Pausing sport, 'serving Kant'
Warning: Language in this article may offend
The Sports Specialist rarely strays from sport. But as my football team’s season has now finished (did I mention Horsham won an historic league and cup double?!) I hope you don’t mind me pausing sport for a week, so I can write about two of my favourite subjects; The Eurovision Song Contest….and the c-word. Yes that one.
While I’ve never used the ‘c’ word ‘on air’, I did once manage to include Eurovision in my national TV sports bulletin, but I’ll come to that. Here in 2025 I’m grateful to the already-notorious Maltese entry for bringing the two subjects together and giving writers the chance to consider the suitability of the most controversial word in the English language.
If you haven’t yet heard, Malta’s song was originally titled KANT. The phrase ‘serving kant’ at the heart of the chorus. It’s almost startling on first listen, as the ‘a’ in kant sounds very much like a ‘u’. If you don’t believe me….
The word Kant means ‘singing’ in Maltese, though the phrase ‘Serving c*nt’ in English apparently describes a “self-confident person in queer and drag cultures”.
The Times Of Malta, while addressing the controversy over the song, said:
“It denotes someone sassy and fiercely assertive - qualities Miriana Conte has brought to the stage.”
Mercifully Mariana’s surname is pronounced as it sounds. But sadly (though understandably) she has had to sanitise the song for the delicate international family audience, so now it’s simply called Serving.
When we get to the c-bomb now, she kinda just breathlessly shapes up to deliver the word, but has it taken away and replaced with an ‘aah’. A top-class little bit of audio production that I hope brought a regretful shake of the head from the sound engineer.
Miriana first performs in Thursday’s second semi-final. I hope she gets through and wins the whole thing. And I also hope she accidentally-on-purpose sings the original version in the encore (with due respect to those who don’t like the word, or whose children like staying up close to midnight for the crazy voting). Because there’s nothing like an original!
I’m not a potty-mouth or a savage, but I’m fascinated by the ‘c’ word, the most divisive of words, on which I could write all day with multiple examples (don’t worry I haven’t).
It’s not something I can just charge into without asterisks and softening, not everyone is comfortable with it, so let’s stick to my love of Eurovision first. 26 years ago we sneaked it into my sports coverage…
I was working for the groundbreaking, influential and outrageously underrated 5 News I the UK, which changed the face of TV news (really it did). I was the sports presenter. The bumper weekend sports bulletins (unusual at the time for terrestrial TV) were getting healthy ratings and though accuracy and professionalism quietly underpinned our output, we had so much bloody fun too. It showed. Our viewers loved it. Damn right I’m going to give us the credit that others failed to.
During the weekdays at the end of each bulletin we’d do a little item called Just Quickly. (I was ‘handing back’ to the brilliant Kirsty Young so I still have old friends and ex-colleagues who say “Just quickly, Kirsty” to me when we’re about to get off the phone.
On one Sunday night in May at the end of the 1990s, I was asked to do a ‘Just Quickly’, not just for the end of sport, but for the end of the entire bulletin, presented by a Martin Popplewell.
The weekend Programme Editor John Leonard had a leftfield idea, because that’s what we did. Relegation had been added to the Eurovision Song Contest and on that weekend Ireland, one of the most successful nations in the contest’s history, had nearly ‘gone down’ (a fate which eventually befell them in 2002).
I say ‘them’ but I mean ‘us’. At the time I didn’t know I was 51 per cent Irish (source: Ancestry.com 2022). My Irishness was unexpected, despite my Liverpudlian roots. If I’d have known my roots by then, I’d have been tearfully cheering for Ireland to stay up in the Eurovision big time.
The contest was about to be revamped, with more nations admitted, and semi-finals introduced for a whole week of Eurovissioning each year. On balance I quite like having a Tuesday and Thursday semi to watch. The ESC is mainly about the music for me.
