Off Topic podcast: ‘The Irish people have failed Eurovision’

Ireland's Eurovision dream has crashed and Byrned, after ex-Westlife singer Nicky failed to light up Stockholm with his sparkly pop number Sunlight. Did we send a knife fighter to a gun fight?

Patrick Freyne has spent the week embedded with the Irish Eurovision troops in Stockholm. He thinks we are being unfair to Nicky Byrne, and reckons there is a "vibe to a winner that you can feel in the room" but is impossible to predict beforehand.

He further argues that “the Irish people have failed Eurovision”. Not, he points out, the fans who are really into it.

“You need to have the whole country invested in it, taking it seriously and people need to recognise that 200 million people watch this. It’s some platform for talented musicians, singers and songwriters but it has this negative reputation in Ireland and the UK that we have to grow out of . . . if they want to win it, the country has to take it seriously.”

Laura Slattery reckons RTÉ do not need to tinker further with the formats and the selection process, but that someone with a better voice, such as Markus Feehily, could prove the key. She argues that not getting through to the final should not be viewed as a failure.

Pivotal moment

Slattery also traces one of the competition's pivotal moments to 1996's UK entry Gina G, Ooh Aah … Just a Little Bit, where the UK made a break from the ballads and cracked the competition wide open (without actually winning). She argues that the Eurovision, which this weekend will feature a performance from Justin Timberlake, is "already our Super Bowl" and the worst thing we could do is to send an "earnest" performer.

Hugh Linehan has been watching the show all week from his sofa in Dublin, and reckons success is not such a complicated issue, and reckons that being ironic about the Eurovision isn't such a bad thing.

The atmosphere in Stockholm is extraordinary, says Freyne, and he describes the city centre and the competition as a utopian ideal. In an age of political dissent, European disintegration and Brexit, Eurovision might just be the competition we need, if not the competition we want.

Later on in the show, we talk to Donald Clarke who reports from the cinematic coal face of the Cannes Film Festival, where Woody Allen is dominating the headlines, and explains why there are no Irish films to be found on La Croisette.