A vision for europe

In May, the Eurovision Song Contest takes place in Turkey, and Great Britain's entrants will be hoping to better last year's effort. They could hardly do any worse - Jemini's performance of 'Cry Baby' was so awful it did well to achieve nul points. That this failure was covered in the press with more gusto than our last Eurovision win - by Katrina And The Waves, in 1997 - speaks volumes about how the annual pop Olympics are seen by audiences here. No wonder decent songwriters and artists have been so reluctant to take part.

It's a different story elsewhere in the made-up continent of Eurovision. In Spain, for example, people enter Fame Academy not to win a swank Madrid apartment, but for the glory of representing their country at the ESC. In Sweden, the competition in the initial heats is so fierce that each year a compilation of entries is released, packed with as much hit potential as your average Now... compilation. It might be true that some countries don't have self-supporting record industries as vast as the UK's and will take any available route abroad more seriously. But it wouldn't hurt to showcase British songwriters' dexterity in the ludicrously difficult arena of the three-minute pop song. The good news is that this year, the BBC are taking things a bit more seriously, with a revamped Song For Europe selection process - carrying the skirt-removingly exciting name Making Your Mind Up . The six contending acts will be unveiled on February 3, then whittled down to a winner via a Pop Idol-style phone vote. For the first time, the UK's Eurovision entry will then be released, by Sony, prior to the ESC itself.

There's no news yet on whether Radiohead are making good their promise to submit a song this year- surprise, surprise - but there's still everything to play for. Remember, last year's nul points result meant that Jemini didn't even get a sympathy vote. Quite right, too - because a country which doesn't pride itself on its talents, deserves no sympathy at all.