As a kid the voting was the only thing I was bothered about, good fun late on a Saturday night (before Match of the Day came on), with Terry Wogan at his arid dry best. With the colour, humour and spectacle, and some of the over-the-top attention-seeking entries, it’s easy to underestimate how good some of the songs actually are in the modern Eurovision. We become fixated on the bad and quirky because the show is the main thing, and casual viewers can be almost irritated by the serious songs.
There are obvious bangers. Swede’s never-in doubt winning song Tattoo by Loreen in 2023 wasn’t a universally popular winner because of its ubiquity and success for months. But it gave me a chance to indulge in my own little bit of dry humour on Twitter, before Elon killed such whimsy with his algorithms.
Every year since 1970s I’ve tweeted a shirt pic of who I think will win #Eurovision Gotta be Sweden🇸🇪 in #Liverpool this week, the spirit of #Abba who won it in UK in 1974 (in #Brighton) Good luck to #Loreen in semi final tonight. She may or may not be the hot favourite 😐
The most famous Eurovision song and victory belongs to Sweden too of course. Abba and Waterloo in 1974. It’s not always recalled that they actually won it in Brighton at what’s become my favourite music venue, the exquisite Brighton Dome in my home county of Sussex.
I would put forward Satellite by Germany’s Lena in 2010, as the best Eurovision winning song. It manages, to be likeable, bouncy, funky and quirky but crucially cool rather than annoying.
The best Eurovision song is simply one of the best pop songs I’ve ever heard, with my favourite video of all-time, The incredible Think About Things by Iceland’s Daoi Freyr.
Why didn’t it win? The 2020 contest was cancelled by the pandemic. Iceland would have surely been an unstoppable winner after the viral video and goodwill around the song and performance. The quality of the songs that year was insanely good. Not least On Fire by The Roop, which would have represented Lithuania. The organisers got it wrong by inviting all the artists back the following year with new songs. A well-meaning gesture that didn’t work.
Baltic countries have a good track record for quality, without the level of wins to show for it. Clearly massively influenced by groups I love from UK in the 80s and 90s, not least Depeche Mode, there have been synth songs that I’ve wanted to win. But nothing better than My Star by Brainstorm. I think part of the appeal for me, as someone whose music taste is mainly gothic, industrial, is that I could like a song this lightweight. But I do. Just stay clear when I’m murdering it while cooking. I don’t know anyone with a worse singling voice than me – ask my family.
My favourite Eurovision song and performance is unlikely to convince you as a sound choice. Because it’s a controversial act, a banned Eurovision country and If I’m honest, a dreadful vocal performance. Sounds good eh!! But the ropey vocals somehow enhance the driving energy and discordance of the song. It’s Ne Ver Ne Boysia Ne Pros by Tatu, which creeps up and exhilarates.
Yes that Tatu. There was so much wrong about the marketing of those girls that it should be impossible to flag up their merits, but I just can’t help loving the music and their attitude in this 2003 Eurovision performance, in which they finally felt authentic. The whole staged-lesbian thing, the ubiquity of the ghastly All the Things She Said video. Not for me. But wait. This tiresome, manipulative sleaze masked something truly exciting. The actual music.
All The Things She Said is a superb pop song. As is Not Going to Get Us. And the 2002 album 200km/H In the Wrong Lane is a masterpiece of production. Because it was produced by a genius, Trevor Horn. I think it’s worth a revisit, but many will still hate it.
This year, I hope Eurovision fans use the spirit of people-power to get behind Miriana Conte and Malta, even though the power of the c-word that has been removed, just as I’ve removed it in this piece so far, in case I cause offence.
The c-word still splits the room, still has the ability to shock and upset. But I’d argue this is about tone and context. Let’s take the word itself. It wasn’t considered vulgar until the seventeenth century (no I didn’t use it back then).
Read on for…Larry David, Malcom Tucker, Sir Alex and the c-word uncensored….and remember you can sign up for a monthly subscription if you don’t want to commit to an annual one….