The Eurovision is arguably the daftest pop show on earth but we suffer from a lifelong addiction to it and at this time of year we all get carried away. Kristina Chetcuti was backstage at last week’s song festival.
Grand chandeliers, round crimson clothed-tables, meticulous seating plans, flowing wine, snazzy hors d’oeufs and huge screens.
I’m in the Green Room backstage at the Mediterranean Conference Centre and I’m momentarily stumped. Had I stumbled on the set of Eyes Wide Shut? My gawp is not the only one in the room. All the singers taking part in this year’s Malta Eurovision Song Contest are thrown.
They can’t believe their luck, that while they’re waiting out the contest results they’ll actually have food and drink.
“And a table! Look at this – the tables actually have our names on them,” they say. They dish out douze points for the set up, in stark contrast to past years when they had to elbow their way to bag a table. This year, they even got red carpet treatment prior to the show, giving it all a waft of ‘Oscars a la Maltaise’.
The singers troop to their makeshift dressing-rooms (“We got a cubicle each!”) where they put on their riot of eye-shadow not dissimilar to that applied by presenters of TV Dubai. They go through their operatic scales. In hushed tones, some past participants say that some singers are not very friendly, but others brush it off as sheer paranoia.
At one point, a whisper resonates around the room that during one particular song, there was a sound problem. A few start to talk out loud about wanting a replay. Aha, I thought: a conspiracy theory in the making? In the end it was nothing – just the sound of the screen gone lower.
Most comment on how happy they are with the filming, the swooping crane shots and the lighting. You would think they would since MTV’s top lighting man, Johnny McCullagh, was recruited.
The Green Room only fills up after all performances are over. The singers and their entourage get down to the business of eating and drinking. And then they become ‘celebrities’. That’s about the point when the hugging starts.
Blue and Riccardo Cocciante might have been crooning away, but our starlets in the Green Room are hugging. They hug their stylists, their well-manicured hairdressers, their makeup artists, their composers, their backing vocalists, and then they sit down. And stand up for another round of hugging. “I love yous” are bandied about.
It’s not really the place for macho thumps on the back: with more than half the males present gay, there are no issues about men hugging men. The booze is helping but the very tight trousers (men) and the wonder bras (women) are boosting the hormones, no doubt.
This year, in fact, could be called the contest where we witnessed the ‘outing’ of the erm, boobs. Half-way through the show I get a text from my cousin: “You’ve got a tough job tonight, careful, some costumes look like they might explode.”
As if on cue, I bump into Ally and Kelly and Jessie and their ‘accessories’.
To my right, there’s the hyper-enthusiastic violinist in a shirt – apparently inspired by Roberto Cavalli – rolled just so, showing a bulging bicep. To my left, there’s the singer deemed most-determined-to-win in her shimmering, erm, night gown.
Further up there’s the pretty boy singer and his Lady Gaga dancers. At the far end is the boys’ boys corner: they strum their guitars and occasionally raise a quizzical eyebrow and smile knowingly.
It’s not really rowdy. From the show’s links to the Green Room, you would think that the banging on the tables, the arms in the air and the shouts of ‘Woo-woo-woo’ were the order of the day. Remember we’re dealing with singers here – they need their audience, without which they are quiet mellow.
There is a hum of chattering; composers and singers having tete-a-tetes; lots of phoning and texting and food nibbling; and backing vocalists sashaying to and from the loos adjusting their bra straps.
As the result time got closer, the tension cuts the air. As part of my ‘blending in’ exercise I say I am rooting for the Richard Edwards boy (reasons given: he’s got a rouge stubble and is a tad Ronan Keating-ish). But apparently I am off tune.
“Glen. Ya, ya. I dink Glen is winnar,” says a German journalist before the start of the concert. “Ya, his song is goot.” He knows his stuff, this hack – he produces a year-round weekly radio show on the Eurovision and for the past weeks had been entertaining his audiences with all Malta’s 24 songs.
There were about 40 press people covering this local event. Half of them foreign: Brits, Poles, Dutch and even one from Luxembourg.
There was also the Maltese press “One Life is quintessential Eurovision,” says one savvy reporter from Radju Kottoner 98 FM. Honestly, they were the most organised: there were three of them there, feeding their two listeners with continuous live updates.
Glen was not only a favourite with hacks; a quick skim through my Facebook confirmed that “the boy in Rupert the Bear trousers” was definitely “Malta’s Kylie”.
He was hailed as “our camp hero” who is “definitely happy in a tent” and his song was deemed as a “brilliant panto song” and “Alan Montanaro must be thrilled”.
At one point a discussion crops up on the meaning of the embroidered ‘TT’ on Janvil’s lapel: Terribly Trousered? Torta Tonda? Till someone cracked the code: Topsy turvy.
I eavesdrop on the theatre audience and the hot topic is the singer who had some liposuction done live on TV: “Eh, see what happens post-op? Fat goes down to your hips instead of the stomach.”
The theatre crowd at the MCC is mainly made up of men with coloured shirt collars spread open wide on their jacket lapels; men with scarves hanging neatly from their necks Godfather style; women in white or red coats with blow-dried fringes covering their eyes; little boys in Chinese collared suits and little girls in faux fur and high heels.
But these are the Eurovision aficionados – they would tell you who won the contest in 1957. They are also the props used to give what is essentially a television show, a ‘live’ feel.
The real audience are, of course, at home – and a record audience of about half the population it was.
They vote for Glen. So do the judges. It was a close shave and in the Green Room everybody crowds on Glen and Richard as they wait for Cocciante’s axe: It’s everyone’s last chance to be on camera.
Then Glen is whisked away to perform on stage. It’s the start of pruning phase which will lead him to the preliminaries at the Eurovision Song Contest in Dusseldorf, Germany, on May 13 – the day where once again we’ll all be beset by Eurovision fever.
The rest of the participants? Lots of hugging and kissing, and brave faces sporting ‘Oh-I’m-so-happy’ fixed smiles.
But you know that deep down they are already planning next year’s entry.