Eurovision Vision

Well, it’s over for another year. I’m never good at picking winners but this year’s winning song was the only one I walked out on in disgust. I half expected to see the subtitle “Based on a True Story” as Norway’s Alexander Rybak sang “I’m in love with a fairytale, even though it hurts”. (But it's probably a melodic masterwork that I'll also be humming before the week is out.) Once again the only entry which floated my own personal boat was from Republic of Moldova; after propping up the table for most of the contest they ended a creditable 14th. But quiet has now settled upon Moscow’s “Laika The Dog” Stadium, the performers have returned to their jobs in hair salons and strip clubs, and Europe starts to think already about next year’s event. Here’s my dream line-up for Oslo 2010. The songs will represent each country’s Eurovision vision, as demonstrated by their form over the last 54 years, plus a few that just popped into my head for no obvious reason. I take no responsibility for any effect these may have on the entente cordiale.

Albania: “Bring Out The Gimp” by 17 Different Words for Moustache
Andorra: “Yes, is a Country!” by Ann-Dora
Austria: “We’re Not All Perverts (Disco Mix)” by DJ Strange
Germany: “Eins Zwei Drei, Peace & Love” by Disturbingly Simplistic
Italy: “I’m not Sharing a Stage with a Bunch of Dirty Thieving Immigrants” by Berlusconi’s Second Cousin Twice Removed
France: “We’re Now The Only Remaining European Country to Have Never Really Understood Rock & Roll” by Je Ne Regrette Rien
Denmark: “Nå, Det Er Ik’ Så Ringe” by Old Gits
Norway: “We Really Wanted Null Points Again” by Øyvind Ironic
Sweden: “Ass of Bass by BAAB
Finland: “We’re Weird” by Satanic Goth Monsters from Hell
Iceland: “Nice and Icy by Ice Maiden
Turkey: “Can We Join The EU” by 2012?
Belgium: “Only” by Entering Open Debate about the Armenian Genocide and Improving Your Human Rights Record
Switzerland: “Too Neat and Tidy” by Half
Israel: “We Get to Participate Even Though We’re Not In Europe!” by Hallelujah!
Romania: “We’ve Discarded Our Rich Folk-Music Traditions” by Marcel, Giuseppe & Johnnie
Republic of Moldova: “We Haven’t, You Assholes” by Moldovan Potato Farming Collective Folk Ensemble
Hungary: “Once a Great Nation” by Treachery of Trianon
Lithuania: “The One Next Door to Latvia” by Lithuania Tourist Board
Latvia: “The One Next Door to Lithuania ” by Latvian Tourist Board
Estonia: “Öõõrt Üähäedä” by Õsžüü Ätküü
Russia: “We Should Get Plenty of Votes As We’ve Ensured There’s A Healthy (shurely shome mishtake – Ed.) Percentage of Ethnic Russians in All of Our Neighbouring Countries” by Spirit of Sovietism
Slovenia: “Holiday Homes For Sale!” by RyanAir Flies Here
Holland: “You’re Asking Us to Take Part in This Nonsense?” by You’re Kidding, Right?
United Kingdom: “Boom Bang-a-Bang Ding Dong” by Anybody Except a Half-Decent Indie Band
Ireland: “Ah You’re So Lovely So You Are” by Patrick O’versentimental
Malta: “I Love You” by Fat Bird
Spain: “Your Mum Fancies Us by Bare-Chested Flamenco Boys
Cyprus: “La Grèce, douze points” by Spiros Domestos
Greece: “La Chypre, douze points” by Stavros Asbestos

So there you go, a great line-up I’m sure you’ll agree. And if you can think of songs for the remaining countries – including those I felt had already “suffered enough” - then you’re a better racialist than I am. Here’s to 2010!

R U Bonkers? #1

As I‘ve intimated previously, I have in the past availed myself of mental healthcare services. While this was done only to research the Great 20th Century British Novel I’m writing (that’s 21st Century now. Ed.), this still might constitute “too much information” for easily disturbed readers, so I’ll tread carefully. I’ve also in my portfolio of careers cleaned the floors, toilets and dishes in a psychiatric hospital, sometimes remembering to wash my hands between tasks. All this has given me a special insight into The World Of The Mad. I wish to reduce the stigma attached to not dealing with a full deck by a series of posts examining The Nature of Insanity. Now, I’m a big fan of self-diagnosis, so I’ll show how you can find out if You Are Bonkers by asking yourself some simple questions.

Chapter 1: Are You a Member of The Staff?

