8 June – I will sing, I will sing to you

The free language rule is a funny old thing. Obviously, most countries have picked a world-wide language to do their stuff. English usually, but French is often a good bet too.

So imagine our surprise when one of the Big Five chose to ignore their national language, but also one of these worldwide ones. In 2011, our friends in France picked today’s birthday boy Amaury Vassili Chotard, a native of northern France, to sing a song in Corsican. Now if you’ve heard Corsican, you’ll know it’s closer to Italian than French. Italian has worked well for the Italians, so the thought was there. We had high hopes that Mr Vassili and he might give us that elusive French win. Then he opened his mouth. We all felt sorry for him. Still, he beat Spain.

Amaury is 34 today.

Bonne anniversaire/Feliu compleanno, Amaury!