Eurovision Drinking Game

The Eurovision Song Contest is soon to be here again! I bet you’re excited? No? Ah well, just pretend to be, that’s the best you can really be expect. Year on year you sit through Eurovision while attention seeking fake-tanned nobodies bob around on stage, ostensibly under the guise of inter-European harmony. So what can make this Euro love-in tolerable this year? Surely you can’t suffer another year of incomprehensible screeching; wondering why nobody on the screen seems to have any reservations that what we all watching is brilliant and not even prepared to consider that Georgia and Azerbaijan might not even be in Europe at all.  The Eurovision drinking game is here to help!

There are a few things to get sorted first if a good drink is to be had by all. And by a good drink we mean a potential hospital trip; you don’t want to run dry mid way through the contest and sit wondering why no-one’s invaded Poland for seventy years or why the fall of the Iron Curtain was considered a good thing when it’s freed up so many countries to compete in this dross-fest. Get to the shops and fill your car until the tyres are bursting with booze and snacks; you’ll need beer, wine (white; you want to be able to remove inevitable stains from carpet/ furniture/ curtains etc.), spirits (why not get a few!) and at least one multipack of crisps (to be used as stomach lining).  Make this enough drink that you at no point become despondent and announce to the room that you consider the historic fire-bombing of Dresden “warranted”.

Firstly a few house rules. There should be no pleasure displayed at any point by any member of the group; any humming, foot-tapping should be severely punished – if anybody tries to seriously sing along to the chorus of a song then they should be prepared to sit out the remainder of the evening in the garden.

Racial/ xenophobic slurs should actively encouraged; the adage “don’t mention the war” might be worth adhering to in polite company, but it’ll make you no friends here. If anybody manages to come up with an entrenched vulgar slur on Moldova, Belarus, Macedonia or Slovenia then they deserve extra plaudits – because frankly, who the hells knows anything about those places anyway?  

Throw the contestant countries into a hat (or bowl, who uses a hat anyway?!) and every contestant of your own game should pick a nation who they will support to the bitter end throughout the Eurovision contest. Even if that country is Germany. If your country wins, you should drink everything that’s left. This won’t be much, as you will see...

So your Eurovision preparations have been made, house rules laid out and it’s now time for the rules of drinking – pour you beers...... now:

• A kiss blown at the camera by anyone on stage or in audience; one shot of spirits
• Any act attempting to sing in English but actually just making like-sounding noises; drink
• Any act miming obviously; drink
• The substitution of lyrics for whoops or screams; drink for the whole time this goes on (anyone with Eurovision experience will know this can last for entire songs)
• Any lead singer not wearing a shirt; drink whenever the camera is on him
• The superfluous use of an instrument during the song; drink – if this instrument is used in a solo or is a fiddle, chug the entire glass
• Any lead singer holding a bunch of flowers; drink – if he/she sings into said flowers; drink the entire glass
• Any techno interlude during a song should be accompanied by everybody in the room jumping to their feet and dancing with their hands in the air. Last one to do so should drink a large whisky/vodka
• Any attempt to perform an ethnic song from the country up on stage should be greeted with a hail of racial abuse, even if you’ve never heard of the country performing. The slur considered most vulgar “wins” and everyone else has to drink
• Strobe lighting used; drink
• Eurovision presenter gets so drunk that they cannot carry on; down large spirit

This covers the rules of drinking during the Eurovision acts. But if you’re not completely on your knees by now or you can still see a speck of carpet from under the vomit, then we’re not quite done yet. The banal and tedious death throes of this diarrhoea is not quite finished as there is still an hour of votes to be counted. And here again there are a few rules to bear in mind:

·         Any collaboration from bordering countries should be met with a barrage of derision and outrageous threats of war, as well as the usual xenophobic slurs. Any slurs considered “special” win the orator the chance to down a glass of wine

·         Any attempted jokes by the bearer of the votes should be met with faux guffawing and a shot of vodka

·         The traditional greeting “Hello from [insert European capital]” should be returned with a hail of abuse.

·         The loser of the contest must drink a bottle of cheap cider as punishment for having the gall to involuntarily haven chosen a crap country.

And with that, Eurovision is over for another year. No more appalling techno, scantily-clad Croatian vote winners, balding German pop stars in lederhosen or songs sung baffling in Magyar. Just a massive hangover and stained furniture to remind you of the evening. And this has to surely be the best way; because anybody who finds themselves humming the catchy Slovakian entry the next day clearly hasn’t abided properly to the rules and has been punished – presumably by a higher power – by having inoffensive pop in their head until next year’s contest.