The Terry Wogan Effect
It may be the Eurovision off-season but we all have two Dutch cities on the brain as we get closer and closer to the official announcement date for where we are headed next May. Meanwhile, I am sure that all of you have been taking some time to relax, reflect & ponder on the contest we love. When I haven't been working to organise the OGAE UK hosting of the OGAE Song Contest, I have been thinking about British commentary legend Sir Terry Wogan. Last year, I moved from London to Chichester, a small town on the English south coast. In making this move, I came across a very different perspective on cosmopolitanism, internationalism and Europe. When the Eurovision Song Contest came around, I came out with all my usual traditions and excitement. The attitude of people that I was greeted with is one that will be very familiar to many British Eurovision fans. Popular catchphrases including "We never do well because Europe hates us", "Everybody else just votes for their neighbours" and most interestingly "I only like it for Graham Norton's commentary". The popular opinion within the United Kingdom is that Graham Norton continued the tradition of commentating with a certain sense of wit aimed largely at the foreign acts and the host presenters started by the voice of Eurovision himself, Sir Terry Wogan. This article seeks to explore what was at the heart of Terry's commentary's popularity amongst the British TV audience and what is the legacy left behind that survives beyond his death in 2016.
Terry Wogan began commentating for the BBC at Eurovision in 1971. At the time, both the Eurovision Song Contest and the British participation in said contest were still in their relative youth. Whilst it is unclear how Terry Wogan got the opportunity, it is certainly clear that he went on to make it his own. Terry commentated on the contest with a fair dose of wit, but all British Eurovision fans know that this wit walked a fine line between funny and offensive (his reference to the 2001 hosts is one to look up). Whilst Terry never went as far as to do anything that would open himself up to accusations of racism, he did state in a 1997 interview with Clive James that the real fun of Eurovision came from "sneering at the foreigners". It is also worth noting (since it will mostly be Eurovision fans who read this article) that he referred to Eurovision fans as "anoraks". This is a phrase I had to look up but when I finally found a definition, it reads "a mild form of abuse for those with an obsessive interest in an obscure subject". Despite this, he somehow kept a love for the contest despite having also described it as "magnificently awful". Wogan quit the commentator's post after the 2008 contest claiming that Eurovision was "no longer a music contest" and claiming that he didn't want to "presiding over another debacle". When Graham Norton then took the post for the following year in Moscow, he persisted with the same sort of wit and humour as Wogan had used for no other reason than the fact that by this point, this was what Eurovision was to a British television audience.
Now, before I get into the meat of this article which will explore the effect that Wogan had on the British perspective on Eurovision, I should give a bit of background on my own view of Eurovision. I began watching the contest in 2012, at the time I wasn't living in the UK and so the first time I watched the contest was on the commentary-less Eurovision website stream and finally, the big contests of the 2000s which were in the opinions of many, the death of Eurovision were the big, exciting spectacles that I grew up on and made me fall in love with the contest.
So when in 2013, I finally ended up watching my first contest from British soil, I was surprised by the general contempt shown towards the contest by the people I talked about the contest with. The premises on which much of the mainstream British perception of Eurovision is based on are downright false and I will take a bit of time to go through these and explain where they came from and why they are false
"Everybody hates us"
We have Jemini to thank for this particular one. That's right, this is the year when Wogan having watched an utter car crash of a performance in Riga had the guts to claim that the reason for our nul points score was because of the British involvement in the Iraq conflict. Now I'll admit that the Brexit situation hasn't helped the general perception of the United Kingdom abroad but there are numerous examples of other European countries who have been in way worse situations and still scored points at Eurovision. We will soon come onto the "everybody votes for their neighbours" fallacy but in 2016, Russia won the televote in a year when they were incredibly unpopular in Europe largely for their involvement in the Ukrainian conflict. Two years later, they came last and this year they placed third in the overall televote. Why the mix of scores if everybody hates Russia? It's because surprisingly, people judge who to pick up the phone and vote for on how they like the performances and not their complicated geo-political hatred of other nations.
