Eurovision. Enough Said.

Yes, it's that time again, when every country in Europe works up a great big figurative belch and throws the musical equivalent of a torrent of fetid air wafting across our screens.
At first glance, I thought that Eurovision was still a good old-fashioned competition in which votes were awarded for garish homosexuality, completely tone deaf singing and horrendously vile colour clashing outfits. And that would've been fine. I could've switched it off half way through the first song and stumbled upon the result on the internet the next day, as usual.
The fact that the favourite was a Ukrainian transvestite coated in tin foil with an oversized Christmas star on it's head doesn't even make me blink. I say it, and not he or she, because to be perfectly honest I couldn't tell if it was male or female. Either way I wouldn't leave it in charge of my kids (if I had any). The only entry I saw that was non-homosexual to any extent was the Turkish entry, sung by a man radiating so much pent-up patriarcy that you wouldn't be surprised if his hobbies including slaughtering goats and slapping his wife.
But the irritating thing is that the whole thing is a pointless farce, because every country votes for the countries that border it, give or take a few exceptions. Wogan said before the voting began, Sweden, Norway and Finland would scratch each other's backs, and so would the ex-Soviet bloc. Even Ireland and the UK swap votes, in a vague silent gesture of Anglophone solidarity. Exceptions occur when on the rare occasion a country has a undeniably shite entry, or when a country in generally unpopular in a political sense.
Cue Britain's entry. The rest of Europe couldn't give a toss if we got up on stage and sung about flight attendants, football hooliganism, crack addiction or the ten commandments, the only thing they're interested in is the fact that we bombed the crap out of Iraq with that cretin Bush leading the way.
And thus the problem arises. I can switch off Eurovision, but when I go abroad I can't switch off the fact that everyone thinks I'm a staunch racist who eats oil for breakfast and shits greenhouse gases and toxic waste. Cheers for the national perception Tony.
In fact, without Wogan's perfect comedy timing as he antagonises every word of the unsurprisingly androgynous Finnish hosts, it might have been a total waste of the ten minutes I spent watching it.