On Wednesday there was a mix of business and pleasure for me. In the morning I attend a conference at the University of Malmo entitled A Transnational Vision for Europe? Performances, Politics and Places of the Eurovision Song Contest. It has brought together a range of academic and interested parties from around the world, reflecting the expanding nature and diversity of research being undertaken in this area. If you’d like to get a flavour of what’s on the programme, click here.
Lucky for me, I was first to deliver my paper – and I was pleased with how it went and how it was received. A range of good questions followed, and it was good to get positive feedback from friends and delegates at the conference. I was on the same panel as my good friend Dr Paul Jordan. We first met at a conference in Volos, Greece back in 2007 – the first dedicated conference on the ESC. He is building a great profile for researching the Eurovision Song Contest. Indeed, I know that some of you will be familiar with his work as “Dr Eurovision”. He will been contributing to both semi-final broadcasts for BBC this week. If you would like to know more about Paul’s work, click here. Some of you might even has seen him on the BBC3 programme How To Win Eurovision last weekend. Paul contributed very well, but the programme was terrible! It was a pity that BBC3 could’t have commissioned a programme which didn’t have to take the ‘proverbial’ out of the Contest. Then again, it was broadcast on Saturday night *and* on BBC3, so their target audience probably wasn’t looking for anything analytical!
I missed the afternoon panels of the conference as I wanted to see the rehearsals of the host Country, Sweden, and our very own Bonnie Tyler. More of that later today…
One reply on “Practice makes perfect…”
Paul was speaking very fast on the BBC on Tuesday, but what he said made sense. Say hi to the golden boy!