"Everybody votes for their neighbours"
Not only was this another fantastic Wogan line from the 2008 playbook but it is possibly the most close-minded. With the advent of the televote in the early 2000s, new countries begun to win Eurovision. First it was Estonia in 2001 then Latvia the following year, Turkey the year after that, then Ukraine, then Greece, then Finland followed by Serbia and finally in 2008, Russia. These countries had come new to the Eurovision party and were unexpectedly doing well against the contest's historical big hitters. How could this be the case? How could the British be bettered at music by the Latvians? There had to be something wrong and the easy demographic to blame was the televote. It must be those pesky people at home on continental Europe who decide who to cast a phone vote for it based on how much they like the country in question. It's at moments like these that I would ask the cynics to consider why Greece and Cyprus give each other 12 points every year? These two nations have a shared language, similar cultural backgrounds, a shared music industry and consequently, similar tastes. Songs and artists from one country and very likely to be played in the other, the more you know and like an artist or a song, the more likely you are to want to vote for it in a song contest. Pretty much the same can be said for the Scandinavian nations, the relationship between Spain and Portugal, the former Soviet bloc and the former Yugoslav nations. This result shouldn't be a particular surprise for the last two because they all belonged to the same nation as recently as 1990. Before Brits try to pretend like this doesn't apply to them, I will remind them that we pretty much gave maximum points to Jedward during their two years competing for Ireland (12 to 'Lipstick' and 10 to 'Waterline') and as much as I enjoyed both songs, it is certain that they were not deserving of those scores in the wider scheme of the contest.
"The music is terrible"
Now unfortunately, there's not much I can do to shoot this argument down because quality of music is completely subjective to different opinions. What I can do is talk about how this came to be a widely-held opinion. If somebody makes fun of something, it is perfectly possible for it to be seen as a joke made in good jest. If somebody consistently makes fun of elements of a person or an organisation or a thing, it starts to degrade the opinion or view of the people listening to the joke about this person/organisation/thing. Terry Wogan consistently made fun of the contest particularly during the 2000s as Eurovision exploded from a small, sweet competition into the television phenomenon it is today. Don't get me wrong, a joke or two about what's happening is all in good jest but when it is a consistent degrading of cultures, styles and performances that are different to one's own, that is simply borderline racism and rarely takes into consideration the variety of music being showcased. When the same people who suggest that the music at Eurovision is terrible express their admiration for ABBA or Celine Dion, they prove that this reputation that the contest has amongst Brits is criminally false. It is also worth noting that even though the United Kingdom don't send their most popular acts to the contest, many countries do and consequently the music taste of other European nations deserves more respect than it is currently allocated.
"We never do well"
I completely get that if you are employed by the BBC as the official Eurovision commentator for a UK TV audience, you are going to express an admiration for the British act as part of your role. Eurovision is centred around a soft patriotism that I enjoy being a part of when watching the contest. Terry pushed the admiration at best into bias territory and at worst into jingoistic rant. His conduct in cases where the United Kingdom scored poorly was slightly akin to that of a tantrum. Again, it must be noted that what the commentator says is of course going to have an effect on what the casual viewer thinks of the overall spectacle, especially when Terry Wogan was expected to be the expert on Eurovision. I am very aware that on this blog, I have backed British acts (one in particular) but the fact is that we don't do well because we don't put in anywhere near the effort that every other country does to firstly understand and then to succeed at the contest.
So years later when Swedish Eurovision godfather Christer Bjorkman suggested that Wogan had "raised a generation of viewers believing this was a fun, kitsch show that had now relevance whatsoever" and consequently that he had "spoiled Eurovision", many eyebrows were certainly raised. Upon honest reflection however, it is worth us as Eurovision fans considering the possibility that he might have been right. Particularly as you consider that the attitudes listed above are a persistent attitude, year-on-year across the entire British nation every time the Eurovision season comes around.
I would like to conclude this article by stating that I have respect for the many years of service that Wogan dedicated to the contest on behalf of the BBC. Whether I like it or not, he is the voice of Eurovision in the United Kingdom and that is important to note and recognise. He also co-hosted what could well be the last Eurovision hosted on British soil (until maybe Australia somehow win it) and clearly has a place in the echelons of Eurovision broadcasting history from both a national and continent-wide perspective. What frustrates me is that his attitude towards the contest has bred a feeling of contempt around Eurovision amongst the mainstream TV audience in the United Kingdom. The BBC has built up a healthy number of TV viewers who tune in to the show because they love it for what Wogan turned it into and what Norton persists with to this day. The BBC will never change their stance on this nor will they mind about how poor the British result it, because this simply feeds the narrative. British participation at Eurovision is stuck in this perpetual cycle that is arguably the making of one of the biggest British Eurovision legends. As a British fan who would love to see his nation higher up the leaderboard again, I can only pray for the right singer and song to come along and get this country falling in love with the potential of what not treating Eurovision as a running joke could potentially be.
