The selection process for Malta’s
entry for the Eurovision Song Contest was a Big Deal. So much so that a semi-final featuring 24
acts was shown live on Friday night primetime TV. And this resulted in an elimination of 8 performers,
leaving a rather lengthy final to be held on Saturday – on primetime TV again,
naturally. I watched this final. Yes, there are better ways to spend a
Saturday night, but sometimes you just end up watching whatever’s on TV, don’t
you. Don’t you? We were doing other things, okay? It was just on in the background. But anyway, this was a strangely fascinating
affair, and this despite the fact that everything but the songs was in Maltese
and so more-or-less incomprehensible to me.
Of course this does not preclude me from giving a judgemental and
critical account of what went on.