The first question to ask yourself upon awaking from the insulin coma and finding yourself slumped in a “trainer-coffin” wing-armchair in a maximum-security care facility. Though it’s not as sure a test of insanity as it seems. For instance, you could believe you’re a member of staff, and lack of patients and not getting paid won’t convince you otherwise. You could be one of the following:

Doctor Davey
A distinguished psychiatrist with a white coat he’s made from his bed sheet and a celery stethoscope. He’ll tell you what you’re suffering from – it’ll always be “a very serious complaint, yerrssss” – and will then recommend some symptoms.

Nurse Nerys
She fashions herself on that Welsh tart on a bicycle, and her medical technique involves getting her breasts out and shoving them in your face. This works for everyone, especially Nerys, whose behaviour ensures that the staff wash her breasts frequently and very vigorously.

Mental Mickey
So called, he’ll point out, because he’s an expert on the human mind. He knows what you’re thinking. He also knows what cushions and button mushrooms are thinking. One day he'll be given the promotion he’s asked for but for now he’ll content himself with sucking people's brains out using his telepathic powers.

Ena the Cleaner
Rather a low-status delusion but easily maintained. All you need is a mop and hospital visitors will treat you as a normal person, nobody will make pathetic attempts to cheer you up, and the staff will let you do their work while they cackle and chain-smoke in the office.

An Actual Member of Staff
This situation is the worst of all. Patients are sensitive, beautiful human beings, but the staff are often as mad as hatters. Especially psychiatrists, who gravitate to this branch of medicine for the wrong reasons: cack-handedness, prurience, deadness of soul, or simply the desire to wear bow-ties as often as possible (oohhh, creepy). Nurses are angels and I’m not going to say a word against them.

So, maybe not quite a sure-fire test, but you've made your first step on the road to wellness - congratulations. Now, I want to end each chapter with a piece of music to lighten our spirits. So here’s Jimi Hendrix’s Manic Depression. He’s decided this should be a fast blues in waltz-time… he’s simply a genius.

Gadjo Dilo’s Peccadillos #3: Big Bird Bumper Edition

My declaration of admiration for Romanian Hattie Jacques Draga Olteanu-Matei, and some comments on Lulu LaBonne’s blog about the sexiness of taller women, may have given the impression that I’m some sort of size queen. This is not necessarily true. If I’m honest with myself I realise that I’ve operated – non-interferingly, though nevertheless whether I or the objects of my attention have wanted it or not - an equal opportunities lechery policy during my adult life, and that larger ladies get their share. In fact, to stress how equal opportunities I am I have conflated lofty and large-boned into the same category. And here are the stand-outs:

East European Lady Tennis Players

These barely need an introduction. They’re all over 6 feet tall, blond, professional, and very much admired. If you’re a tall lady – even a gangly one - I advise you to get thee to a tennis court. Maybe you don’t even need to do that. Try wearing all-white clothes and carrying a tennis racket everywhere you go. Learn a little Russian or Slovakian. Still not working? Maybe get a job wiping old ladies down in a care home; acquire a large monobrowed boyfriend called Oleg; look very very cool 99% of the time but dance like a mentalist every time you hear the strains of I’m a Barbie Girl or Ruslana’s Eurovision-conquering Dyki tantsi Hutsul classic. Still carry the tennis racket though, especially when dancing.


Me (allegedly…)

I once had a girlfriend as tall as I, exactly 6 foot - that’s 1.8288m to you foreign johnnies – which is tall for a lass. It was also a bit Mrs Robinson, though I think the age difference was only 7 years. Anyway. One year I wanted to buy said girlfriend (who I won’t indelicately include in this list) a pair of stockings for her birthday. So I goes to a lingerie boutique in Copenhagen (where we lived) and tells the bint behind the counter “I’d like a pair of sexy stockings for a lady who’s the same height as I am”; she sniggers, audibly, “oh, and what sort would you, err, I mean your lady friend like, sir?” Ahh, ok, I see the way it’s going, and I decide to play it up, “we'll, she’s quite a hairy lady so they’d need to be something opaque and probably close-woven”, “hmm, yes, and I’m guessing she’s also quite muscular – an athlete or a body builder, perhaps? – so something durable”; “oh yes, absolutely... no, deary, those ones are latex”; “yes, lovely, aren’t they; would you like to buy some amyl nitrite as well?”