Thank you for reading the article this far. Please let me know your thoughts on the subject in the comments below and please subscribe to the blog for further updates. Content from the blog will be slow in this Eurovision off-season but I will write when I get time. Until next time, enjoy the sunshine and have a lovely summer.
Terry Wogan began commentating for the BBC at Eurovision in 1971. At the time, both the Eurovision Song Contest and the British participation in said contest were still in their relative youth. Whilst it is unclear how Terry Wogan got the opportunity, it is certainly clear that he went on to make it his own. Terry commentated on the contest with a fair dose of wit, but all British Eurovision fans know that this wit walked a fine line between funny and offensive (his reference to the 2001 hosts is one to look up). Whilst Terry never went as far as to do anything that would open himself up to accusations of racism, he did state in a 1997 interview with Clive James that the real fun of Eurovision came from "sneering at the foreigners". It is also worth noting (since it will mostly be Eurovision fans who read this article) that he referred to Eurovision fans as "anoraks". This is a phrase I had to look up but when I finally found a definition, it reads "a mild form of abuse for those with an obsessive interest in an obscure subject". Despite this, he somehow kept a love for the contest despite having also described it as "magnificently awful". Wogan quit the commentator's post after the 2008 contest claiming that Eurovision was "no longer a music contest" and claiming that he didn't want to "presiding over another debacle". When Graham Norton then took the post for the following year in Moscow, he persisted with the same sort of wit and humour as Wogan had used for no other reason than the fact that by this point, this was what Eurovision was to a British television audience.
Now, before I get into the meat of this article which will explore the effect that Wogan had on the British perspective on Eurovision, I should give a bit of background on my own view of Eurovision. I began watching the contest in 2012, at the time I wasn't living in the UK and so the first time I watched the contest was on the commentary-less Eurovision website stream and finally, the big contests of the 2000s which were in the opinions of many, the death of Eurovision were the big, exciting spectacles that I grew up on and made me fall in love with the contest.
So when in 2013, I finally ended up watching my first contest from British soil, I was surprised by the general contempt shown towards the contest by the people I talked about the contest with. The premises on which much of the mainstream British perception of Eurovision is based on are downright false and I will take a bit of time to go through these and explain where they came from and why they are false
"Everybody hates us"
We have Jemini to thank for this particular one. That's right, this is the year when Wogan having watched an utter car crash of a performance in Riga had the guts to claim that the reason for our nul points score was because of the British involvement in the Iraq conflict. Now I'll admit that the Brexit situation hasn't helped the general perception of the United Kingdom abroad but there are numerous examples of other European countries who have been in way worse situations and still scored points at Eurovision. We will soon come onto the "everybody votes for their neighbours" fallacy but in 2016, Russia won the televote in a year when they were incredibly unpopular in Europe largely for their involvement in the Ukrainian conflict. Two years later, they came last and this year they placed third in the overall televote. Why the mix of scores if everybody hates Russia? It's because surprisingly, people judge who to pick up the phone and vote for on how they like the performances and not their complicated geo-political hatred of other nations.
"Everybody votes for their neighbours"
Not only was this another fantastic Wogan line from the 2008 playbook but it is possibly the most close-minded. With the advent of the televote in the early 2000s, new countries begun to win Eurovision. First it was Estonia in 2001 then Latvia the following year, Turkey the year after that, then Ukraine, then Greece, then Finland followed by Serbia and finally in 2008, Russia. These countries had come new to the Eurovision party and were unexpectedly doing well against the contest's historical big hitters. How could this be the case? How could the British be bettered at music by the Latvians? There had to be something wrong and the easy demographic to blame was the televote. It must be those pesky people at home on continental Europe who decide who to cast a phone vote for it based on how much they like the country in question. It's at moments like these that I would ask the cynics to consider why Greece and Cyprus give each other 12 points every year? These two nations have a shared language, similar cultural backgrounds, a shared music industry and consequently, similar tastes. Songs and artists from one country and very likely to be played in the other, the more you know and like an artist or a song, the more likely you are to want to vote for it in a song contest. Pretty much the same can be said for the Scandinavian nations, the relationship between Spain and Portugal, the former Soviet bloc and the former Yugoslav nations. This result shouldn't be a particular surprise for the last two because they all belonged to the same nation as recently as 1990. Before Brits try to pretend like this doesn't apply to them, I will remind them that we pretty much gave maximum points to Jedward during their two years competing for Ireland (12 to 'Lipstick' and 10 to 'Waterline') and as much as I enjoyed both songs, it is certain that they were not deserving of those scores in the wider scheme of the contest.
