Eurovision:Tim Moore's book epitomises western Europe's deeply ambiguous relationship with the Eurovision Song Contest. A London-based travel writer in the Bill Bryson mode, Moore's past books involved him following the pilgrim's path to Santiago de Compostela on a donkey, cycling the course of the Tour de France, and yachting to the Arctic Circle.
His latest self-consciously madcap concept? To track down and interview the 14 acts that have failed to score points in Eurovision since 1975 (the year the current zero- to 12-point voting system was inaugurated.)
It's a difficult premise, in a number of ways. First of all, it's cruel, particularly from someone who's in the business of entertaining people himself. It's not enough, apparently, to suffer humiliation before an estimated 400 million viewers; now those who have endured "light entertainment's ultimate indignity" are asked to relive it as fodder for someone else's comedic stylings. And Moore gets Eurovision completely wrong: by focusing solely on performers, he "blames the messenger" (something he half-heartedly acknowledges in the course of the book) and misrepresents the contest as being about individuals when it's really driven by collective interests - record labels, national broadcasters, governments, and the European Broadcasting Union itself.
That said, it was up to the "nul-pointers" themselves to field Moore's advances, and a full nine of them agreed to be interviewed, sending our correspondent to the far-flung corners of Europe - Oslo, Helsinki, Istanbul, Brussels, Sintra. The most interesting and memorable part of the book is, not surprisingly, the performers' stories; many of them - particularly the older ones - are career musicians who were trying to use Eurovision as a means of greater exposure and have been coping ever since with the failure. You can't help but be inspired by many of the musicians' ingenuity and resilience, and there is something engaging and even informative in the book's portrait of the less glamorous side of Europe's pop musical industries.
Moore's most improbable and difficult encounter is with Finn Kalvik (Norway, 1981) who has become successful enough to spend six months of every year on a Thai beach; and it is on the shores of Koh Samui that Kalvik turns on Moore and dresses him down for forcing him to relive his Eurovision shame - twice (the tape recorder fails the first time).
This confrontation is so emotionally shattering to Moore that he brings it up again and again in the remaining 300 pages - but what the heck did he expect? I'm on Kalvik's side. The problem with this book is that it's not really about the nul-pointers at all, it's about Moore - an excuse for endless, poorly structured rambles in which he describes each subject's losing performance; then recounts his travel experience getting to the interview; and only then gets around to allowing his subjects to speak. A lot of generalisation and objectification happen along the way: Finnish men look like "one part Billy Idol to nine parts rally driver", the 1994 Estonian contestant "might have spent the afternoon ladelling dumplings into dinner trays", Switzerland "is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, stuffed up the back of a cuckoo clock and punted into the fondue". (Huh?)
Late in the book, Moore arrives at what is, for him, the nul points coup de grace - the UK act Jemini's loss in 2003, "the worst noise heard on a Eurovision stage in the contest's 47-year history" - which prompts some national self-flagellation about Britain's Wogan-led indulgence in "ignorance and its sidekick xenophobia" in its discussions of and relations to Eurovision. Moore needed to include himself in this critique: the entire book is an exercise in laughing at foreigners.
Karen Fricker is researching the Eurovision Song Contest as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for International Integration Studies, Trinity College Dublin. She reviews theatre in Ireland for the Guardian and Variety
Nul Points By Tim Moore Jonathan Cape, 378pp. £11.99