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  • Vladimir Putin's nul points for UK

    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.
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