AceAceBaby wrote:
Maybe if we put forward a geniune star, or a song which reflected more than our narrow western musical tastes, we'd appeal more to the other countries. The fact is that we don't make any effort at all. Russia did, they put their best guy in their whole country on that stage. Of course they deserved to win.[/color]
It's true that we used to put in much stronger entries. In the late 80's, early 90's the UK had a consistant run of high rankings with very strong entries.
This page details our entries:
http://www.squidoo.com/eurovisionsongsuk (that page contains links to Youtube versions of the songs as well)
Scott Fitzgerald in '88 (2nd, beaten by Celine Dione), and in '89 with Live Report (again 2nd),
Micheal Ball was certainly not a lightweight when he came 2nd in 1992, and Sonia again came second in 1993.
All of those entries were more memorable than the winners, but at least they scored well. What decent performer in their right mind would want to do Eurovision now?
The entire thing is just a farce. To be fair the entries in the last 10 years or so have generally been quite shit, but who would risk their career with a Eurovision disaster? There was no shame for Micheal Ball when he came second, but with the voting these days you'd be lucky to scrape 10th. And who wants that? So only no hopers are willing to give it a go.