OK - so here I am, 4.30 in the Ring Club, Tallinn - pissed up - in the Eurovision mood - and looking forward to tomorrow's cavalcade. The field is wide open - it could be anybody - but I'm hopimg for 1) Sweden 2) Malta 3) Lithuania. I'm being interfered with as I type. What a life we have - what a life we live!

Right then - that's probably all from me, until I get back from Tallinn to Nottingham on Sunday night. In the meantime, keep it locked on World Of Chig for frequent updates.

Happy Eurovision, everybody!

The Troubled Diva EUROVISION Old Curiosity Box!

Selma - All Out Of Luck (Iceland, 1999)
Brainstorm - My Star (Latvia, 2000)
Nusa Derenda - Energy (Slovenia, 2001)

To mark this most special week of weeks, here are my favourite entries from the last three Eurovisions.

Come on......you know you want to.
Just point and click......and no-one need ever know.

Update: Sorry - you weren't quick enough. These MP3s are no longer on my server. I generally make them available for a week or so (sometimes less) before substituting them for new ones. Better luck next time!

Oh Christ. www.archive.org has caught up with my old home page from 1996. I had rather hoped this was dead and buried by now. The experience was rather like stumbling across one’s self-indulgent adolescent scribblings many years later. Except that these particular scribblings are available for all the world to see.

The ghastly chirpiness! (Coo, gosh, look everybody, I’m on the Internet – how fabulous!)
The grating self-promotion! The blatant self-adoration! (Hurrah for me and my fabulous life!)
The relentless triviality! (And you thought Troubled Diva was bad?)
Those bloody rainbows! (Yay! Gay Pride! Fabulous!)
"Useful Links" - to bloody search engines!

www.archive.org - a valuable repository of knowledge for future generations, or a humiliating exercise in public skeleton-rattling?

You have to understand.

This is Eurovision Week. Thus for me, right now, nothing else matters. Only Eurovision.

I have (albeit temporarily) reached that blissful, Zen-like state of grace where - freed from the cares of everyday life – mind, body and spirit are now set in perfect alignment, fixed on a single ideal of celestial perfection. The ideal of Eurovision.

Nirvana through shallowness, remember?

To this end, I will be loading up a special Eurovision Curiosity Box of choice MP3s before the day is through. Maybe they can help you attain that same higher plane of consciousness. I can only hope.

Ah. I think I might have just worked out the identity of my mysterious occasional commenter, “A Reader” . Ah!

Now that rehearsals and press conferences have started for this year’s Eurovision, there are a number of fan sites carrying up-to-the-minute details of how it’s all going so far, who’s wearing what, who’s looking good, who’s sounding crap, etc.

If, like me, you are quite giddy with anticipation and desperate to know this stuff, then here are some links.

Tallinn Calling – immensely detailed reportage from Luke.

On Europe’s ESC Week Coverage – frequently updated rehearsal reports from Phil Colclough. Almost soon as a country’s rehearsal ends, then up pops Phil’s instant report. If Geocities is too busy, then try the mirror site.

eurosong.org.uk – a useful digest of everyone else’s reviews, along with some pics.

A Broad In Tallinn – daily reports from Julie “Bossyboots” Wright in Estonia.

Euronet Message Board – the crack cocaine of Eurovision gossip. All the news, literally as it happens. Look for messages from Frank and Luke in particular.

In the Seventies, when I was still cheerfully prog-rocking in a pre-Punk state of Eden-like innocence, it was Tangerine Dream. On paper, they had all the right credentials. Long electronic instrumentals with orchestral overtones, which sought to expand the very boundaries of musical creativity. Cool album covers. Signed to Virgin Records, back when they were still a hip, cutting edge label (believe it or not). By rights, I should have loved them. As it was, I found their albums excruciatingly dull.

My top Tangerine Dream memory: being forced to listen to a whole side of their “Rubicon” album by two wildly evangelical classmates (“You have to listen to this! Now!”). At the end of the record, they sat there, slumped on the couch, in near post-coital raptures:

“Do you know – there were times during that when I actually felt physically scared?”

“Yes, me too. It felt like I was drowning, or as if a huge weight was pressing down on top of me.”

“Yes, me too. Amazing.”

“Yes, amazing.”

In a state of bored annoyance, I went over to the record deck (a Garrard SP25 Mark IV, inevitably in those days). I looked down at the turntable. The album had played all the way through at 45rpm. Nevertheless, it had still felt like an eternity to me…

---

In the Eighties, it was The Blue Nile. I lost count of the number of times this band was earnestly recommended to me, in reverential tones.

“Hey, you’re into music, right? Well, there’s this amazing band which I just know you’re going to love. You probably haven’t heard of them, though. They’re called…The Blue Nile. Shall I do you a tape?”

On paper, they had all the right credentials. Intelligently crafted, subtle, intricate pieces which evoked a mood of gentle yearning.

