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We may laugh at the spangled catsuits. But this contest matters, in its own daft way
With one chortling exception, old Europe is remembering that the Eurovision song contest deserves to be taken seriously. This Saturday, Italy rejoins the competition after 14 years, with Raphael Gualazzi, a young crooner in the Michael Bublé mould – a symbolic step out of Berlusconian estrangement.
The German hosts, meanwhile, are approaching the contest with more noble earnestness than ever. Der Spiegel reports that entries will be interspersed with clips depicting people from every participating nation who now live in Germany – "to show that we are an open country where immigrants can feel at home". Foreign minister Guido Westerwelle has grandly pledged that "in a single night, we will disprove many longstanding prejudices".
Good luck with that over here, Guido. Since we stopped winning it all the time, Eurovision is a word the British deliver with an unappealing smirk. Even now Terry Wogan has been replaced by Graham Norton, we can't see beyond the spangled catsuits or hear beyond the power yodelling. But Eurovision is not about the songs and never was.
The then fledgling European Broadcasting Union conceived the contest in the dark cold war days of 1956, deciding that the continent's fraternity might best be bolstered – and the burgeoning threat of US cultural imperialism best forestalled – via the rallying might of light entertainment. On 24 May of that year, viewers across the continent watched Jetty Paerl take to the stage of Lugano's Teatro Kursaal. She burst into De Vogels Van Holland, not a moment too soon: the next day Blue Suede Shoes broke into the UK top 10, and before the weekend was out the Americans had detonated the first aerial H-bomb.
For better or for worse, Eurovision mattered. With a TV audience that soon topped half a billion, it had to. Beneath the daft outfits and drooling lyrical imbecility, the contest was a pan-continental showcase of new friendships and old enmities. The debut of Franco-run Spain in 1961 had to be diplomatically offset by inviting Yugoslavia. When António Salazar's Portugal applied for entry three years later, activists threatened to bomb the auditorium.
Israel in 1973, then Greece, then Turkey: being welcomed into the Eurovision fold meant glorying in the recognition then sticking the boot in when the time came to vote. Cyprus first competed at the finals in 1981, but it would be 23 years before a Turkish jury awarded the islanders a single point – by which time its Greek counterparts had lavished 191 on them. The many Arab broadcasters screening the 1978 contest had stuck in an ad break while Israel's entry was performed; when it became clear that Alphabeta were set to win, they simply pulled the plug. Jordan prematurely ended its transmission with a lingering still shot of a vase of daffodils.
The modern Eurovision song contest was born in Dublin 1994. As the roll-call of former Soviet satellite states flashed up on the scoreboard, the watching west grasped the mind-spinning realities of the new Europe. It was a moment that again showcased Eurovision's unlikely willingness to shoulder a burden of historical enormity: somehow, seeing Estonia's Silvi Vrait take to the Dublin stage as Switzerland's Duilio walked off, it seemed more tangibly significant than the signing of any treaty.
When Ruslana won for Ukraine in 2004, she was rewarded with a seat in parliament. Viktor Yushchenko billed the resultant 2005 Kiev final as "the biggest event in our history", and told a visibly overwhelmed EBU official that together they would "achieve the sacred integration of Ukraine into Europe". "You do things that diplomats cannot and will not do. We are soldiers on your side."
I was there in Kiev. Every face shone with pride and portent: a humbling experience for anyone raised in Le Royaume Uni, Eurovision's boo-boys. It was like the fulfilment of the idealism that spawned the contest, a flag-faced, arms-linked celebration of a riven continent finally at peace. But at the same time making a bit of a berk of itself.
Looking beyond Eurovision's weighty geopolitical significance, my most treasured intervention remains the French boycott of 1982. "This so-called pop music competition," proclaimed France's minister of culture with an air of extravagant disdain, "is nothing more than a monument to drivel". Perhaps he wasn't watching in 1961, when his countryman Jean-Paul Mauric strode out on to the stage in Cannes to perform Printemps, a song whose opening line was to have unfortunate and enduring repercussions for viewers in the decades ahead. "Bing et bong," Jean-Paul stridently declared, arms splayed, neat quiff tilted slightly aloft, "et bing et bong et bing".