakan Berg transforming Britain’s Got Talent.
Davie Robertson describing a bout of Himalayan altitude sickness on BBC Scotland’s wonderful Return To Real Kashmir FC docu- mentary: “The worst day of my life, and I’ve played at Albion Rovers.” Jeremy Clarkson turning out to be a better Millionaire host than Chris Tarrant.
And an 88-year-old patient called Peter, who was saved from the Holocaust as a small child, winning his battle for life, against all odds, on BBC2’s Hospital Special: Fighting Covid-19 – an astonishing two-part series that was a privilege to watch.
Random TV irritations
THIS Morning’s Phillip Schofield attempting to jump on board Piers Morgan’s Covid outrage bandwagon.
The terrifying news Shirley Carter and the rest of the EastEnders cast will be “doing their own hair and make-up from now on”, as I’d assumed they already did.
MOST READ IN OPINION
White Lines turning out to be just another load of over-hyped Netflix rubbish.
And Antiviral Wipe host Charlie Brooker becoming the latest in a long line of TV presenters to exclude men from his list of groups at more risk of dying from coronavirus.
Because even though we’re 50 to 80 per cent more likely to die than women, in every country, it’s box-ticking political correctness that drives the BBC’s news coverage, not basic compassion and humanity. Despicable really.
Telly quiz
CAN you tell me what was being described here, last Tuesday? “Having managed only 14 bowls, Paul Hollywood’s Wanko Soba challenge comes to an end.”
A) He’s taking part in an eating contest on Channel 4’s Paul Hollywood Eats Japan?
B) He’s failing his audition for MTV’s Celebrity Ex On The Beach?
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