Eurovision 2019

Yesterday saw the most fabulous Caturday night of the year as mannys once again held their Eurovision Singing Competition. We were all very excited cats here, but then the actual competition turned out to be well below the usual standard. Not universally though - the two campest and most colourful entries were saved until last, these being from Australia and Notorious Eurovision Cheats Spain.

Plus the Iceland entry was... certainly something.

On top of that, there were a couple of songs I liked, including the one from Switzerland.

But my favourite was Norway's entry, perhaps helped by their costumes reminding me of Blakes 7 - look at the mannys to the left and right and it's easy to imagine Avon dressed like that.

The biggest disappointment for us cats was not in the songs (we loved all of them really!) but in the voting. They changed the system a few years ago after a competition where the winner got such an early lead that it was clear they had won well before all the votes had been cast.

The way it works these days is that we spend ages watching all the countries of Eurovision taking turns to give their votes (and there are 41 of them so this is often a three sleeps event for cats), but then they render it a big waste of time by the second stage of voting, where great big blocks of seemingly arbitrary votes that have been cast by mannys using their 'phones are given out.

I don't doubt that these votes are being assigned fairly, but the process is completely opaque to viewers so they may as well be entirely random, and the only advantage (if you can call it that, mew) to using this system is that it manufactures tension when the final set of votes are read out, which the presenters try to milk like Greg Wallace announcing who has won a Masterchef programme... only the live broadcast nature of Eurovision makes it look like the presenters don't know what they're doing.

The Goodies in Seth Efrica

South Africa was the episode I was most looking forward to now that The Goodies has been released on DVD. I had previously seen several of their most famous episodes that had been put onto certain streaming websites (You know the ones I mean), but had missed this one.

Perhaps the mannys that did the uploading were shy about this one due to its controversial subject matter and, these days, its even more controversial way of tackling it. South Africa is a vicious, scathing satirical assault on the racist apartheid policies of South Africa at the time this was made, exemplified in the form of guest-star Philip "Solon" Madoc (Brain of Morbius was made less than a year after this), who is so racist that he paints Graeme's tie white and has to replace his own set of dark glasses with white ones.

It isn't remotely subtle (although it is very, very funny) but, like Star Trek's Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, it isn't trying to be - and would most certainly have been less powerful if it had tried to be.

Supposedly the BBC didn't want to broadcast this episode at all. But then, the BBC has a long history* of objecting to entertainment TV programmes getting involved with political issues - especially when they take sides against the conservative status quo.

I for one am glad it did go out, and is available to be seen today, as it will remain relevant so long as manny countries institute racist policies that resemble apartheid. It is only a shame that now, due to the different attitudes of the 1970s (when it was made) from today, some of its message is likely to be missed due to the presence in the episode of racist language, Black-and-White-Minstrel makeup, and the fact that all the main cast are white mannys.

Nevertheless, it is tough to imagine a modern-day mainstream entertainment TV programme that could produce an up-to-date equivalent that would both be as powerful and have the same audience reach. The unique "anything, anytime" format of The Goodies allowed them to tackle this subject matter for a single episode before moving on to something completely different the following week.


* Footnote for the benefit of posterity: This refers to an event topical to the week this article was written, whereby the BBC cancelled an episode of Have I Got News For You because - and this is their given reason - it was due to feature the leader of the Change UK Party when an election was only two weeks away. This was in the very same week as it prominently featured Nigel Farage, leader of the Brexit Party, on an edition of Question Time.