JOHN WATERS:I FEEL for Dustin. To experience the true nature of dismay is to look in the bathroom mirror the morning after you've been humiliated at the Eurovision Song Contest as you ask yourself: did that really happen? It seems unlikely. Even being there in the first place is so improbable that part of your brain tells you that everything, good and bad, is all part of a dream. But you just can't wake up.
A year ago, I remember sitting on the side of the bed in my hotel room in Helsinki, trying to retrace the steps by which I'd got there. What terrible defects of character, what deep psychological trauma, what profound, unfulfilled need, had led me to pursue this particular adventure?
Why couldn't I have listened to Joe Duffy? Would I ever be able to show my face in public again?
This May, I have to admit to a smidgin of schadenfreude. There is something to be said for not making it to the Eurovision. I feel like the elder lemon, offering advice to a new casualty, albeit a turkey, about how to handle failure of this most incomparable kind.
For a start, Dustin, take a boat home. Do not, under any circumstances, subject yourself to that funereal flight back to Dublin.
There is a deep patriotic streak within us all - even, I imagine, turkeys - and, no matter how incongruously or ironically, Ireland's representatives at the Eurovision do fly the national flag. This will begin to eat at your soul.
To drown their deep tribal shame and embarrassment, those around you will be getting drunk. If you remain sober, you will come to know the true nature of despair. You will gaze out the window as you pass over mountains and wonder why the aircraft cannot crash into them.
Planes crash all the time, you will reason - why not this one?
It won't crash.
When you get back to your turkey coop, lock the door, take to the bed and cover your head. Bring the phone with you, though, as it is important, in this moment of incommunicable horror, to pretend that you are taking the whole thing in your stride.
Those who would like to go to the Eurovision but are too cool or timid to try will be scrutinising your every word for a hint of a whine or an excuse.
Take calls from journalists and the phone-in shows, even Joe Duffy. Engage in deep sociological analyses of the outcome of the Eurovision, as though the whole thing was an experiment.
If anyone tries to argue that you were the victim of an eastern voting pact, be sure to disagree, so that people think you are really taking it well.
Do not read the newspapers.
Do not venture outdoors, for at least a week.
There is a particular type of Irish citizen who takes life exceedingly seriously and who is driven by an overwhelming desire to communicate this seriousness at every opportunity, no matter how frivolous the context.
On the Monday morning after Helsinki, I was walking along Merrion Street in Dublin when I noticed a tall male individual lurching in my direction, clearly in the process of dredging from the recesses of his thinking facility something in the way of a witticism.
I nodded politely and, taken short, he responded: "You're an awful f**kin' eejit, Wathers."
It was not so much that my inner child was too fragile to deal with this rejoinder, but that, because I still had this sense of being in a dream, I thought for an instant about landing a Zizou-style header.
The worst that could happen, I reasoned, was that it would wake me up.
Luckily, just then, I found myself approached by one of those wonderful doormen at the Merrion Hotel, who stretched out his hand and said: "I bet you had the greatest fun! I hope you try again next year."
Only then did I become convinced that I was not dreaming.