Yikes Eurovision 2016 Already?!?

Is anyone ever truly prepared for Eurovision? (Our family are fans ever since we saw it on Spanish TV about 10 or 12 years ago. Fabulously kitschy.)

The contest is still 3 months away and is enough to put people off visiting Europe!

Most Brits avoid it like the plague as it is no longer about the songs, but just demonstrates cronyism. All the former USSR countries vote for Russia, Cyprus votes for Greece etc. Whether the UK's entry is the best ever is irrelevant. Most of Europe won't vote for the UK with the probability that we may leave the EU in the summer.

Yes, you can have too much Eurovision!

Ah the Eurovision Song Contest. The best I watched was at university. We had a party with some of the international students. Food, drink, snark. We had international friends, some from other European countries who could inform us and did that the BBC subtitles did NOT match the much more raunchy lyrics. And American and Canadian students, with expressions of a mixture of horror, fascination and enjoyment at some of the acts.

All helped along by Terry Wogan's commentary.

Those were the days.

The European Broadcasting Union uses Eurovision as its brand name, so I always smile when they pass the media centre for an election, a sports or cultural event, that is being transmitted via the EBU. For example at the Scottish Independence Referendum the news cameras went into the foreign media area of the count, there among the CNNs, the CBCs, the ABCs (both Australia and US), the RTVEs, etc was 'Eurovision'.

Yay, Eurovision! Such a cheese-fest, I love it. (It's also the subject of the greatest episode of "Father Ted"!) I wish BBC America would stop broadcasting "Star Trek: TNG" just for one day and show the contest instead.

I suppose if I actually lived in Europe and had grown up with it, I'd be totally over it, just as if there were an Amerivision Song Contest. I'm surprised Simon Cowell never tried to put something like that together. From Baffin Island to the Falkland Islands ... it'd be pretty amazing!

Ah, Teresa beat me to the Father Ted reference ;-)

And in remembrance of Father Jack (who died this week), here's their Eurovision entry, and the accompanying video.

You're a pony no more.

I was on a trip to Europe during the height of Eurovision 2014, and it was really amusing to see the varying levels of enthusiasm in different countries. I watched a semi-final in Reykjavik, and the bar we were at was packed, lots of cheering, etc. For the final, I was in London, and while many places were showing it, I wouldn't say there was much in the way of crowds or enthusiasm. I think our British friends were very much humoring us (or rather, humoring me) by even bothering to go out for it.

I myself am somewhere in the middle. I watch it every year, but I don't really have strong feelings about it. Though I do wish the voting didn't basically come down to geopolitics. Russia's entry last year was actually really good, unlike Russia's reputation.

It's Ireland's biggest lingerie section, so I'm told.

RIP, Fr. Jack. Quick, someone play the Marseillaise!