Eurovision Again

Last night was the night for the annual European Song Contest and UK came last - with a mere 10 points - for the third time in eight years. This is quite impressive and possibly unequalled - I include the word "possibly" only because I can't be bothered looking it up. Who cares anyway. Most songs in this annual waste of time, money and effort sound alike. They have the bland un-controversial feel of a TV commercial or a tin of Heinz beans. Our candidate for stardom this year was one Josh Dubovie, who is, I am told, a teenager. That sorts out how old he is but whether he can sing or not, I know not. His song was written by Pete Waterman while idling away a few hours on a restored steam train excursion and even he did not think the song was up to much. Josh was selected as our candidate for the songfest via a viewers vote at the end of a TV programme in March - which somehow I managed to miss. This system of selection is, surely, flawed. Watching the Eurovision Song Contest for several hours can drive a man to drink - as Terry Wogan reported every year; he only got through it by drinking whiskey throughout. What then of viewers who, for several hours, watch a programme that attempts to single out a performer from a selection of hopefuls, who, we must assume, would have been bombarded with eggs and old fruit if they dared to perform in a live venue. And these viewers are the people who are being asked to make a selection. The fact of total failure - coming last - in three years out of eight does suggest that we need to think outside the box - as the saying goes. At the end, in 2010 we just managed to pip Belarus for bottom spot and they would have had about 2½p to spend on the project.

But Britain is, in general, not good at music. Our greatest composer was Georg Frederik Handel - a man born in Germany and only to be counted as a British composer on the strength of his naturalisation after he came here with the German speaking King George I. If we discount Handel, we will give top prize to Henry Purcell, a man who died in 1695 at the very Mozartian age of 35, without achieving quite the international fame of Wolfgang Amadeus. My own feeling is that the greatest of British composers, if Handel is excluded, would be Edward Elgar. He composed music that was original, of the highest quality and oozing the atmosphere of England. He was no Beethoven but his best music has stature that stands well alongside the best of European composers. And his "Dream of Gerontius" is, like Beethoven's Missa Solemnis admired rather than loved.

It's quite a journey from the Missa Solemnis to the Eurovision Song Contest and something tells me that we had problems with the sat-nav and got lost along the way.

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