Vladimir Putin’s nul points for UK
Russia’s hardman has rejected Britain’s overture to end Eurovision
block voting

The Sunday Times
January 4, 2009

Stuart Wavell
IT’S almost enough to put the boom bang-a-bang into a new cold war.

Before turning off the gas supplies to Ukraine, his neighbour, Vladimir
Putin, Russia’s hardman leader, rejected a plea from Andrew Lloyd
Webber for Moscow to vote for the UK in the Eurovision song contest.

`Can I ask you please . . . Can Russia vote for Britain?’ the composer
asked.

Putin replied: `Well, speaking for myself I am prepared to do so, but I
believe you should better address this question to the Russian
audience.’

The Russian prime minister even told the musical peer, who is on a
personal mission to save the contest, that he expects Ukraine to vote
for the Russian entry.

In an interview with Lloyd Webber, Putin made a spirited defence of the
block voting system. It helped Russia to win last year and prompted Sir
Terry Wogan to throw in the towel as the BBC presenter of the contest.

Putin singled out Ukraine and Russia as shining examples of how
neighbouring countries `understand each other’ and offer mutual support
during the annual song-fest. Last week Russia switched off energy
supplies to its former Soviet satellite republic, a conduit for gas to
western Europe, citing unpaid bills.

`For instance,’ said Putin, `if you take the trans-border countries of
Russia and Ukraine, sometimes you cannot tell where there are more
Russians or where there are more Ukrainians. The ethnicities, they are
so mixed they create a combination, a symbiosis of cultures.’

The prime minister’s remarks, sometimes bordering on the surreal
quality of the song contest, were made at his dacha outside Moscow,
where as host of the 2009 competition he received Lloyd Webber.

The Oscar-winning composer will write the British entry but has made it
clear that he will not pen `nonsense’ similar to the song Boom
Bang-a-Bang that took Lulu to joint victory 40 years ago.

Putin, a judo aficionado, threw Lloyd Webber by at first fawning in his
presence before suggesting that he had borrowed some of his melodies
from Russian classical music.

`In the early 1990s I was on a business trip to Hamburg and had an
opportunity to enjoy your musical, The Cats, which was running for 10
years there,’ he said via an interpreter. `I could not imagine that I
would ever have an opportunity to meet you and talk to you.’

The nature of Putin’s `business trip’ remained unspecified. Putin
resigned from the KGB in 1991 during the abortive coup against
President Mikhail Gorbachev, which the state security service
supported.

Putin added: `I myself believe20that in your great musical, Jesus Christ
Superstar, one can easily trace some melodies which resemble Prokofiev
and this can he heard.’

Lloyd Webber admitted: `Yes, it’s true. Very true.’ Although coy on his
own choice of popular music ` `I cannot boast of being an expert in
this area’ ` Putin picked out the British band that had kindled
Russians’ aspirations of freedom during the cold war (when Putin was
tasked with suppressing political dissent).

He said: `Of course many generations in Russia have been raised by and
still have a strong love of the creative works of the Beatles. I had
the pleasure to meet, several years ago, Mr McCartney and of course
their songs and the pieces that they have granted to this world are
still on top.’

Extracts from the discussion were televised last night on BBC1’s Your
Country Needs You, in which Lloyd Webber will help to select the singer
who will perform Britain’s entry and compose a `tailor-made’ song. The
series is introduced by Graham Norton, who will succeed Wogan as BBC
presenter of the Eurovision finale in Moscow in May.

Lloyd Webber’s record in this area is not good: in 1967 he wrote a
Eurovision song with Tim Rice called Try It and See, which was
rejected. Perhaps this explained his need for Russia’s support this
year, exploiting the fact that no co
untry can vote for itself.

The exchange illustrated the gulf of perception between the British and
the Russians about the gravity of the song contest. Lloyd Webber
established on his fact-finding mission that east European countries
were avid followers who felt the UK was no longer taking the
competition seriously.

`The message that came back loud and clear,’ Lloyd Webber said, `was
that the country that had brought them the Beatles not only wasn’t even
bothering to make an effort any more, but was in fact laughing at the
countries who were ` and since then they’ve harboured quite a lot of
resentment towards us.’

This earnest approach was echoed by Putin, whose image of the contest
would be unrecognisable to most Britons: `First of all it’s about the
young people . . . I hope that millions of young people in Europe and
in Russia will be listening and watching good music and will be raised
and educated by this good music.’

How the blocks shape up

Block voting at the Eurovision song contest has become so widespread
that Sir Terry Wogan cited it as a reason for quitting the show after
37 years.

Following Russia’s victory last year, Wogan said: `Those who care will
have had it up to here with the blatant political voting.’

Russia’s entry, Believe by Dima Bilan, received a maximum 12 points
from six
neighbouring countries: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine,
Belarus and Armenia. Israel was the only other country to award Russia
top marks.

The success of Serbia in 2007 could similarly be attributed to generous
scoring from its neighbours: Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,
Macedonia, Hungary and Montenegro.

Meanwhile, Lordi, a heavy metal band from Finland, won in 2006, after
receiving `douze points’ from Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and
Estonia.