Today, we’re in the futuristic world of the year 2000, when audible confusion was caused the length and breadth of the nation by the startling appearance of a Britpop band from Latvia (if only Laxton’s Superb had thought of that)… Brainstorm with My Star!
- Brainstorm were, frankly, robbed when they only finished in third place, losing to Denmark’s Michael-McDonald-on-a-shoestring Olsen Brothers with Fly On The Wings Of Love. More deserved however was their placing several thousand points ahead of the UK entry, the appropriately named Don’t Play That Song Again by the somewhat less appropriately named Nicki French.
- Brainstorm formed in Latvia in 1989 when they were all about twelve, the collapse of the Eastern Bloc-related timing presumably being far from coincidental, and had been one of the country’s most successful alternative rock bands for nearly a decade by the time they entered Eurovision. That’s like Thousand Yard Stare representing the UK in 2000. If Thousand Yard Stare had been more successful.
- Brainstorm frontman Reynard Cowper, the Beck-lookalike doing that nattily-trousered audience-scaring dancing, would later present The Eurovision Song Contest when Latvia assumed hosting duties in 2003, the same year that saw the UK deservedly become a laughing stock thanks to the hapless and indeed hopeless Jemini with Cry Baby. They should have gone for Thousand Yard Stare.
- this very nearly wasn’t the first occasion on which the Britpop influence infiltrated The Eurovision Song Contest; in 1993, Denim were favourites to represent the UK with Here Is My Song For Europe, but were disqualified when one of their fans became a little too overenthusiastic and invaded the stage tearing up a picture of MC Sar & The Real McCoy. Producer Charles McHaltenwood thought this posed too great a security risk for the actual event, fearful that his copy of Doctor Who And The Space Pirates Episode 5 might be damaged in the fray, and the UK was instead represented by Sonia with Better The Devil You Know, which finished Who The Fuck Cares?th.
