‘It’s Just Not Funny Any More’: Terry Wogan, Melancholy Britain, and the Eurovision Song Contest

Abstract

‘It’s the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday, the 57th,’ wrote Guardian columnist Simon Hoggart on 25 May 2012: ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it was the last?’ He characterizes the contest as ‘utterly, horribly grim’, full of artists not aware of their lack of talent, and run by organizers who take it seriously as ‘a feast of fine music, brought together to bring nations together in harmony, when in fact it’s a steaming bowl full of ordure!’ Hoggart’s expression of strongly negative views about the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) is not unique in the contemporary British media, and in accounts by writers of British origin. In 2010, the New Yorker’s film critic, Englishman Anthony Lane, opined that European pop music ‘was all created by the great God of dreck, and Eurovision is his temple’ (Lane, 2010: 44). In 2007, Daily Telegraph writer Jim White noted the contest’s ‘utter, jaw-dropping, eye-popping, tooth-grinding, morale-sapping awfulness’, while Radio Times’ David Whitehouse called the ESC ‘utterly bloody stupid’. That same year the Guardian’s Caroline Sullivan implicitly attributed the recent ESC wins of ‘eastern’ countries to cheating and collusion: ‘you wouldn’t go broke betting that representatives of all 15 eligible states are huddled in a conference room in the Carpathians as we speak, discussing tactics.’ While other recent winners had hailed from Finland and Greece, Sullivan singled