Worst. Eurovision. Ever.
If you want a look into the kind of nonsense that goes on behind the scenes at the contest, Worst. Eurovision. Ever. will take you on a wild ride around the rehearsals, dressing rooms and showbiz parties with such an informed eye that you'll never look at the dear old contest the same way again.
As a journalist, Roy has been covering the contest in person since the nineties, and over those years he's seen all sorts of unexpected misbehaviour and excess.
When some plucky underdogs from Moldova unexpectedly won the Eurovision Song Contest, the show's organisers were instantly worried about how they were going to hold the following year's competition in such a small and little-visited country. But the location was the least of their worries as a procession of unlikely artists began to be chosen for the show, and everything from Norwegian black metallers, a Saudi Arabian prince performing for San Marino, and an Icelandic bloke dressed as a dog caused a cascade of complications before a single note had even been sung. Can they keep all the egos in check, or is the whole thing going to come tumbling down around them?
For a council house kid from the middle of nowhere in the early eighties, the only real method of expressing yourself after leaving school was to shout very loud and bash things in a punk rock band. After a few musical stints he started up the fanzine Xerox Heaven, and from there he found himself in London editing an early student lifestyle website for Jim Kerr of Simple Minds. Since then his journalistic highlights have included reviewing a noise festival in Shanghai for Metal Hammer, reporting from every Eurovision Song Contest since 1998, and answering the readers' letters in Disney Princess magazine in the voice of Jessie The Cowgirl from Toy Story.Roy was inspired to write Bugger Banksy after the illusive artist chucked up an artwork opposite his local chippy for Valentine's Day, and he watched the unwelcome chaos that ensued for the unfortunate souls that lived on the other side of the wall.He has now finished his new book, Worst. Eurovision. Ever. and whilst the Eurovision Song Contest might seem like an unlikely subject for a gnarly punk rocker to write about, but Roy has surprising form in this field.