When the Fat Lady Sings

It seems to me a woman does better as a singer if she’s “well covered”. There are exceptions - the pixieish Björk for instance - but to sing as low and louche as this (though unfortunately these clips don't really do her voice justice) you need to be Yugoslav chanteuse Ljiljana Buttler. The number of larger-than-life jazz ladies doesn’t need listing here for me to prove my case further. So I’ll leave you with Macedonia's famed, fuller-figured Gypsy-Turco-Iraqi-Jewish adopter-of-orphans (sounds like hard work) and Nobel Peace Prize nominee (for the adopting, I’m guessing) Esma Redžepova, backed by the Romanian brass phenomenon that is Fanfare Ciocărlia:

Up The Workers #1

We're about to celebrate Mayday here, when everybody used to have to parade through the street chanting “Ceau-şes-cu!!” and “Hurrah, yes, let’s do it in 4 ½!!” (The Great Conducător’s clever twist on the Stalinist 5-year plan). Many now prefer just have a bar-b-que and to play a bit of footie. But I’m a bit “old school” in believing that work should be celebrated. However, some people who claim to be hard workers are in fact the biggest slackers of all. When I worked in the health service there was a woman who spent her time carrying a piece of paper around, and if you asked her to do anything she’d say she was busy; it took 6 months before they realised she did nothing, and even then they couldn’t sack her. Dyhurr. Here are some other lazy arses who get on my tits:

Bruce Springsteen

Springsteen often sings about the hard-working, blue-collar life, but does he really live up to that? Take a look at “Born in the USA”; I have, and I’ve counted more than 20 times where he sings “born in the USA", and always to the same tune – he simply can’t be bothered to think up new lines, he’s more repetitive than that Philp F*****g Glass!! He’s never done a real day’s work in his life - no wonder they call him “The Boss”.

Karl Marx

No Good Boyo has cleverly called Friedrich Engels “The Andrew Ridgeley of Communism”, but was Karl really much more of a grafter? The Communist Manifesto pretty much writes itself, I’d have thought. “Workers of the world unite”: yeah, obviously they will, and then go on strike most likely. And “International finance is doomed to collapse”, well that’s just happened hasn’t it, and that didn't take a lot of effort - so thanks for nothing, Beardy.

James Brown

The “Hardest Working man in Show Business”, they used to call him. As I’ve said before, Soul Brother No. 1 was like a brother to me, but sometimes you even have to criticise family. He used to collapse in exhaustion on stage during every show and get one of his attendants to help him up again. That’s nothing. I collapsed 13 times when trying to do the “Mashed Potato” at aunt Doris’s Christmas party last year, and nobody bothered to help me up. He needs a bloody good haircut too. Even a bloody bad haircut would be an improvement.

Worker Ants

Shirker ants, more like. How hard can it be carrying a bit of leaf around?? So what if it’s 3 times your body weight, it’s still only a bit of leaf. And I know that ants make honey (that’s bees. Ed.) but so does Sainsbury’s. I’m not impressed. The queen ant on the other hand is a member of royalty and has to work hard to look composed and radiant whenever she emerges from the hive (bees again. Ed.) and I reckon she does a marvellous job, Gawd bless yer Ma’am!

Gadjo in the Dragons Den #1

That Dragon’s Den programme was great – is it still running? I’d like to be on it, and show those fat cats a couple of revolutionary ideas that’ll change the world that I’ve thought of, and they’re going to start saying “alright, Mr Dilo, I‘m prepared to invest £50,000 in your idea for 40% of the profits” and stuff even before I’ve finished the demonstration. Even if they don’t I’ve already had an offer Mr Isaac Ummintorobyou formerly of the Central Bank of Nigeria who’s got a large amount of money he needs to send to Europe right now. People have called me stupid before but here’s where I show them:

Balloon Modelling Kit

We’ve all seen those street performers who bend balloons into the shapes of rabbits, dogs, spaceships, etc. Great, aren’t they. But even top-flight entertainment like that needs a new direction once in a while. This is why I’ve come up with the All-New Balloon Modelling Kit. The twist is that you model small animals into the shapes of balloons. See, it’s the other way around – neat, eh?! The kit comes with a rabbit, a dachshund, a tabby cat, a stoat (or a weasel, depending on availability) and a few hamsters to get you started. The animals will all be docile and reasonably robust. The balloon you make is of course entirely your own choice, though you’d be advised to make one that’s fairly appropriate to your raw materials. Dachshunds of course lend themselves to long thin balloons, and I’m training the cats to puff themselves up by holding their breath for the small round ones and the rabbits to keep their ears down for the pear shaped ones. I'm expecting the hamsters to be more versatile. Believe me, this is going to be a hit at children’s parties – just watch their faces!!


Testicle Recognition System

Fingerprinting has been with us for a long time, but the average criminal can get round it by application of a little battery acid. Iris recognition systems are supposed to be really accurate, but most criminals’ eyes are really squinty like Clint Eastwood's in Escape From Alcatraz or else they wear sunglasses, and then it’s not going to work. However, even the most hardened criminal is still going to have testicles, and that’s where my idea comes in. Your nadger is such a maze of furrows that no two are alike. My system currently consists of a camera and a felt-tip pen for highlighting the outstanding features on each photograph, but I'd like to develop this. I’ve experimented so far on distinguishing my left one from my right one and I have a 87% success rate - and most of the remaining 13% was when I’d just had a bath, which tends to make them look more alike – which is pretty good for a prototype. I reckon this idea could be used on the new ID cards we’ve been hearing so much about, and I’m expecting a call from the Home Office any time soon.

