We came second at Eurovision but as usual Graham Norton was the winner
AS empty headed celebrities never tire of reminding us, we all stand with Ukraine.
We also rejoice in their military victories, mourn their losses and hope Putin’s thugs are driven out of their country at the point of a bayonet.
But it’s not compulsory to like their awful Eurovision-winning song, Stefania by Kalush Orchestra, is it?
Because the only Ukrainian sound it conjured up for me was the dog-culling episode of Chernobyl, and if I ever hear that noise again it risks tarnishing my happy memories of an extraordinary Song Contest that began in the least promising fashion, on Saturday, with a chorus of Give Peace A Chance.
A song that has every right-thinking person reaching for their howitzer.
There was an immediate problem, too, with our Italian TV presenters, Laura Pausini, Alessandro Cattelan and Mika, who’d made the fatal mistake of playing the occasion for laughs, as if they were Mika and Bernie Winters.
FOREIGN CRAZIES
A painful process, this was, involving lots of green room puns, a gimp suit and a cringe-mongering sketch about Italian hand gestures which had our own host Graham Norton telling viewers: “I’m making a hand gesture. Can you see it?”
The stupidity of this approach, of course, is that there are far more obvious sources of comedy at any decent Eurovision.
The most crucial being the acts themselves, who did not let us down in Turin, where we were blessed with authentic foreign crazies like Moldova’s show-stopping accordion frenzy, by Zdob Si Zdub, the Serbian frightener with the wart, who chanted about private health insurance, and French devil-dancing singers Alvan And Ahez who ended with the solemn voice of Graham Norton ringing in their ears.
“There now follows a human sacrifice.”
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These regular and entirely necessary barbs are the greatest strength of Norton, who understands that Eurovision is the one night of the year we’re allowed to laugh at foreigners and almost no one is off limits, not even the female astronaut from the International Space Station, whose gravity defiance was honoured with the comment: “In space, no one can hear you scream at your hairdresser.”
If Norton has a Song Contest weakness, it’s come to the surface during the later stages, when he’s taken the right hump over Great Britain’s annual voting humiliation.
An affront I’ve always found funny on the grounds it wasn’t Azerbaijan who produced The Beatles, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Van Morrison and George Michael.
This year, though, as we all know, something beautiful happened. Britain actually had the best song, Space Man, performed by the irrepressible Sam Ryder, who is three artists in one: Rod, Jane & Freddie Mercury.
The Europeans knew it as well and, after years of neglect, we suddenly started getting 12 points from Germany, France, Belgium, Georgia and, most joyfully of all, the Ukrainians, whose representative blew us a kiss from the deserted streets of Kyiv. In the wrong hands, the moment could’ve become lost in tearful sentimentality and schmaltz.
But Norton never succumbed to the over-emotional show-boating that ruins so much television, not even at the moment the public catapulted Ukraine to victory, when he preferred to point out: “Britain has all the glory, none of the expense.”
It’s not just this ability to adapt to the tone of Eurovision that marked him out as a brilliant broadcaster, on Saturday, though.
It was also the fact he was having to cover for the Italian hosts, who screwed up their links at fairly regular intervals.
“We’re moving on, this is Holland!”
“It’s not. It’s Poland.”
“POLAND!”
It all added up to an event and a performance for the ages that would’ve been way beyond the ability of any other living British light-entertainment presenter.
Which won’t be enough for Norton to beat Big Zuu at next year’s Bafta awards, obviously.
But what an effort from the lad.
UNEXPECTED MORONS IN THE BAGGING AREA
THE Chase, Bradley Walsh: “Could You Survive Midsomer is a book for fans of which TV show?”
Jo: “Twilight.”
Tipping Point: Lucky Stars, Ben Shephard: “In March 2021, France nominated which staple foodstuff as its candidate for Unesco intangible heritage status?”
Robert Peston: “The French language.”
Tipping Point, Ben Shephard: “Alabama is a constituent state of which large country?”
Victoria: “Hawaii.”
Ben Shephard: “In the title of a series of films starring Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau, what colour is the Panther?”
Victoria: “Black.”
