So it’s upon us again—only two weeks to the next Eurovision Song Contest. Why should I care, you ask? Great music? Certainly not. The chance to watch 30+ nations make fools of themselves? Closer! Well I’m not sure I have a great answer for you other than to share my personal reasons for finding Eurovision to be an entertaining event.

Scandal

Who doesn’t like a bit of scandal? One thing is for sure, the good old Eurovis will provide it in great heaping doses.

You can always rely on some acts to provide some topical political or sex scandal to get the German tabloids firing. Whether it be the Russian duo Tatu’s threatened but ultimately unrealised lesbian kiss:

Croatia hopeful Severina’s ex-husband’s untimely release of old sex videos [tastefully reset to video featuring that year’s entry by well-wishers], or Ukraine’s transsexual Veerka who narrowly escaped the European Broadcasting Union’s anti-defamation rules by suggesting that his 2007 entry wasn’t singing ‘Russia Goodbye’ in protest to Kremlin influence in the Ukrainian elections, but was actually celebrating his love for peanuts using the well-known Mongolian phrase lasha tumbai.

The other recurring scandal theme in the Eurovision is the political vote. This often reported but greatly misunderstood phenomenon actually has three components. First there’s the diaspora or ex-pat vote, primarily favouring Greece, Turkey, Russia and Serbia whose populations abroad traditionally vote in great numbers to support their nations in a way that other expat populations (say the Poles or Czechs) never traditionally did. You can be sure that the telephone vote from the UK will provide some points for Greece and Turkey this year, and that Russia cleans up collecting points from the former Soviet Union where a Russian minority still lives.

The second major voting group is what I call the Orthodox Bloc—Serbia, Greece, Georgia, Armenia, FYRoM, Russia , Romania, Bulgaria, Cyprus, etc all do a great job of supporting each other.

Last, you can always rely on the cultural affinity vote—Scandinavian countries vote for each other, Greece and Cyprus (Greece again — lucky country!) and yes, we also get some free votes from Malta, saving us from the dreaded ‘nul points’ more than once.

This year the voting scandal is likely to be about the new voting system as much as anything else. Last year the EBU (which runs Eurovision) introduced new half public, half jury votes to solve the problems above. However, in the first application of the new system, the juries and the public overwhelmingly supported the same entry, Norway, sparing the new system from scrutiny. My guess is they won’t be so lucky this time, and scandal is the only result!