AS I’M old enough to remember Michael Jackson when he was black and sang that song about the rat, so I’m old enough to remember the Eurovision when it was a national incident.
Those were the days when the swings in our local park were chained up on Sundays, when the swimming pool only opened on the Sabbath for the purposes of Christian immersive baptisms and where my mother would not let us kick ball in the front garden on the Lord’s Day for fear of giving the neighbours heart attacks.
We grabbed our pleasures where we could.
Smoking was a step too far – but I confess to breaking my confirmation pledge by emptying the dregs of my aunty’s wine glass when she wasn’t looking.
Sundays were extra long and dreary in the days of the swings ban... you needed the drip from a wine glass.
Music changed all that. You had your mother’s roast dinner and the new Top 40 countdown to look forward to. Would Peterson Lee storm to the top of the charts with Welcome Home and would Rene and Renata be back on that gondola in Venice?
There’s me on my knees in front of the big old cassette player of a Sunday, pushing the buttons madly to tape the songs, but miss out on the DJ talking over them. There’s me, sneaking my big brother’s Beatles albums into school because it was cool.
Do you prefer the blue album or the white?
Remember, we only had three television channels that blared out God Save the Queen of an evening before the screen faded to a black dot. We lived in a bleak set straight out of a Nordic crime drama.
All we had to look forward to was chips in the school canteen of a Thursday and the prospect of a school social where they piled balloons into nets to make it look fancy and you might get a mineral.
All this means that the Eurovision Song contest was a time of huge excitement.
It was that and the Sweeney and Anthony Valentine in Colditz on the television.
Now, the Eurovision seems so ridiculous, so glitter-ball crazy, so over the top. Honestly, it feels like the one good reason to back Brexit.
All those mountains of sparkle, all those flashing disco lights, all those beautiful people with teeth so bright you could pick them up from the international space station.
And black leather – lashings of it – and tattoos, whole Sistine chapel-loads of body art drilled on to honed muscles.
Smear the Vaseline on the lens and wherever else you like, the Eurovision’s come a long long way, baby.
Who cares if that bare-chested man banging the enormous gong is a throwback to Frankie Goes to Hollywood?
I liked it better when the singers were young and sweet and the stage show was muted. Then it was dead serious.
Maybe I liked it better because it was a world stage where Ireland shone. I liked it the year that Dana won because my mother is from Derry and everyone knew somebody who knew Dana. My cousin was in the same class as Dana in Thornhill and this was a very big deal.
When Johnny Logan crooned What’s Another Year, our hearts stopped. We were just unbeatable.
Eurovision gifted me a love of languages and a passion to learn them. Now a lot of those singers are out there butchering English. I want to hear sexy French and Italian or a bit of throaty Croat, if you like.
Remember Un Banc, Une Arbre, Une Rue? It was the 1971 winner for Monaco and it sparked my lifelong love of French.
Remember Éistigí, éistigí, cloisim arís é, Ceol An Ghra? That was the Irish entry for the following year.
But the pinnacle of it all was Abba – one of the best pop groups ever. I had a white sparkly beany hat just like Agnetha – sadly minus the straight blonde hair to go underneath – and her tight blue satin trousers just didn’t look the same around my derriere.
But their music touched our dreams and gave us dreams of our own.
Picture a group of 16-year-old girls in the Deerpark Hotel dancing in a circle round a neat pile of handbags... those were innocent times.
Abba sang “I have a dream” and we had our dreams too.
Shall I watch Eurovision? Maybe. But ah, it’s never the same.
