No Rock And Roll Fun

THE POOR SOD: Soon after a visibly lubricated Terry Wogan returned to our screens for the second half of the Making Your Mind Up show last night, it became clear that the people of Britain had chosen James Fox and his David Gray's Gone To Iceland one bloke and a guitar effort to carry the British flag into Eurovision proper. Like a British soldier sent to Iraq with no body armour and a gun made from two washing-up liquid bottles and clothes peg. Oh, sure, if the Eurovision Song Contest was being judged solely by legal secretaries from Basildon on their third bottle of Sainsburys white wine and halfway through a Thorntons Truffle Egg, he'd be in with a chance, but do we really expect people living in countries where Dido would be pronounced clinically dead to take a scruffy bloke in jeans burbling some halfsense about how we've got to hold on to our love tonight to their hearts?

The song is rubbish by most standards - why do they have to hold on to their love tonight? What's going to be different about tomorrow? Or is he suggesting that the relationship is like some sort of werewolf, during the day a lovely, snuggly thing, but as soon as the moon comes out it's all tempestuous and needs to have men hold the thing down with guy ropes and a giant tarpaulin?

James also explains that if he lost the object of his affection, he'd be helpless - not in the usual way, spending days staring slack-jawed at Gabby Logan, shovelling Pot Noodle into a mouth; no, James would be "helpless inside" - if his girlfriend left him, no doctor would be able to repair his organs from their multiple rupture. A little later, James explains that he is "changing - I can feel it inside." His insides again. Maybe he's getting love confused with indigestion? Perhaps that's why he's got to hold on to the love tonight, because tomorrow he'll get a pack of Settlers Tums and everything will be fine?

In short: horrid Athena man sentiments, no silly dance routine, no pretty girl. It might just pull off a Johnny Logan, and it probably won't burn in the way like Jemini did, but even so... the BBC will be relieved they won't be having to host the 2005 event.

In other Eurovision news, Jemini popped up on BBC Three complaining "If we won an oscar, we'd still be 'the ones who scored nul points.'" No, dears, you wouldn't be; indeed, the very fact its only a moot point what sort of success would allow you to put being judged the crapest song Britain has ever produced explains why you will always be the ones who scored nul points. If you want us to stop thinking of you that way, you could try going and being successful at something. Not giving lots of interviews about losing Eurovision would be a starting point.