Category: Poetry on the hoof

Controversy about Englebert Humperdinck representing the U’nul-point’K and a gang of Russian grandmothers representing Roman Abramovich at the 2012 Eurovision summit in Baku has led to the resurrection of a song which narrowly failed to qualify for selection as the EU official’s entry to the competition back in 1995 when the Euro was unleashed on the world of Irish farmers, British shop-keepers and Bulgarian flea market owners.

Instead of asking nation states to generate nation-state-of-the-art-pop songs, the EU has decided its about time it waved its own flag and get some one in who can do some aural flag waving on their behalves.

The song – Ich bin ein Berliner and du bist ein dummkopf – was written by Brussels burocrats on a night out in Sunderland, picked by Georgio Morodor, given an electronic make over and played to the turbo-folk hoardes across the Balkans through the late ’90s and early ’00s.

The concept that the EU itself should be represented at Eurovision is being hotly contested by the UK government and UKIP as it’s being seen as a surreptitious attempt to ingratiate the British public into the benefits of the Euro: and their resistence ensured that the song was never released on the Great European Public.

But nevertheless, you can’t keep a good man down (as Hotlegs once mumbled on the B side of Neanderthal Man) and the song is attracting a lot of interest on social media.

Well, the lyric maybe: the Brussels burocrats have been politely snubbed by Morodor and they are now looking for a suitable composer and musical arranger to bring their collective efforts to an eager, new young Eurovision audience.

For those aspiring composers and arrangers amongst you, keen to gather fame, fortune and eventual ignominy through the joy that is Eurovision, here are the lyrics in all their unedited glory:

In a restaurant, the elderly memories
one German, one Brit, one Rumanian, 
two Turks, two Hungarians and a Dutchman, 
swapped over cheese, wurst and red wine.
Our gestures give us away; 
the sweep of the hand from the plate to the waitress, 
the cough, the handshake, the awkwardness.
Signifying troubling difference.

but the younger ones laugh
as if nothing were amiss.
This is about them, here and now, 
putting our history behind them.
They ignore the coughs and embarrassments of their elders
adopting the easy going nature of a young Hungarian lad
laughing with a Romanian girl 
with no more to it than that.

And what binds us? The young to the old?
A spirit of peace, democracy and don’t forget the economy.
Its all about the economy, stupide.
You are the next generation of refuge workers
who will do shite jobs for the lousiest of pay
and then not unreasonably
apply for a national, legal identity.
Wir Sind  Berliner aber Sie Sind dummkoepfe.

Nudeln, rosti, pommels frites, pasta,
The European carbohydrates
Differ only in their shape and texture.
Deep down, the Bucharest lady
Secretly harbours the Irish waffle;
The ancient Bulgarian
Longs for tender mung beans,
Yet the Brits all gather around chicken tandoori.

Come in, Graham Norton: your time is up!