This week it was revealed that the British public, via BBC1's Saturday night talent show Your Country Needs You, had chosen Jade Ewan to represent them in the Eurovision song contest. It wasn't a huge surprise for viewers whom, the show had regularly implied, would have been crazy to vote for anyone else.
Your Country Needs You was a messy, boring, humourless series – Simon Cowell's offerings look slick, buzzy and street smart in comparison - but it was the final programme that provided the last straw. Who would have imagined that Lulu and Duncan from Blue would get involved in something of such low quality?
For the blessedly ignorant, Your Country Needs You saw Andrew Lloyd Webber and a sycophantic Graham Norton embark on a mission to search the country for the most talented singer to represent the UK at the Eurovision Song Contest, thus restoring cohesion and community values to broken Britain. The bad-tempered, socially awkward Lloyd Webber was a strange choice for such a demanding quest, and Your Country Needs You presented him as the centrifugal force in British popular culture, a deeply depressing notion.
The finalists who reached the live TV shows had a tough job, partly because none of them were much good but also because the show had clearly already decided who it wanted for a winner and was prepared to go to any lengths to secure her victory. Still, this didn't stop the panel (Webber, Lulu and guests like Duncan and Emma Bunton) telling the achingly average, nerve-shot Charlotte that she was a "great talent" and sheep farmer Mark that he had "The Voice" while Lord Webber sat in the middle of the panel like Nero - and with that emperor's ear for music, too.
However, this was not, in my opinion, a level playing field. Every week, after the queue of very ordinary looking civilian contestants had come and gone, the beautiful Jade was launched onstage looking like she'd been styled by Beyoncé, lit by Merchant Ivory and choreographed by Matthew Bourne. She isn't much of a singer – she slips and slides over the notes like a drunk ice-skating yodeller – but the panel generously restricted their comments to the small percentage of notes she sang in tune, gasping in wonder at her "incredible" and "extraordinary" performance.
The final clincher came from The Sun, which ran a story the day before the final in which Lloyd Webber admitted he'd shed a tear when he saw how well Jade looked after her disabled parents. It was a moment familiar to anyone who'd watched Peter Kay's recent satire on TV talent shows, and which underlined the reality that those poor ordinary kids with big dreams had never stood a chance against the BBC's intentions. It might have made good telly (except it didn't) but what was the point of any of it in the end?
Last week I watched the old episode of Father Ted where Graham Norton grimly riverdances in a tiny caravan for one. Ah Graham, where did it all go wrong?