RANDOM IRRITATIONS
C4 broadcasting an Elon Musk hatchet job the moment he threatened the left’s Twitter stranglehold.
Tom Cruise hijackng The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Celebrations for a Top Gun advertorial.
Film-themed C4 dating show Let’s Make A Love Scene swiftly degenerating into Last Drongo In Paris.
Chris and Rosie Ramsey managing to be the 10th and 11th funniest people on their own show, where no one was particularly funny.
And BBC1’s Freeze The Fear taking six weeks to turn eight minor celebrities into tearful, over-sharing, psycho-babbling bores.
’Cos that’s just what we bloody need at the moment, isn’t it...
SINGING OFF WIM SHEET
AFTER six weeks of pseudo-scientific blah, the entire point of BBC1’s Freeze The Fear With Wim Hof seemed to boil down to a bungee jump.
In the event, seven of the celebrities took the leap off Italy’s Colossus Bridge and were deemed to have “faced their fears”, while Professor Green refused the jump and was deemed to have “faced his fears”
A verdict that was somewhat at odds with Wim’s bold episode-two promise, just before he jumped, that: “You’re going to do what I do.”
Yet, as followers of other bearded whackjobs, like Jeremy Corbyn, will confirm, the more a guru is proved to be wrong about something, the more it actually proves they’re right about everything and the mainstream media are just liars.
So, at the end of their journey/luxury Alpine spa break, the show’s emotionally incontinent celebrities queued up to pay grovelling testimony to Wim’s method.
Chelcee Grimes said: “I dealt with emotions that I thought I was over but came to the surface.” Or as it’s also called, grief.
Dianne Buswell said: “I came here to let go of the feeling that ‘you’re not good enough’.” Or as it’s also called, insecurity.
And Alfie Boe said: “The guy has helped me shed so much that I’ve been carrying for a long time.”
Or, as it’s also called, Michael Ball.
EUPHEMISM of the week belongs to BBC News correspondent Lorna Gordon who, Wednesday evening, reported Rangers fans in Seville were: “Keeping themselves hydrated.”
As in, as “hydrated” as a dead dingo’s donger.
INTERRUPTION of the month.
Tipping Point, Ben Shephard: “Last visible in 1986 and not due to be seen again until 2061, what come”
Bzzzzz.
Is it a white, male newsreader anchoring BBC London’s 6:30 bulletin?
MISLEADING caption of the week? See below.
Because up until Monday’s landmark edition of This Morning, I’d been working under the assumption “Hollywood’s Top Penis Maker” was James Corden’s agent, not Chris Hemsworth.
TELLY quiz, on what trippy show did you hear the following commentary this week: “At one point we are going to see a man going under his horse. Don’t panic. He’s supposed to be there.”
A) The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Celebration?
B) Married At First Sight: Norfolk?
OPTIMIST of the week? Freeze The Fear’s Lee Mack, who finished the series by asking co-host Holly Willoughby: “Does it make you want to be a contestant next time?”
Although she’s as much right as anyone to enter The 1% Club, I suppose.
LOOKALIKE OF THE WEEK
Sent in by Ashley Smith, March, Cambs.
GREAT SPORTING INSIGHTS
STEVEN GERRARD: “My job is to win games for Aston Villa and that’ll be the case whatever club I’m at.”
Jermaine Jenas: “The Liverpool team out there is the best they’ve got. But Curtis Jones could come on and improve things.”
Michael Dawson: “Conor Coady will go to the World Cup. There’s not a thought in my mind.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
TV GOLD
BBC1’S coverage of arguably the greatest ever Eurovision Song Contest.
BBC2 providing a glorious woke-free zone, every Sunday night, with Commando: Britain’s Ocean Warriors.
Inside No9’s Kid/Nap on BBC2.
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The touching barminess of ITV’s Platinum Jubilee Celebrations, featuring the Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force’s steel band version of Dancing Queen.
And This Morning’s riotous interview with “Hollywood’s leading prosthetic penis maker”, Matthew Mungle, which was already testing the studio’s poker-faces before Schofield broke them all with the killer question: “You once made a scrotum for Will Ferrell?”