In Defence of Eurovision

I have zero interest in Abba or Bucks Fizz, and my music tastes are generally indier-than-thou. So don't go thinking my love for the Eurovision Song Contest is about the cheesy music. "It's a battle between the songs and the hair," the UK's commentator Terry Wogan once said, "and the hair's winning." Yes, sitting through Eurovision means sitting through a bunch of god-awful excuses for pop music, but the suffering is lessened somewhat with Terry there to match you drink for drink. And if you're diligently filling in your own scoresheets, there's so much more to look out for: outfits, choreography, queer subtext, imaginative use of English, and general flamboyance.

Since 2000, Neil McCulloch has combined the Eurovision with travel, seeing the contest live every year. "It's a bit like following the football around the world, without the aggression on the terraces," he says, adding that it's taken him to a few destinations that hadn't yet become popular with tourists. His Eurovision obsession began at a monthly London night called Douze Points, and escalated from there. He notes that various friends of his have got it worse – one of them had to move to a ground-floor flat as his floor was starting to sag under the weight of his Eurovision collection. He's hoping the UK doesn't win any time soon, so he can continue taking exciting holidays – but he's got little to worry about, since "[our compatriots] don't take it seriously at all – as evidenced by Scooch. Slovenia did (drag) air stewardesses with far more flair and originality years back in 2002!"

Last year's Eurovision took the contest to whole new levels of the ludicrous, topped off by Lordi's victory with Hard Rock Hallelujah. (The winners, in their trademark monster costumes, were later presented with an award from the president of Finland for exemplary Finnish work.) Lithuania's entry – LT United's We Are The Winners – was another sign of a more ironic approach to the Eurovision. Meanwhile, the UK's entry, Teenage Life, was an embarrassment performed by a 32 year-old man flanked by dancers dressed as schoolgirls - a rather odd offering from a country so prone to panicking about paedophiles – and received a grand total of 25 points. Nonetheless, it's a shame he won't be returning this year, as he was planning to duet with Carol Decker (remember T'Pau?).

Iceland's entrant last year, Silvia Night, only made it to the semi-final with her offering Congratulations, which included a phone call to God in which she claimed to be saving the world. After the finals, though, her diva strop topped the charts on YouTube. Drunkenly turning on the press following Lordi's win, she raged that they didn't have a real make-up artist, that the Swedish contestant was an "ugly fucking old bitch", and that everybody was laughing at her. Everyone gasped at her obnoxiousness, but most people didn't realise that she was a character rather than a real person, sort of like an Icelandic Ali G.

So what's in store for this year? Well, both Denmark and Ukraine have drag queens in the running, Georgia and the Czech Republic will each make their debut, and Serbia and Montenegro will submit separate entries for the first time. Iceland's entrant looks like Lion-O, Teapacks from Israel bring us a controversial song about nuclear war, the Romanian entrants are trying to outdo everybody with the amount of languages they can cram into one song, and Andorra is courting the pop-punk contingent. So gather together an international collection of food, drink and people, park yourselves in front of the TV, and watch this year's madness unfold.