THE SONG IS ENDED

by RAY FLEMING “Wings on my back, I got horns on my head.
My fangs are sharp, and my eyes are red.
Not quite an angel, or the one that fell.
Now choose to join us, or go straight to hell.” With these immortal lines Lordi, the Finnish horror rock band won the Eurovision Song Contest from 21 other acts and in doing so notched 292 points, the highest score in Eurovision history. Tanja Karpela, the Finnish minister for culture said that Lordi's victory “showed that Finnish music could be successful abroad.” Quite so, minister, as has the music of Sibelius for the past century. The Eurovision Song Contest has become a caricature of itself. The only pleasure left in watching it is to catch Terry Wogan's barbed comments. Did I really hear him say of the German TV presenter, “Who d'you think you are, Lord Haw-Haw?” Thinking over the whole event and its outcome I suspect that the runaway victory for the monsters from the far north should be taken as a sign that people have had quite enough of the pretentious and phoney show and would be quite happy to see it brought to an end now that it's reached 50. It is no longer a song contest. If I had been the French or Irish competing with well-crafted ballads I would have wondered why I was bothering if grunts and groans and animal costumes could win the day.