Eurovision Song Contest in popular culture

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the Eurovision Song Contest in popular culture. For the main article, see Eurovision Song Contest.

There are references to the Eurovision Song Contest in numerous popular films, television series, radio series and stage plays.

Contents 1 Film 2 Television 3 Radio 4 Stage

[edit] Film

• In the 1977 film Jubilee [1] a character is referred to as "England's entry for the Eurovision Song Contest" about 32 minutes in. This is ironic as constituent nations of the UK, unlike in football and other sports, do not have their own entries. This is arguably because it is technically EBU members, rather than countries themselves, competing. Therefore, as the BBC covers all of the United Kingdom, they have a United Kingdom entry.
• The 1981 Dutch film Ik ben Joep Meloen [2] features the main character accidentally entering (and winning) the Dutch national preselection for the Eurovision Song Contest. The film included an appearance by Marlous Fluitsma, the presenter of the Eurovision Song Contest 1980.
• In the 2000 film An Everlasting Piece after about 7 minutes a wig technician asks during customer/client smalltalk whether the client knows where the Eurovison Song Contest is being held that year.
• The 2000 Swedish film "Livet är en schlager" ("Life is a schlager") [3] is about a housewife that gets her life turned upside-down when she participates in 'Melodifestivalen', the Swedish qualifier for the Eurovision Song Contest.

[edit] Television

• A 1970 episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus included a sketch about the Europolice Song Contest. The competitors were police from various European nations. The parody included the announcement of scores in many languages and outrageous accents, including many non-European.
• In a 1975 episode Fleet Street Goodies, of the British comedy The Goodies, Bill Oddie enters the fictional Eurovision Raving Loony Contest.
• In an episode of The Young Ones, Alexei Sayle dressed as Benito Mussolini and performed a mock Contest entry called "Make Silly Noises".
• British comedy Maid Marian and her Merry Men (1989) included a Eurovision parody in their song contest 'a Song for Worksop.' Upon forming the idea for the song contest, Marian described in vivid detail the exact manner in which she would host the show, mirroring Eurovision hosts of the past, and the winning song was the Guy of Gisborne's idiotic composition 'Ding-a-Ling-a-Ling, Dong-a-Long-a-Long.'
• The 1994 BBC sitcom The High Life included an episode where the protagonists entered a song for Europe, later going on to achieve the glorious score of 'Nil Points' for their song 'Pif, Paf, Pof' where Sebastian goes on to bemoan the fact that that was, "worse than Lynsey De Paul and Mike Moran in 1977 with Rock Bottom and they were shite".
• The Eurovision Song Contest was the central focus of an episode of Father Ted. The joke was that the Irish had lost so much money by winning so many times they decide to choose the worst possible entry as their song entry. Father Ted and Dougal win with an entry called "My Lovely Horse".
• Steve Coogan portrayed a spoof singer Tony Ferrino, who was purported to have won the Eurovision Song Contest 1980 with the song "Papa Bendi", in several television specials in 1997 and 1998.
• The short-lived BBC comedy Heartburn Hotel featured an episode in which the delegation from the impoverished Eastern European state of Zagrovia, recovering from a recent civil war, stayed in the grotty Birmingham hotel run by Tim Healy's character whilst taking part in that year's Eurovision Song Contest. Although the country in question is, of course, fictitious, the Contest had indeed been held in Birmingham that year (1998), and the programme notably included some specially filmed footage of the Zagrovian "entry" - entitled "Lik, Lik, Lik" ("Love, Love, Love"), sung by Saskia - being performed on the actual ESC stage at the National Indoor Arena, complete with commentary by Terry Wogan. [4]
• In the 2004 documentary series Himalaya with Michael Palin, Palin compares a Tibetan music festival to the Eurovision Song Contest.
• In the 2004-2005 documentary serie How to Start Your Own Country, Danny Wallace attempts to submit a song of his own composition, Stop The Mugging And Start The Hugging, as the country Lovely's entry to the Eurovision Song Contest 2006. The contest's scrutineer, Svante Stockselius, meets with Danny and is sympathetic to his cause. However, he informs him that Lovely can not enter the Contest as it has no national television or radio station of its own and therefore can not join the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). Danny then submitted his song to the BBC (an EBU member which supports the UK entry to the contest) in an attempt to receive their backing, but their judges are unimpressed.
• At the 2005 MTV Europe Music Awards, the British host Sacha Baron Cohen made a parody of Eastern European countries hosting the Contest. As the fictitious Kazakh TV personality Borat, Cohen opened the show by welcoming the viewers to The Eurovision Song Contest 2005. The award show also included other, more subtle, references to the ESC, like overly long folk-dance sequences (common in the interval act of the ESC), and a pointless appearance by the (still fake) Kazakh president.

[edit] Radio

• In the pilot episode of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, panelists had to sing a popular song with lyrics replaced by "la la la" and only on one note, with the other team having to guess the song by rhythm only. After a particularly lengthy and monotonous "la la la" by Graeme Garden and Jo Kendall, Bill Oddie guessed the tune as "That was the German entry in the Eurovision Song Contest.... in 1967, 1964, 1962 and 1958."

[edit] Stage

• Playwright Jonathan Harvey wrote a play called "Boom Bang-a-Bang" in 1995 which is set at a Eurovision Party (a social event which is popular with gay men).
• An Australian musical comedy-cum-tribute to the contest, Eurobeat: The Eurovision Musical, was launched in 2003 as a cabaret-style show in Melbourne. It has since gone on to do a national tour of Australia in the second half of 2006 and is going to the Edinburgh Festival (UK) in 2007