Jacob Rees-Mogg's guide to watching the cavorting sodomites of Eurovision

13th May 2023

AS the Eurovision Song Contest takes place in England’s far North, it falls to a sober, unbiased mentor to guide the nation through it. I am that gentleman.

England

Officially the entry is for the UK, but there is no such nation. Just England ruling a collection of mongrel fiefdoms. Mae Muller spells her name correctly, which is to say medievally, but the entry is ‘I Wrote A Song’ which smacks of the proud three-year-old on her chamber pot. Which largely sums up all music of the last 150 years, bar Britten.

Commentary

Provided by an Irishman succeeding an Irishman, showing the regard we rightly hold this competition in: no more than dirty tavern talk to entertain itinerant farm workers with hoofmarked foreheads. The only commentary necessary is not provided by the Leninist BBC but accessed via the mute button.

Sexual inversion

At Eurovision, as in the brothels and theatres of Queen Bess’s golden age, sexual inverts abound. It seems every utopia, like free-market Britain today, must pay this price. You will be able to tell them simply by looking at them. Leaf through a Bible at these moments. They cannot touch you. They are merely malevolent spirits.

Europe

A heathen continent forever bereft of the virtues bestowed on our island nation. As shameful as pop music is, theirs is yet worse. Their aping of it is painful even to those who profess to enjoy popular modern artists such as the boy Presley. At least this continental chimps’ scat-flinging contest leaves one in no doubt of their subhumanity.

Ukraine

At a cost of £24 million, another generous British contribution to the war against the Slavs. But would we not have better spent the wealth in buying them 15 Storm Shadow missiles, and leaving the arena in Liverpool to stage its usual dogfights and bare-knuckle brawls?

Remain at your television throughout

Eurovision is hosted by us so it would be rude to leave. Watch a collection of halfwits, sodomites, yelping minstrels and misguided benighted wastrels making the case for a fresh inquisition. It will be as morally instructive as my son Anselm’s birthday trip to Bedlam to see the lunatics gibber.

Sandwiches in a lay-by, and 15 other 80s holiday activities

13th May 2023

BEFORE cheap airline travel, holidays used to be profoundly disappointing. Here are some of the classic lowlights from 80s family trips.

Waiting for the AA on the hard shoulder

An 80s holiday wasn’t complete without your parents’ Ford Granada breaking down. No mobiles either, so your dad had to traipse a mile up the motorway to the emergency phone.

Visiting a windswept beach

Not a sheltered cove with powdery sand and crystal water, but a huge, bleak vista where the sea was half a mile away and you had a wind tan within five minutes.

Donkey rides

Who was sadder, the donkeys trudging miserably up and down the beach or the kids riding them who’d rather be in the arcade? Hard to say.

Staying at your nan’s

A week at Nan’s house and being forced to eat faggots and watch Take The High Road wasn’t a holiday, it was torture.

Local natural history museum

Full of creepy things like jars of pickled animals and drawers of butterflies pinned to cardboard.

Local agricultural museum

Less creepy but way more boring. How could there be an entire museum dedicated to 18th century seed drills? And why did your dad make you visit it?

Sitting in a car park

Of course it was absolutely pissing it down every day you went to the beach. You were in Morecambe, not the Costa del Sol.

Wasting your money in the amusement arcades

You dreamed of the amusements all year round, but within 12 minutes you’d spent all your holiday money losing at OutRun.

Tent in a field

You went to sleep freezing and woke up as soon as the sun rose at 5am, then spent the next few hours lying in what was basically a hotbox of your dad’s farts.

Sandwiches in a lay-by

There was no Bill’s or Zizzi in the 80s. Instead, you ate sweaty cheese and Marmite sandwiches in a dual carriageway lay-by while lorries whizzed past.

Board games in a caravan

North Wales has some of Europe’s finest medieval castles. And you never saw any of them because it was lashing with rain and you were trapped in a caravan playing Boggle for six days.

Peeling off your sunburnt skin

No one thought about skin cancer in the 80s, so you’d get sunburnt on day one and spend the rest of the holiday having a competition with your siblings to see who could peel off the largest intact bit of skin.

Renting a deckchair

Your dad rented a chair for him and your mother, while you were relegated to a damp, sand-covered blanket.

Chips stolen by seagulls

Good chips were the one upside of an 80s seaside holiday and a prick of a seagull always ruined it by attacking you. You don’t get that on Crete.

Disappointing petting zoo

A sheep and two guinea pigs do not count as a ‘zoo’. But your mum wanted you to get your money’s worth as she’d shelled out two quid each for the pleasure.

Tedious history tour

Your parents were obsessed with a Roman road and your holiday consisted of a week in the car driving it. You wondered what it would feel like to literally die of boredom.