Claes-Göran Hederström

I’ve not forgotten him, but I don’t exactly think about him constantly, either. Him being Claes-Göran Hederström, who represented Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1968. He certainly had my vote, back then.

But you’re never sure if cute looking, sweet singing young men age well. Maybe he wasn’t all that good a singer? And now that he’s an OAP, he’s well, old.

But Claes-Göran turned up on television a couple of weeks ago, and he looked better than he used to, and the voice had survived as well. So all is fine, and I see he is still touring and singing. That’s what we like!

Oops,

that would be us, then. Euphoric over win. Sort of.

I don’t often think of the Finns as being terribly amusing. This one was. And it doesn’t matter if he wakes up tomorrow wondering what on earth he said, because none of us know for sure who he was. Masks are good, occasionally. Even the Swedes had a person reporting on the votes who could actually speak English. People seem to have caught on, realising the importance of not making fools of themselves, language wise.

The UK thought they were finally taking this song contest seriously enough. But they didn’t. Look at what everyone else does! Even the Russian grannies were better than Engelbert. And it goes without saying that we want Wogan back. Now. Or at the very least, next year.

The Swedish song wasn’t too bad. And let’s hope they can avoid the exam season for next year’s contest.

Baku calling

There is a strangely Transylvanian theme to this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. Lots of capes and menacing dark looks, as well as those weird wing things on people’s shoulders.

Somewhat unusual that so many performers appear to be fully clothed. And old. Older, I mean. Like Engelbert and the Grannies. What’s more, they sing in languages other than English. Unless the songs are written in very poor English and sung in even worse. But I’m guessing several countries have opted to use their own languages. Good idea.

The Nordic countries like having immigrant singers, unless going for the superblonde look like Iceland did. The German boy was pretty (so many of them were, even if they did look Mafia/Dracula-ish) but could somebody please tell him to take his stupid hat off!

Who do we dislike enough that we want their country to win? Please not Greece! Though their song makes that less likely.

Let’s go for the Grannies, cookies and all.

Eurovision – a post script

Not only am I a fortunate witch, but my earlier post on Bookwitch about it being a small world, is definitely true here. Less than four years ago Son told me about his teacher in one of his subjects at university. (Isn’t it nice that he talks to me?) It took me a while to make the connection, but his teacher began reading and commenting on the witch blogs. Apart from being nice, Lauren also knows more than I do about most of my Culture topics. If I need to know something, I can always trust her to sort me out. If I’ve seen something early, she saw it before me, and some. And she always has the DVD box set.

So it’s hardly surprising that she went to the Eurovision dress rehearsal last week. And she promised to bring me back a little something. I’m very grateful to her, and I apologise for any suffering that might have taken place in the interests of this post. Over to Lauren:

My initial comments after watching the dress rehearsal/jury final were as follows…

Intro act: surprisingly entertaining, and probably justifies Stefan Raab’s presence as host. He certainly wasn’t there for his English skills or suave appearance in a suit! (Question: will international audiences find German humour funny?) Anke Engelke is fantastic, however. We left the hall shouting ‘Danke, Anke’, and weren’t the only ones. But I’m fairly sure it wasn’t coincidental that she did all the linking moments which required actual brainpower…

The songs: My favourite – Iceland. Crowd favourites – Germany (obviously), Ireland, Sweden, UK. Grandma’s favourite – Finland. Bookie’s favourite – France (?). Dark horse – Azerbaijan. Trashiest outfit – Slovenia, closely followed by Hungary. Weirdest act - Moldova. Most of-out-tune – Lithuania. Most overshadowed by background action – Ukraine. What were they thinking? – Georgia. Dodgiest hair - Denmark and France. Most retro – Serbia. Welcome back – Italy. Nice but bland – Switzerland. Best ‘feelgood numbers’ – Romania, Spain, Iceland. Best voice – Austria. Biggest fear – that Ireland wins! (Does Europe have *less*’ taste than Britain?)

It was interesting to see how different things sound in the hall and at home on television. A few acts improved noticably between Friday and Saturday – Italy was much better, and more in tune, as was Serbia and Georgia (whom I still couldn’t stand, but at least resembled a rock song instead of a mistake) – while others remained abysmal. (UK, for a global pop act you really need to try and find a tuning fork somewhere…)

The arena felt smaller than it appeared on TV, but they had transformed the football stadium very well. The atmosphere was incredibly friendly, complete with face painting, cocktails and a lot of strange outfits. One amusing thing to note was how obvious the pyrotechnics are in the arena – the fireworks almost deafened us, and Greece’s flames felt rather like an instant blowtorch. I wouldn’t want to have been sitting any closer.

Also entertaining was watching the mock vote after the interval act (forgettable). Apparently the video links need to be rehearsed too, so we were witness to a selection of actual hosts and substitutes in dreadful clothes reading a selection of fake numbers. This requires more skill than you’d think – the ability to announce ‘This is the result of the Moldovan’ and recite 8, 10 and 12 points is not exactly universal.

I watched the actual final at a party with a group of dedicated Eurovision fans, and none of us could agree on a potential winner, so the fairly wide distribution of points didn’t come as much of a surprise. We tipped Italy, just, over Serbia (who we knew would never win given they didn’t sing in English.) However, we suspected Euro-popular but bland would probably just make it, so the eventual winner wasn’t a great surprise. (They’d been my dark horse). I think we thought Sweden might just make it over the line instead. Italy’s position caused great jubiliation at our party, and some irritation - not only did we vastly prefer the song, none of us can possibly travel to Baku next year.

That’s probably enough rambling to be going on with. The whole occasional was ridiculous, but it was certainly an experience, and I’m very glad I went, even if I couldn’t get tickets to the actual final.

