Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Hawkins: I'm a victim of racism

Apparently it hasn't occurred to Justin Hawkins that his failure to win the UK's Eurovision heat might be down to people not liking him or his song. Sure, it must be hard to go in two years from being the toast of the Brits to being rejected by te Making Your Mind Up audience, but even so, to then try and suggest he's been the victim of racism because he was working with Beverli Brown is really shabby:

“The United Kingdom must be either racist or stupid not to have voted for Big Brovaz or Beverlei Brown.

“It’s like when multi-award-winning, multimillion-selling LEMAR lost to DAVID ‘Three stars at Burger King’ SNEDDON in Fame Academy all those years ago. Nothing ever changes.

“The whole thing whiffed of a stitch-up.”

Victoria Newton is in pieces, so she is:
I really hoped Justin would win Saturday’s sing-off. Representing us at the contest in Helsinki this May would have been a nice way to mark his return to music after getting out of rehab.

Without wanting to be harsh, why should the UK public have its votes motivated by wanting to "do something nice" for someone coming out of rehab? Was there something in the rules we missed?

And having seen what a terribly bad loser Hawkins is - this shabby attempt to wrap himself in the cloak of the underdog and his childish storm-off when he found out his antics hadn't swung the vote - it's probably just as well that he was voted out at this stage, showing himself up, rather than embarrassing us at as a nation during Eurovision.

Meanwhile, the BBC has tried to delicately blame Terry Wogan for announcing the wrong winner on Saturday without actually upsetting him:
A BBC spokesman said: "Terry was given the right name down his earpiece. There was no technical problem."

They admitted the studio was noisy and emphasised Sir Terry was not being blamed for the mix-up.

Terry has been quite upbeat about it all:
Speaking on his BBC Radio 2 show, Sir Terry said: "Nobody died, it's a TV programme. It wasn't the general election. People got a bit confused."

"People" got confused, did they, Terry?


4 comments:

Unknown said...

Looks like the blame is being shunted here, there and everywhere. I'm expecting any minute for the BBC to declare their "full confidence" in Our Tel's abilities. And then replace him with Tess Daly or Phillip Schofield.

Anonymous said...

Hawkins has a nerve to accuse anyone at all of racism considering his own single last year which was right down in the bearpit with The Sun at its very worst. Or is it OK if "they're" white Europeans?

Things *have* changed, on the whole and certainly among the generation buying the most pop records, vis-a-vis racial matters in the UK - after all, Lemar has had a proper career for himself, unlike Sneddon - but cabaret-glam/metal/Queen isn't exactly leading the way, is it?

Chris Brown said...

Apart from the obvious, how exactly does he think Lemar got to be so multi-million-selling if everyone's a racist?

Anonymous said...

Well, plenty of people are racist in terms of genuine political power but not in terms of light entertainment (which is all pop is for them). But the further into pop's dominance of British life a white person was born and raised, the less likely they are to be anti-black, on the whole, and although pop is not the only factor, it's certainly a key factor, both in itself and in its interrelations with the other factors.

But what really angered me was that someone who could write and record a song so fervently promoting the Engerlund mentality - which often hides very real, genuine and virulent racism - could accuse anyone else of such prejudices.

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