The world (and word) of jaymz

It’s widely known amongst my friends that I absolutely love the Eurovision song contest. Growing up with a father that was obsessed with war movies my early formative years tended to view europe like this:

Europe for me as a young child was world war Europe. I’d always thought of the many different countries as totally separate and thought the huge amount of cultural difference a difficult thing to placate, especially growing up in Northern Ireland where even people in the same country hated each other.

Then one evening my parents put on BBC1 and bemoaned that “Eurovision” was coming on. I’d no idea what it was and after being told “it’s a singing competition for countries in Europe” I was significantly intrigued enough to demand to watch it. After a few hours I’d decided that this programme alone was responsible for the prevention of world war 3 and began to see Europe more like this:

The reason I believe what many consider a giant waste of time to be the reason we’re not all living under the fourth Reich is simple. If you actually watch the show it’s hard to not get a sense of communal euro-love throughout. Read the rest of this article »