We learned this week that President Vladimir Putin of Russia believes
that the European continent has not suffered enough.
We learned, as astute listeners may have surmised from the strains of Czech crooner Karel Gott,
winner in 1965 of the inaugural Intervision Song Contest,
that the Warsaw Pact analogue, the Eurovision Song Contest, is back.
Oh, no.
Oh, yes.
We learned that there will be more, perhaps, of this sort of thing.
For example, Bulgaria's Lily Ivanova bringing it home in 1966.
Monocle magazine interviewed Lily Ivanova back in 2009.
You see what you're missing when you don't subscribe.
Back in the ussr.
We learned
that President Putin himself had decreed this resuscitation of the Soviet white elephant
by way of somewhat tardy response
to Russia being ejected from Eurovision circa three years ago due
to the whole pointless pillaging of a neighbouring nation thing,
thereby depriving us of such delights as Russia's 2021 entry.
This the mallet, if you would, what won intervision in 1967, then?
Ah, yes, Eva Pilarova, Czechoslovakia's own Dusty Springfield.