Come Writers And Critics...

Most local TV critics are awful. They either rewrite the press release or they oafishly try to say contentious stuff with neither wit or illumination. But in 1978, I was a fan of the Belfast Telegraph's columnist, Keith Baker. He wrote funny reviews and when he did get snippy with his comments, there was a point to it all. I guess he was the first journalist that I read with intent. My dad wasn't impressed. He didn't dig the sardonic stuff or the irony. Which made me enjoy the Baker dispatches all the more.

I was reminded of this when I watched Eurovision on Saturday night. Like many parents, I amused myself by sneering at the haircuts, the lumpen melodies and the tiresome hackery of the work. The children ignored all this, as is their prerogative. They were gunning for Jedward and loving the Moldavian hats.

But I remembered a Keith Baker column from Eurovision in Paris, 1978. There had been controversy that year when Israel pulled ahead with the infantile 'A-Ba-Ni-Bi'. Yet the copy that Baker filed from April 22 was mostly concerned with a Norwegian singer called Jahn Tiegen. He was a trooper in his own land, and his Eurovision entry 'Mil Etter Mil' would spend four months in the national chart. However, the Eurovision judges declared it was a stinker and didn't give Jahn a single vote.

So that was Keith Baker's riff. He described the bearing of a man who had just been grossly humiliated in front of his peers and a massive television audience. The column also revealed how the aftershow party people had put a contagion zone around the nul points Norwegian.

In the quality press, writers such as Clive James may also have been mining the tragic potential of this event. But we only got the Belfast Telegraph in our house and so this is where I got my cultural insights. And thus I owe a debt to Baker and his words.