People and Countries for 2003

In order for the drinking game to work, and to maximise the fun that you're likely to get out of the night, everyone coming along must choose a country. This choice can be based upon any criteria, possible suggestions include: ethnic extraction, sport allegiance, language familiarity and high opinion of performer/song (for this last: research will be involved. Check out the links section for resources).

In addition to the current list of people and their allocated countries, this page also has some Tips For Choosing Wisely and a discussion of the Potential Highlights for ESC 2003.

Current Allocation

Each song has been rated according to merit (this year it's according to Kelly), with ABBA being the best and A the worst.

Order	Country	Language	Rating	Allocated To
1	Iceland	English	ABBA	Judi
2	Austria	German	A	Simon
3	Ireland	English	AB	Anais
4	Turkey	English	ABBA	Mel C
5	Malta	English	AB
6	Bosnia	Bosnian/English	ABB
7	Portugal	Portuguese	AB
8	Croatia	Croatian	ABBA	Kelly
9	Cyprus	English	AB
10	Germany	English	A	Mick & Davina
11	Russia	Russian	ABBA	Andy A
12	Spain	Spanish	ABB	Eddddieeee
Order	Country	Language	Rating	Allocated To
13	Israel	Hebrew/English	A
14	Netherlands	English	ABBA	Shaun
15	United Kingdom	English	ABBA	Dave & Jill
16	Ukraine	English	A
17	Greece	English	AB	Zoe
18	Norway	English	A
19	France	French	AB	Claire
20	Poland	German/Polish/Russian	A	Steve
21	Latvia	English	ABB
22	Belgium	Imaginary	AB
23	Estonia	English	ABB	Christian
24	Romania	English	ABBA
25	Sweden	English	AB
26	Slovenia	English	A

Apologies: Dave L, Kirsty, Ed E, Adam and Ania.

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Choosing Wisely

Probably the most helpful starting document is the ESC Singers and Songs PDF file produced by the EBU. There's a lot of interesting reading, including the names of the artists and the songs that they will be performing.

Next stop should probably be some thinking about the geography and language of the song. When it comes to picking a winner, things are much more complicated than they seem. My best guess is a formula that looks something like this:

Probability of winning = (A x Performance) + (B x Song Quality) + (C x Political Factors)

Where:

• Performance is influenced by crowd reaction, attractiveness and attire of performers, and energy of performance;
• Song Quality is influenced by language, mass-appeal and catchiness; and
• Political Factors is influenced by historical friendships and emnities, presence of geographical neighbours in the contest, and language and cultural similarities.

My best guess is something like A = 0.5, B = 0.2 and C = 0.3 (but feel free to disagree).

All this having been said: the best thing to do is find a song or performer that (for whatever reason) you like. Or just take pot luck. There is definitely something to be said for finding out on the night that your country is the one with the transvestite wearing yellow leather.

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Potential 2003 Highlights

As always there is definitely things that promise to delight and disgust. Off the top of my head:

Russia	Russia's entrant for 2003 is Tatu, the (if you believe their press) lesbian couple who have had a hit with their song "All The Things She Said". Rumour has it that the EBU have promised disqualification if they start snogging on stage, so don't get your hopes up. They have, however, promised to take Eurovision to strange new places, whatever that means.
Host	Tiny Latvia has a point to prove, although all the gear (and quite a few of the people running the show) have been shipped in from Scandinavian neighbours. What I want to know, though, is who's going to perform during the midway break, since of the top of my head I can name precisely zero famous Latvians.
Spain	The Spanish entrant is from their equivalent of Popstars (which isn't unusual this year). The Spanish were devastated last year when their melodically-challenged "Europe in Celebration" went down like a one-legged matador. Pride is on the line because the winning song (Latvia) actually had a whole lot of flamenco influences, in effect in out-Spanished Spain.
Politics	Operation: Iraqi Freedom didn't go down particularly well on the Continent, so there's every chance that the Coalition of the Willing (the UK and Poland) might experience some kind of backlash. On the other hand, France's "European Super-State" ambitions aren't exactly popular with the smaller European countries, and Israel isn't making a lot of friends on the West Bank. Combine this with the admission of a whole bunch of new EU members, and you have a much-changed political climate. And, in case you're thinking "surely this stuff doesn't matter", think about the mob psychology of millions of telephone voters looking for a reason not to vote for a country. I present, as support for my argument, the fact that Germany has never won Eurovision.
Language	Each year French dies a little more as the language of Europe. This year only France is game to sing in French, and German has leap-frogged into second place behind English (although, interestingly, the Germans are singing in English).
Belgium	If you look closely at the above table, the language of the Belgian entrant is "Imaginary". Now you know why a love Eurovision!

If, in the course of your research, you find out anything interesting about this year's Eurovision, let me know and I will add it to my list. And I take as given things like poor fashion, ethnic mismatches between peformers and countries, blatant musical rip-offs and strangely somber Eastern Europeans.

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