Danke, Lauren. So grateful that someone is mad enough to travel far and wide for some culture.

McFly, again?

Miss Vet called round for tea and scones again today. No, make that orange juice. And scones. It was very nice to see her. But this was her fourth trip to the UK in less than nine months just to see McFly. Over the scones I was foolish enough to enquire if she knew when they’d be appearing next. Well, yes, she’ll see them in London in two weeks’ time.

Of course she will. She’ll just McFly over here again. I suppose I’m relieved I’m not the only one around here who is mad.

And I do like the way you can hang out near the hotel where your stars are staying and get to see them and talk to them. I now have a good idea of where to search for the famous when they come to Manchester. Whether I ever will is another matter.

Miss Vet came with some Belgian McFly fans/friends, which just goes to prove how you can make friends with the help of the internet and jet-setting.

For someone like me where my favourite act only tours every two years, and then always as his final tour, this business of McFlying several times a year sounds great. At her age she has the stamina, although there are the clashing interests of whether she naps on the plane or studies for the Chemistry exam on Wednesday.

Over the scones we descended deeper into the world of light music by discussing Eurovision songs old and new. It seems the pretty boy in the red leather jacket will be representing Sweden. Looks before song or voice. On the other hand he is no puppet turkey.

More Eurovision, quizzes and missed programmes

Speaking of Eurovision as we where, we had the pleasure of catching – very briefly – a programme called Skavlan, which my encyclopaedic brain identified as something I’d heard of before. It’s another of those ‘pratshows’ as they call chat shows in Swedish, although this one is Norwegian. Or is it? Could be that it’s just Skavlan himself who’s Norwegian and happens to ‘prat’ in Norwegian on a Swedish show. Or not.

Doesn’t matter, as we barely watched it at all. Daughter found the language and the ‘pratty’ subtitles less than enchanting and asked permission to switch channels. Before she did, we caught the Norwegian contribution to this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, which looked really, quite, well, African. Upbeat music sung by someone with a very African looking name. When she came to be interviewed, however, she sounded thoroughly Norwegian. So, all well and good.

We found some sort of quiz show, second half of. I was told off for trying to show off, when all I did was answer the questions.

Before these bits of entertainment on a Friday night (I believe Fridays are the new Saturdays for staying at home and having a cosy evening in front of the telly) we had caught the last two thirds of På Spåret, which strangely enough I’d never watched before, despite reading about it often. It’s another quiz programme, with celebrity contestants. Not that I’d heard of them, but they seemed nice enough. We learned things about Haparanda and Acapulco that we didn’t know before.

And, it’s funny, but after Saturday’s heat of the ESC we hung on in front of the box, and were treated to episode one of Downton Abbey. We missed it at home, due to some other programme having the temerity to be on at the same time, and Downton Abbey lost on that occasion.

But, thanks to our travels we got to watch what everyone had talked about on Facebook and elsewhere, and it wasn’t bad at all. In fact, we liked it. Now all we have to do is find the rest of it.

I see that Zen is on tonight. Episode one. That, too, was a loser in the channel war at home, so maybe I will..?

Pre-Eurovision songs

There is no such thing as too much Eurovision Song Contest. For some people. Like the Swedes. They have umpteen heats leading up to the Swedish selection of whoever they will send. We watched, erm, maybe the fourth? I don’t know. I didn’t pay too much attention. It was on for the entertainment of Daughter, the ESC fan in the family, and we had our dinner while watching.

It was fun enough, and with some really weird extra stuff from behind the scenes, like the presenters racing down corridors on a disability scooter, and the contestants being grilled by two ‘secret service’ style prize idiots before their performance. Amusing. Or not.

Of eight contestants, two went on to the ‘real’ contest in Stockholm and two went on to a second chance event. The rest went nowhere. Unfortunately Sebastian was one of those, and I felt he was the only one with any prospects at all. Not as cute as the winner Eric Saade, who wore a very red leather jacket. And he was cute. The other winners were The Playtones, who were quite lovely in their 1950s blue suits and oily hairdos. The song wasn’t bad either.

It’s a great idea, though, for any country other than Britain, who still can’t take this kind of thing seriously. Not only do you get the real deal in Düsseldorf, but you get the national contest ‘at home’ and before that you have all the local heats, which means months and months of fun.

And you can buy the CDs.

They should have known

On the basis of hearing only the quick run-through of the Eurovision contestants, I quite liked Norway’s entry. I didn’t waste all evening on this event by watching every minute. But that doesn’t mean I don’t take it seriously. After all, I’m not British.

If and when Britain can be serious about Eurovision, they will most likely do well, or at least better, again. Winning is not a God-given right. And I feel that Terry Wogan took being rude about Eurovision a little more seriously than Graham Norton did. He didn’t even seem to twig when the FYR Macedonian vote lady spoke pretty good Australian. Did anyone notice that the male Norwegian presenter could also speak Icelandic? Or the excellence of the Greek vote person’s Norwegian? It’s such a happy multi-language talent event!

And does anyone sit around making snide remarks on live television quite like the British commentator? Not even sure he’s aware of any old history between the host country and the winning country, but never mind that, eh?

Very pleased for the German winner. Maybe they should have warned contestants that if they win, they need to sing their blasted song again. As did Spain. Didn’t think much of the clowns.

Although watching the whole thing (well, not the whole thing as I said earlier, but all that I did watch) in Sweden, I watched the BBC version. For technical reasons. Son’s English Uppsala neighbour had gone off to Norway to watch it live. Good for him.

How many of you spotted the Norwegian Crown Princess and her children cavorting around, while the cameras panned all over the world, showing us people who were having a good time?

We agreed at the end that we like the Eurovision tune the best, and you don’t hear it nearly enough in the UK.