In practice, they bored me rigid. Soulless, bloodless, clever-clever. Tediously “tasteful”. Like Enya with testicles.

---

In the Nineties, it was DJ Shadow. The critics’ choice. A sure sign that you had impeccable taste. Breathtaking, groundbreaking originality, they said. Nope, sorry. Directionless abstract noodling which induced nothing in me but boredom, and a vague sense of uneasy low-level misery.

Which makes it all the more surprising that I find myself loving the new DJ Shadow single, You Can’t Go Home Again. It’s frisky, it’s fresh, it’s fun. How did that happen?

A sartorial note to geezers of my age and over:

It’s no good digging out your horrible old “David Steel” shirts from the 1980s (you know, the striped ones with the contrasting white collars), in the hope that wearing them again will make you look trendy. Because you won’t look trendy at all. You'll just look like a middle aged man in a horrible old shirt.

This is because you have broken one of the cardinal rules of fashion: namely, that it is never permissible to wear authentic retro clothing, if you were actually wearing the same clothing the first time round. The only people who can carry off a “retro” look are those who were too young to wear the clothes when they were new. For the older gentleman, the only possible alternative is to buy a reworked contemporary update of the same look – but even then, you are skating on thin ice.

I have spoken. Let there be no more of this folly.

Bloggers on Telly.

Monday night's blogger spots:

20:00 - Liquid News (BBC Choice)
A feature on the build up to this year's Eurovision, including footage from Jessica Garlick's press conference earlier today. Jessica gives the room a quick accapella burst of Come Back (this year's UK entry). The camera swings round to capture the applause from the assembled journos. Ooh, look! Who's that in the front row, in the dark blue shirt, applauding so warmly? Why, it's Chig, our man on the spot in Tallinn!



23:00 - V.Graham Norton (Channel 4)
At the start of Part Two, our Graham goes through some of his recent postbag. Hang on? Didn't he just mention Jonathan? Jonathan Green? Jonathan "Over Your Head" Green? And haven't we seen those amusing Dutch cheeses somewhere before?

Finally, the powers that be are seeing sense. Heroin is a thoroughly nasty drug, and heroin addiction is a highly undesirable state of mind of body to be in. However, heroin does not have to be a killer drug. Heroin primarily kills in one of two ways: either through diseases caused by impure supplies, which have been cut with other toxic substances, or through supplies which are unexpectedly too pure, leading the user to overdose by accident. A properly administered dosage of clean, consistent amounts of the drug addresses both of these problems - and saves lives. Bottom line.

Legally prescribed heroin also stops addicts from committing crimes to fund their supply, and undercuts the profits of the big dealers (with their, um, somewhat robust approach towards protecting their businesses). It's the only way forward.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to someone about this site. I have only known her for a comparatively short period, and she had only recently visited this site for the first time. I think that she had made straight for the autobiographical “40 Days” pages, as many do. Anyhow, her reaction was interesting, and unexpected. She told me that after a while, she simply had to stop reading me – because she found that her primary reaction to the site was one of disappointment.

At this point – naturally! – my paranoia kicked straight in. Was she disappointed in the content of the site? Was she disappointed by what she had discovered about me? No – it was neither of those things. She was disappointed to be learning about me merely by reading about me on a website. She would rather have heard me telling her the same stories in person, over time. For her, it was too much, too soon, and in the wrong way.

Last weekend, over dinner, I met a couple of other people properly for the first time. As the subject of my weblog was brought up in conversation, I found myself inwardly groaning. Naturally, they were most curious. One of them eagerly asked me for the URL.

I took a deep breath, and issued a caveat. What she would find here is a fairly unvarnished representation of most aspects of my character, and she should maybe be prepared for that. Furthermore, I explained, this site works best of all for two groups of people: those who start off by already knowing me well, and those who start off by not knowing me at all. For those who only know me slightly, and who would like to know me better, I would suggest that maybe this isn’t necessarily the best medium to do so.

WARNING: Some of you may consider the following to be in dubious taste. Proceed at your own risk!

On the phone to someone who has spent several extended periods working in Sierra Leone – I mentioned that website of Krio proverbs which I linked to a couple of weeks ago, and quoted her an example.

She: That’s very interesting. By the way, do you know what they call the clitoris in Krio? They call it the “pearl”. Which I think is very descriptive. Don’t you?

Me: I really wouldn’t know. It’s not exactly my territory.

She: Oh yes, trust me – it’s very descriptive. Although it’s a strange word to use, as a lot of them still get chopped off over there.

Me: In that case, I just hope that nobody is making them into pearl necklaces…

All right, all right, I give up.

Since half the visitors to this site have come looking for Travis Fimmel (this year's hot new Calvin Klein underwear model, in case you didn't know), maybe it's time to give them what they want.

Listen up. In the current (May) edition of The Face, there is a photospread of Mr. Fimmel, accompanied by an article and an interview. Here are a couple of excerpts from that interview. To some of you, they might come as something of a disappointment. Now read on...