My mind feels like a foreign land

The Netherlands
Duncan Laurence
Arcade

On Line, on digital and on 88 to 91 FM, here we are then in permanently middle of the road Netherlands - a country so dull that the closest they've come to entertainment in the last ten years was when they entered Howard Stableford off of Tomorrow's World, former MP Bill Rammell and television's MacGyver in silver space suits, dancing like someone's embarrassing dad at a wedding to literally the worst piece of music ever entered into any song competition ever. Click here if you don't believe me.

Every year it's the same. Take 2017. Do you remember Wilson Phillips? You know, off of hen night karaoke classic Hold on? You do, you must do. Three sisters. Close harmonies. Rom coms. Imagine what their album sounded like. Probably like "Hold On" but without the singalong chorus and the hooks, right? It also probably sounds pretty dated now, right? Well 2017's Dutch entry was effectively track eleven from the 1990 debut album, "Wilson Phillips". And it was shit.

Or take 2018. Imagine. You’re at the bar, sipping on a cold one and that one girl walks in. You catch a glimpse, but someone (the big overly jealous boyfriend) has a problem with how you just gawked at their fine woman. Suddenly, there’s a thrown cue ball, he breaks a pool stick over his knee and before you know it, he has a half broken beer bottle in his hand. You’ve suddenly realised, “Oh S@!%, I’m screwed! I wish Johnny Cash was here! Or Garth Brooks! Or Willie Nelson! Or the Woolpackers!" Or, failing that, a man called William from a village just outside Amsterdam pretending to be American.

For reasons that I simply can't fathom, this year's effort has been the bookies' favourite for weeks. I can't fathom it because it's awful. It's a man called Duncan singing a bad Coldplay song about a friend of his that has died, sat at a piano. It takes ages to get going, he barely connects with the camera, when he does he looks like he hates you and there are literally thirty nine better songs in the contest, as well as Poland.

He's also got it in for Serhat. "I daydreamed about taking part in the Eurovision on behalf of the Netherlands. But I did not see it happen that I would just be asked: in recent years the Netherlands has focused on the big names in the music industry. So when I found out, thanks to a mention in the TV commentary, that the talent in the tiny San Marino with only 30,000 inhabitants, even less than in Hellevoetsluis where I grew up, had been and they had called on a foreign I have considered the artist to register with the San Marino selection committee. But no, I thought quickly - that would have felt a bit like treason".

Treason? I'll tell you what's treason, Dunc. An first verse that attempts to rhyme "left" with "cracks".