The Eurovision Debacle

So this year the competition has gone beyond being just ludicrous. The songs were not just mediocre they were bizarre, incomprehensible or just stupid. Andy Abraham sang a reasonable song and certainly didn't deserve to be last. The great Sir Terry Wogan is now considering his position, and all Western European countries need to accept the fact that they will never be winners, or leave the whole thing. Where did it all go wrong - well maybe the enormous proliferation of countries taking part didn't help, but it is the new 'political' voting that has taken over in the past few years that has nailed the whole contest. To the Eastern European bloc (and here I include the former Soviet republics and the Balkans) this contest is a big deal so all the populations of these countries who find themselves 'abroad' get voting in massive numbers. Germany always awarded maximum points to Turkey because of their large numbers of 'guest workers' but now the huge emigre Russian populations always vote for Russian, and the Balkan states vote for each other (because there are Serbs, Croats, Albanians, and Bosnians scattered throughout so many countries). This year the large Romanian population in Spain voted en bloc. This isn't going to change, and no tinkering with the voting system will solve the problem. The only alternative is a series of local contests for each area and then a fixed voting system for the 'finalists' otherwise the UK should withdraw from the whole thing.

Pygmalion

A production at the Old Vic starring Tim Piggott-Smith as Henry Higgins and Michelle Dockery as Eliza Doolittle and featuring the wonderful Una Stubbs as Mrs Pearce the housekeeper. Although this must be a century old, George Bernard Shaw's play about the English class structure, language, women's role in relation to men, and the bizarre nature of modern 'sciences' remains as fresh and funny as it was when it was written. Tim Piggott-Smith might have been born to the role of the 'phoneticist' who proclaims that he can tell where anyone was born and grew up from a few spoken words, and believes that every person betrays their place in society every time they open their mouth. He accepts a bet from fellow language student Col Pickering that he can pluck a lowly flower girl from 'the gutter' and pass them off as a Duchess at an Embassy reception within six months. Despite warnings from his mother and his housekeeper he launches into the project without considering what the girl (Eliza) will do once her independence has been taken away - because with the accent of a flower girl from Lissom Grove she can earn a meagre living and a livelihood, with the accent of a Duchess she cannot obtain any kind of work. In passing Higgins gives Eliza's father a fiver and thereby raises him from the ranks of the 'undeserving poor' - a position that allows him to be a dustman and he can 'touch' any man for a sub - into employment at £3,000 a year as a philosophy lecturer - a position that means 'every man touches him for money'. The cast is superb in this production - Shaw is very wordy, and must require some learning, but none seemed to be delivering their lines or declaiming them, the diction was clear, the timing wonderful, the humour precise - the actor playing Eliza's father has several long speeches, all spoken with feeling and made the audience (containing several school parties) laugh out loud. Una Stubbs as Mrs Pearce proves what an excellent comic actress she is in her scenes. Even though there are many reminders of the musical adaptation My Fair Lady this play is certainly worth reviving. Rating 9/10