Following on from my Eurovision post below, Sir Terry Wogan has announced that he may step down from commentating on the Eurovsion Song Contest. Terry, who as commentated on the Eurovision for the BBC since 1970, is protesting after the UK’s poor showing (again) and domination by Eastern European countries (again). He is quoted as saying:

I don’t want to be presiding over yet another debacle.

Do Europe realise what they’re doing to us? Half of the Eurovision fun is hearing Terry Wogan’s witty comments. The Queen clearly agrees with me – she gave Terry a knighthood for his services to the Eurovision Song Contest.* And you can tell he’s no stranger to the bottles of booze as the night goes on as there always comes a point when he babbles on and on. But fair play to him, who hasn’t downed a few Pinot Grigios one night in with friends in front of the telly and started to make what we think are the world’s wittiest comments.

But maybe the point is that Eurovision isn’t what it used to be. Nobody in Western Europe does well anymore, and the contest seems to be dominated by the Eastern European countries. There’s now so many countries participating that we need semi-finals. (43 countries took part overall.) There used to be a time when we used to tune in to see what our European neighbours would enter into the contest and laugh at their crazy interpretations of “pop music”. Nowadays we get entries produced by Timbaland. I think it all started going downhill when they got rid of the “here are the results of the UK jury” thing.

Oh Eurovision, I miss the proper “you”.

Here’s a great clip from 1981 from a show to decide the UK’s entry. Of course, it’s Bucks Fizz with Making Your Mind Up. And it’s even got Sir Terry at the beginning of the clip. I give you everything, I do.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pACePi441ds]

BBC News: Wogan ‘may quit Eurovision role’

*This may not be true