Can you imagine this Headline? When I heard John Waters say on Newstalk this morning that one day we could see the likes of U2 enter the Eurovision, one thought passed my mind: brilliant. The BBC are apparently in talks with Morrissey, the king of cool, to represent Britain in this year’s Eurovision.
After speaking to a couple of my friends who are diehard Morrissey fans, they informed me that only he, the legend of pop, would be the one who could get away with it.
Morrissey was horrified when he saw how badly the UK did last year and wondered: why didn’t anyone ask me?
Now they have, and in an even bigger surprise he is looking like he is going to go for it.
There is the “ironic cool” factor - like one of those weird contrariety laws in physics: When something is so uncool it actually becomes cool.
But it also makes sense in a commercial and advertising sense - this show has over 300 million viewers and now has created a user generated voting system whereby the voting public get to decide who wins.
If Morrissey is successful this year, other big names are likely to follow, and then of course we might see interest from other networks particularly in the US, that is if this competition attracts some of the bigger names in the industry.
Of course this would represent a cash cow advertising opportunity for local networks in Europe. The question is can the Eurovision change its ways from a cringe experience to one where we are looking at some of the best bands in Europe entertain us with original music and where we can vote to keep them in?
Ask any band manager if they would like 300-500 million people (including new accession countries) to see their band. Bring on Morrissey.
MM