All right, I am guilty as charged.

In my defense I will say that it was part of an experiment, and that may not wash with some juries but nevertheless, it is my excuse.

You see, I watched a bit of the Eurovision last night.

It started with a bit of idleness. There is a television that had been sent flying when some lads were installing blinds in the widows. One bloke went and fell, taking the television and a few other things with him. Last night I thought I would see if the television still worked.

It worked perfectly and while I was at it I thought I would mess around with my Freesat receiver which hasn’t been switched on in ages. After a lot of trial and error, I get the lot working, and lo and behold – there was BBC1.

Now the Eurovision is of course on RTE which I could watch on the laptop, but frankly I find poor Marty Whelan a bit tedious. The BBC on the other hand had Graham Norton who normally I can’t stand as he’s a bit squeaky gay for my liking. However, being squeaky gay somehow fitted in with the awfulness of the programme. In it’s awfulness the programme actually became compulsive viewing. Each act was preceded with a warning that it contained flashing lights which was a gross understatement. Each act was an assault on all the senses.

I don’t remember much about the individual acts there there one or two almost memorable ones. There was the UK entry which was a group of semi naked men apparently screwing each other in a rotating cube. There was another bloke [German, I think] who seemed determined to set the place on file with flames everywhere. The Irish one of course was all devils and witchcraft and frankly I’m surprised that Old Nick himself didn’t suddenly rise out of the pentangle and declare himself the winner.

The bloke who won wore a feather boa type top and a miniskirt which sort of summed things up. Apparently he’s a “non binary” [one of the they/them crowd] but just was a very gay bloke. Someone should tell him.

The only thing that was impressive was the effects they managed to squeeze out of technology. The whole stage seemed to enter a fourth dimension at times and while it was supposed to leave me impressed but just left me bewildered. I honestly don’t remember a single song, partly because they were all much the same and partly because there were no songs. Not one. It was all performance and nothing else.

It did however improve marginally in direct proportion to the quantity of whiskey intake.