Eurovision: Making Your Mind Up is ostensibly the competition to find the UK's Eurovision Song Contest entry, although this year the BBC appeared to make a mistake and accidentally broadcast The Most Tiresome Ironic Hasbeen Competition instead.
All sorts of people that you hadn't thought about for years decided they wanted to represent Britain in the Eurovision Song Contest this year – someone who used to be in The Darkness, someone who used to be in Atomic Kitten, someone who used to be in East 17, Big Brovaz and some French girl with a case of Celine Dion delusion – but in the end the winner of Eurovision: Making Your Mind Up was Scooch, a failed sub-Steps band from the turn of the century who won the public over with a charming mix of xenophobia and homosexual blowjob jokes called Flying The Flag. God bless Scooch and God bless Eurovision!
Eurovision 2006 was, it's fair to say, a complete disaster for the UK. Eurovision: Making Your Mind Up was won by Daz Sampson, a middle-aged Ian Huntley lookalike with a schoolgirl fetish who rapped about doing PE in his pants or something. Europe didn't like Daz Sampson and the UK was beaten by almost everyone, from a Croatian pornstar to some Finnish metal overlords. Lessons were learnt. Europe already has enough reasons to hate us without seeing a man dressed exclusively in stonewashed denim rapping at a 30-year-old schoolgirl. So this year was going to be the year that the UK took Eurovision seriously. Morrissey wanted to do Eurovision, and then Jarvis Cocker wanted to do Eurovision too. But something went askew.
Instead of two of the finest lyricists that Britain has ever produced, the Eurovision: Making Your Mind Up contenders were announced with that twonk from The Darkness looking alarmingly like a frontrunner. And on Saturday night, Eurovision: Making Your Mind Up took place on BBC 1 to remind Britain why it'll never win Eurovision ever again. And what a line-up the British public had to choose from.
First there was Happy by Liz McClarnon from Atomic Kitten – like Kids by Robbie Williams and Kylie Minogue after a rewrite by Rain Man so that the only words actually sung were "yeah" and "happy". Then there was Brian Harvey from East 17, looking increasingly like the world's angriest human embryo, who sang I Can – half I Believe I Can Fly by R Kelly, half theme-tune to The Greatest American Hero and half useless. Then forgotten British R&B stars Big Brovaz wrongly assumed that two women going "wooOOOooOOOAH!" while a man gangsta raps about his enemies was what the Eurovision Song Contest needed. Then a girl called Cyndi – apparently French although looking like she's lived in Essex all her life – sand the song from Titanic but changed some of the words. Then it was Scooch – who'll we'll come to later – and finally Justin Hawkins from The Darkness incomprehensibly squealing a horrible Agadoo soundalike that may as well have been called This Is What Happens To Your Career If You Take Drugs. Basically, by 8:25pm on Saturday night we'd realised that Britain doesn't stand a hope of winning Eurovision this year.
In the end – following an embarrassing walk-out by Justin Hawkins when he realised he hadn't won – the two Eurovision: Making Your Mind Up finalists were announced as Cyndi and Scooch. Despite Terry Wogan's best efforts to do us all a favour by naming Cyndi as the winner, really it was Scooch who gained the most votes with their song Flying The Flag.
Scooch – whose previous songs include 1999 number 29 smash hit When My Baby (no, us neither) – walked into Eurovision: Making Your Mind Up with Flying The Flag. Flying The Flag by Scooch, in case you missed it, is basically a plea for Europe to come and bomb the UK into smithereens. In it, Scooch dress up like flight attendants, make fake aeroplane safety announcements, do a semaphore dance, offer oral sex to all the men in Europe and then top things off with a lyric about how Britain is great and all other countries are shit. In short, it makes Daz Sampson's Eurovision tune from last year look like The Drugs Don't Work by The Verve. Since the words don't exist to competently describe how befuddling Flying The Flag by Scooch actually is, here's a video…
We know. Flying The Flag by Scooch is no We Are The Winners by LT United is it? Anyway, since Eurovision: Making Your Mind Up was chosen on a public vote, it's your fault that Scooch are going to Eurovision. And our fault. And your Mum's fault. Especially your Mum's fault.
Not even in our wildest dreams can we even begin to imagine that Flying The Flag by Scooch will win Eurovision. Let's just pray that we beat the mirrory Ukrainian transvestite, or else we really will be upset.
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Ro-Ler says
Fuck me, that song is AWFUL.
Dave says
That was one of the finest write ups ive read in a long time !!
im still sat here laughing, half at the article and half at the situation that Britain Eurovision finds itself in..
This years going to be a classic, maybe they should have kept Saddam alive, and played him reruns of this years show.
im sure by act three we would have found WMD’s somewhere…maybe not real…but even Saddam would have squealed !!! lol !!
Ilana says
Your anti-Justin stuff is incredibly tiresome. You’re just jealous because you want to be him. And you know it
Mike says
More anti Justin Hawkins nonsense. It was something different from the ex Darkness front man. Personally I thought it should promise but calling him a twonk? My aren’t you so witty. Write a proper review.
Donnemarco says
Your write-up’s pretty funny (even though I’m a huge Scooch fan).. but I’m not sure where the lyric ‘about how Britain is great and all other countries are shit’ is in the song. Methinks you have made this up.. Lighten up mate! It’s Eurovision: it’s hardly going to change the world that this song exists: but at least it’s interested you enough to write something about it eh?
johnner says
The tooth fairy must have hated Justin Hawkins,if the wonky toothed fucker ever sneezes violently he’ll decapitate himself!
Em says
why do most people slate Justim Hawkins? ok he has done drugs hasn’t most people in the music industry done them?, but thats one of the reasons he left the Darkness! as for calling him a twonk, i think you are one! i mean COME ON you have slated everyone which has performed on there!
Tenzil says
Eurovision is better when its awful. I watched last year’s and there were a few too many vaguely half talented people in it for it to be truly entertaining. So top work Scooch, keeping the dream of entertaining mind numbingly awful crap alive.
P.S. Justin Hawkins is shit.
The Schlagerboys says
Scooch are fabulous and the audience were loving them on Graham Norton last night (check out the clip on our blog).
The United kingdom is clearly going to win Eurovision 2008!
The Schlagerboys are wondering where we can get air hostess uniforms to fit us…. We’ll need them for Helsinki…
Ben W says
I think Ally Ross (Sun TV critic) may be a fan of Hecklerspray. His lead story in today’s paper is about Making Your Mind Up and it has a wiffy familiarity to this story. The Liz McClarnon ‘yeah’ and ‘happy’ thing and the ‘no, us neither’ aside about Scooch… there were probably more similarities, but I was reading a discarded copy in the loo so I can’t provide further analysis.
If you’re reading this Ally – Oi! Stop nicking Hecklerspray’s gags!
SPRAY ENFORCER says
Mr Ross earns more than enough dosh to make up his own gags. We will be investigating these claims in forensic levels of detail over the weekend.
Thanks for flagging this up Ben – you’re a star.