So, Phil, as tradition dictates… what are you doing at Eurovision this year?

Glad you asked, reader of OnEurope, because for the 14th year in a row, OnEurope will have a team at the Eurovision giving you…well… the coverage we think you need

Rehearsals start bright and early on Monday April 28th (10am CET) and there will be the usual coverage from me of rehearsals. The usual warnings and caveats apply and, for all you first timers, I believe Roy D Hacksaw said it best back in 2006:

“Anyone been here before? Hands up at the back… Well you’ll know what to expect. But for you new coves there’s a few things you need to know about the OnEurope away team on-the-spot beat happenings.

If you’re looking for reasonable, balanced news reporting, including the minutiae of the Croatian backing singers’ sock choice, or transcriptions of the heads of delegation’s buffet choice meeting, well perhaps you might want to go somewhere else. A popular news site perhaps. If you want rabid, ill-informed blatherings, well there’s plenty of message boards that take the wonning.

However if you’re looking for lively, opinionated, frontline reports on the rehearsals, parties, poorly considered press stunts and all the other foolish tomfoolery that goes on in the week-and-a-bit trip to Eurovisionland, well you’ve come to the right place.

Along the way we’ll slag off your favourite song, praise your most hated tune to the hilt, call your father a ho and your mother a teacake, inadvertently pour some vile cultural slur on your country and upset the pop stars, TV executives and massed press corps of 37 European(ish) countries. But mainly we’ll be mocking each other and executing near impermeable in jokes, poorly spelt.

But hopefully along the way we’ll be able to tell you what’s going down, using the medium of words, pictures, sound and mime. Although hopefully without the mime. We’re just four overweight, unsurprisingly single social misfits approaching middle age and with nothing better to do with our lives.

Enjoy your meal.”

Still resonates to this day!! – That’s pretty much what we are gonna do. Talk a lot of Bollocks about your contest, upset as many people as we can but tell you what we see, not that everything is beautiful, and get you a glimpse outside the bubble of Eurovision and into the real world…. the bonkers, mad world that we inhabit.

There is not just me of course, Jody and Monty will be joining us at some point, get pissed, and write about it to all and Sundry. Nick, back home, will be reprising his Thunderbird 5 role and gelling all this madness together. Riigi should be dipping in and out, as he has been accredited too, giving some off the wall Estonian Musings, in his second language. There is also a rumour that I might be moonlighting over at Eurovision Ireland as well…. so feel free to drop by!

There you have it, the Smorgasbord of OnEurope cheesiness for 2014. Enjoy 😉