Hello Fans!!

Since my decision to enter next year’s Eurovision Song Contest to relaunch my INTERNATIONAL POP CAREER, I have taken myself to all sorts of Eurovision-related events as part of my research.  My travels took me to the Maltese National Final Selections in January, where I met two-time Eurovision entrant Chiara. She told me that they key to success at the contest was to have the song with “the right ingredients”. At the Melodifestivalen final in Sweden, which I went to in March, the song with the right ingredients was a schlager-by-numbers pop song delivered by previous Eurovision winner, Charlotte Perrelli, with an obligatory key change and a silver dress.  Despite Chiara’s wise words in Malta, I was still none the wiser about what the right ingredients actually were.

More recently, my research has seen me taking notes at the official UK Eurovision Preview Party, where a selection of past and present Eurovision acts took to the stage. I also took to the stage that night, as a backing dancer for this year’s Norwegian entrant, Maria Haukaas Storeng. What I noticed at the event was that songs of many different ingredients went down well with the audience. Speaking to Maria before we went on stage, I asked her about her song and she told me that what she liked about her entry, Hold On Be Strong, was that it “grew on you”. This contrasted what Iceland’s entry, Euroband, had to say – their opinion was that they key to success was that the song “had to be instant”. 

Yet again, I was left completely at a loss at what the right ingredients were for triumph at Eurovision – I needed to find out the formula to ensure my VICTORY next year, so that I can be the INTERNATIONAL POPSTAR I once was.

Last night found me at the Piccadilly Theatre in London at a special charity event which saw the casts of various West End musicals from performing favourite Eurovision songs. We were treated to the female cast of Mamma Mia! performing Ding A Dong, Avenue Q doing Waterloo, the boys and girls from Grease jiving to Making Your Mind Up, and the night’s winners, the ensamble of Wicked dazzling us with Ooh Aah… Just A Little Bit.  On top of that we had Scooch Flying The Flag for us and a juding panel of Frances Ruffelle, Sally-Ann Triplett and Dame Cheryl Baker (all previous UK entrants) giving their opinion on the performances. When asked what they wanted from the performances the general gist was that it should be “camp” and have spandex and glitter. By the end of an amazing show I was begining to get more of an idea of what Chiara meant back in January about what the “right ingredients” were. 

Basically, you can enter pretty much anything – you just have to convince the voting public to like your ingredients as well.  That said, a key change, glitter and camp performance can help too (as long as there isn’t a Serbian dressed in a tux in the contest).