Tuesday 17 May 2022 08:49 AM DAN WOOTTON: For 10 years BBC bosses tried to kill off our Eurovision hopes trends now

For 10 years BBC bosses tried to kill off our Eurovision hopes and blame it all on Brexit and Boris. But our glorious Spaceman Sam Ryder proved, as usual, the Britain-hating Beeb got it all wrong

The insufferable snobs at the BBC spent the best part of the last ten years trying to permanently kill off Britain’s chances of winning the Eurovision Song Contest.

The argument I would always hear around Beeb headquarters in London’s W1A was that the UK could enter a duet by Ed Sheeran and Adele but we would still languish on nul points.

So, instead, they gave up on us altogether, buying into the London metropolitan group think that Eurovision is something to be embarrassed about and looked down upon, despite it being one of the corporation’s highest rated shows every damn year.

First, they wheeled out old legends like Bonnie Tyler and Engelbert Humperdinck with zero social media following to sing depressing duds.

Then they spent eight years sacrificing on the Eurovision altar a host of well-meaning no marks with limited talent who you’ll never hear of again.

Surie, Joe and Jake, Electro Velvet, Mollie? Anyone? Nope, didn’t think so.

There was no longer any sort of competition or public vote to choose our entry – it felt like the Britain-hating BBC picked at random a charisma-less singer with the least chance of winning.

The last two competitions proved the nadir, with Michael Rice finishing dead last with the forgettable Bigger Than Us in 2019 and, following a Covid enforced year off, James Newman’s tuneless Embers – our worst ever entry – also ending up bottom with the dreaded nul points humiliation in 2021.

Hapless BBC executives continued to argue there’s simply nothing we can do; Europe hates us because of Brexit and Boris, there’s no point wasting our time and money even pretending to try.

On Saturday in Turin, those clueless Beeb boneheads were finally proven wrong.

The corporation’s defeatism was a total fallacy.

The instant Eurovision classic Spaceman by Sam Ryder – an Essex rising star, signed to record label Parlophone, with a massive social media following, especially on the influential platform TikTok – won the jury vote and came second overall.

The cruel reality for Brits like me who have been waiting quarter of a century since our last win by Katrina and the Waves in 1997 is that, if it weren’t for an unprecedented European war seeing the public sympathy vote throughout the continent rightly generating huge points for the Ukrainian entry, the UK would have been in with a decent shot.