G-G-G-G-G-Granville! (#7): I’ve Said it Once and I’ll Say it Again

It was pointed out – by Gorilla Bananas, no less – that stammerers are not so much getting stuck on words but emphasising them. It’s true. And as well as repeating (that’s emphasising) sounds, repeating whole words is also a habit stammerers get into: they’re so used to restarting the run-up they often don’t realise they’ve already taken off. (This also, up to a point, makes them fantastic lovers... another story). In fact, Scientists believe that repetition is actually the reason for stammering in the first place: evolution has hard-wired into our brains the knowledge of the fundamental truths of the universe and the only way of making people understand these are by constantly repeating them, and the only way of doing this without seeming like pedantic bores is by having a speech impediment. Clever or what that Darwin, eh? These scientists go on to say that we emphasisers are ipso facto the chosen conduits of the eternal verities, and that these are the chosen ones:

Tony Hancock: “That’s a good ‘un, that’s a good ‘un!” Hancock often repeated his best lines. Did comedy dieties Galton & Simpson script them like that or was The Lad ‘Imself fulfilling a higher destiny?

Tony Blair: “Education education education”. Now that sounds an eternal truth if ever there was one. And heck, we chose him; you can’t much more chosen than that.

Policemen: “‘Allo ‘allo ‘allo”. The police get a bad press but they’ve got a difficult job imposing their (foreordained) authority. Especially when stammering. I suppose having a truncheon makes it easier.

MacBeth: “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow... Out, out, brief candle!... (etc)”. The Downside. Macca knows too much, and it’s not made him a happy bunny.

Jimmy Saville: “Now then now then now then…. urghh-ughh-ughh!” Strewth. Saville’s clearly a conduit of something. Beats me what though.

Bill Withers: “I know, I know, I know I know, I know I know I know”. Bill’s getting exciting and perhaps giving away too much here. We need to keep our mystery, mate.

James Brown: “Vienna”. Stammering Brother No. 1 has already been mentioned on this blog, and with his repeated and seemingly irrelevant intoning of the word “Vienna” was clearly trying to tell us something about pre-WWI diplomacy. Too late.

The Byrds: “Turn Turn Turn”. Where were we supposed to turn to? That's for them to know and you to find out.

The Beatles: “Yeah Yeah yeah”. Ok, ok, it's piss-easy to pick on repetitions in pop songs and I promise this'll be the last, but it shows you’ll never go bust by underestimating the public's need for banality.

Bruce Forsyth: “Good game good game”. Brucie, evolution’s greatest achievement so far, also responsible for the near-palindromic “Nice to see you to see you nice”.

Gone To The Dogs

Now I have full-time employment I also have colleagues. One would wish for colleagues like Gareth, Colin or Johnny. But no. It’s hard to get any fun or indeed human interaction of any kind and therefore to have remained sane by Friday. My best bet - and my main source of Jeremy Clarkson news - is Doru, a jolly decent chap but with rather low horizons: “Barry Bogiss he won last night”; “Eh??”; “European Long Distance Lawnmower Rally. You did not see on Eurosport 2?”; “Oh, errr, yes, of course, errr...”; “Sven Spodsen he started well but his rotor blades were set too high. In London is raining a lot, yes?”; “…yes, indeed, yes, almost all the time, yes……. Chim chiminey, chim chiminey chim chim cher-ee….”.

So after the departure of my donkey friend, I’ve been forced to turn for companionship to the canine community. Dogs are plentiful here: domesticated, wild, feral, bi-feral, feral-curious… one of my wife’s cousins even has a dog that’s half wolf! I remember when it was the cutest puppy you ever saw, but now it’s a wolf, though for some reason still as soft as shite. The man next door has dachshunds, which he tells me – inexplicably, unless it’s to make me feel at home – are English. I’ve been convinced there are at least 20 of them, but Mrs Dilo assures me that because they move around so quickly and randomly it just seems like there’s a lot. I therefore applied my A.I. unsupervised learning and pattern recognition skills and deduced that there’s 3 of them, based on 3 distinct emergent patterns of fur-colouration. But Mrs Dilo, again, whose eagle eyes spot bargains, gypsy misdeeds, and the differences between hedge warblers and sedge warblers from several kilometres distance, assures me there’s 4 of them, but that 2 look quite similar. And they’ve got names: “Bruno”, “Blackie”, “Boo-Boo” and – oh yes – “Lady”.

Another mystery solved. I’m now friends with them all and with their Ţuică-breathed owner. We’ve barred them from our garden by boarding up the holes in the fence, but Bruno in particular can make himself incredibly low to the ground so it’s only a matter of time before he’s crapping on our carpet.