"The music is terrible"
Now unfortunately, there's not much I can do to shoot this argument down because quality of music is completely subjective to different opinions. What I can do is talk about how this came to be a widely-held opinion. If somebody makes fun of something, it is perfectly possible for it to be seen as a joke made in good jest. If somebody consistently makes fun of elements of a person or an organisation or a thing, it starts to degrade the opinion or view of the people listening to the joke about this person/organisation/thing. Terry Wogan consistently made fun of the contest particularly during the 2000s as Eurovision exploded from a small, sweet competition into the television phenomenon it is today. Don't get me wrong, a joke or two about what's happening is all in good jest but when it is a consistent degrading of cultures, styles and performances that are different to one's own, that is simply borderline racism and rarely takes into consideration the variety of music being showcased. When the same people who suggest that the music at Eurovision is terrible express their admiration for ABBA or Celine Dion, they prove that this reputation that the contest has amongst Brits is criminally false. It is also worth noting that even though the United Kingdom don't send their most popular acts to the contest, many countries do and consequently the music taste of other European nations deserves more respect than it is currently allocated.
"We never do well"
I completely get that if you are employed by the BBC as the official Eurovision commentator for a UK TV audience, you are going to express an admiration for the British act as part of your role. Eurovision is centred around a soft patriotism that I enjoy being a part of when watching the contest. Terry pushed the admiration at best into bias territory and at worst into jingoistic rant. His conduct in cases where the United Kingdom scored poorly was slightly akin to that of a tantrum. Again, it must be noted that what the commentator says is of course going to have an effect on what the casual viewer thinks of the overall spectacle, especially when Terry Wogan was expected to be the expert on Eurovision. I am very aware that on this blog, I have backed British acts (one in particular) but the fact is that we don't do well because we don't put in anywhere near the effort that every other country does to firstly understand and then to succeed at the contest.
So years later when Swedish Eurovision godfather Christer Bjorkman suggested that Wogan had "raised a generation of viewers believing this was a fun, kitsch show that had now relevance whatsoever" and consequently that he had "spoiled Eurovision", many eyebrows were certainly raised. Upon honest reflection however, it is worth us as Eurovision fans considering the possibility that he might have been right. Particularly as you consider that the attitudes listed above are a persistent attitude, year-on-year across the entire British nation every time the Eurovision season comes around.
I would like to conclude this article by stating that I have respect for the many years of service that Wogan dedicated to the contest on behalf of the BBC. Whether I like it or not, he is the voice of Eurovision in the United Kingdom and that is important to note and recognise. He also co-hosted what could well be the last Eurovision hosted on British soil (until maybe Australia somehow win it) and clearly has a place in the echelons of Eurovision broadcasting history from both a national and continent-wide perspective. What frustrates me is that his attitude towards the contest has bred a feeling of contempt around Eurovision amongst the mainstream TV audience in the United Kingdom. The BBC has built up a healthy number of TV viewers who tune in to the show because they love it for what Wogan turned it into and what Norton persists with to this day. The BBC will never change their stance on this nor will they mind about how poor the British result it, because this simply feeds the narrative. British participation at Eurovision is stuck in this perpetual cycle that is arguably the making of one of the biggest British Eurovision legends. As a British fan who would love to see his nation higher up the leaderboard again, I can only pray for the right singer and song to come along and get this country falling in love with the potential of what not treating Eurovision as a running joke could potentially be.
Thank you for reading the article this far. Please let me know your thoughts on the subject in the comments below and please subscribe to the blog for further updates. Content from the blog will be slow in this Eurovision off-season but I will write when I get time. Until next time, enjoy the sunshine and have a lovely summer.
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