Theresa May says Brexit could ruin our Eurovision chances this year
But the UK Prime Minister says we won’t be leaving THAT European institution as well
Tuesday night saw Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May guest on The One Show with her husband Philip, and while host Matt Baker sadly didn’t hit her with one of his legendary “how do you sleep at night?” zingers like he did David Cameron, she did face some tough questions about our membership to a venerable European institution.
No, no, not the EU – we’re of course referring to the Eurovision Song Contest, which will see the UK melodically compete with other countries this Saturday and which some fear could be next in the line of big international organisations we might be set to leave.
So Baker and co-host Alex Jones posed the question – will the UK be waving goodbye to Eurovision just as we will to the EU in 2019, or will we remain strong and stable in this most harmonious of unions?
Well, it turns out the latter is true – May was pretty confident we have a future in Eurovision – but she did admit she had fears about what the Brexit vote would do to Britain’s own hopes in this year’s competition, suggesting our European neighbours might take the opportunity to mark us down.
“I’m tempted to say in current circumstances I’m not sure how many votes we’ll get,” she joked to the hosts.
Fingers crossed she’s wrong and there’s not too much animosity this year – otherwise, poor UK entry Lucie Jones might have to make a hasty Brexit stage left.
The 62nd Eurovision Song Contest Grand Final takes place on Saturday in Kiev, Ukraine, and will be broadcast live on BBC1 with commentator Graham Norton
Authors
Huw Fullerton is a Commissioning Editor for Radio Times magazine, covering Entertainment, Comedy and Specialist Drama.
