At Home with John and Debbie

So what is this?

Discussing our Eurovision parties with a friend over spiced hot chocolate, in a mud-spattered vegetarian cafe tent at Bestival, he told me that I owed the Internet instructions on how to conduct one. So here it is.

Concept

The concept is simple. Get some people together on the night of the Eurovision final.

Assign guests with countries.

During the performances:

• Watch
• Keep notes on a wall chart the whole room can enjoy
• Eat and drink delicacies associated with each performing country

During the voting:

• Conduct some kind of drinking game, based on the scoring

Afterwards:

• Drop heavy hints that everyone should go home. Or carouse until the early hours. Your choice.

Over the years, Debbie and I have refined things. So now for the detail.

Things you will need

Some of this is optional. Well, obviously, it’s all optional.

• A delicacy for every country that’s in the final. This is a big deal, so I’ll discuss it in detail later.
• Stout paper bags - kind that takeaway food sometimes comes in. You can find suppliers online. You can get them on eBay, even. Who knows, perhaps there are even real shops that sell them?
• Stickers with flags on them. These are to be stuck to people, bags and perhaps the wall chart. An industrious few hours in the company of flags.net, a DTP package, a colour printer and a box of printer stickers should see you right. Or, if you’re feeling more lo-fi, draw your own in coloured pens. Albania is tricky if you choose this route. Do more sets than you think you’ll need. Have the country name printed under each flag, unless you and all your guests have a comprehensive knowledge of European flags.
• A big piece of paper - for the wall chart. Also, somewhere to put it. We tape it onto a big sheet of hardboard, and support it on an easel. A suitable bit of wall would do just as well.
• Marker pens - or brush pens, for the wall chart.
• A means of watching TV that’s big and loud. A PVR is particularly handy, in case something unbelievable happens, and you have to rewind, or preparations overrun and you have to delay the start of the show.
• Shot glasses. Enough for everyone. Even beer and wine will be sampled from these -with so many countries, plus the voting, anything more is a recipe for disaster.

In advance

Invite people. Make sure they confirm and commit. It’s a real nuisance not to be absolutely certain how many people are coming, because it affects the assignation of countries.

You’re going to be spending a fair amount of money on food and drink. A good way to mitigate this is to ask people to bring as much to drink as they would normally bring to a BYOB party - but to expect to mostly drink stuff you supply, leaving what they brought behind in lieu.

Buy the food and drink.

As the big day approaches, remind your guests to turn up on time. You might come across as being a bit of a party fascist, but it’s worth it.

You may wish to prepare European flag bunting, or some other party decorations.

On the day

Prepare the wall chart.

The wall chart has several purposes:

• A reminder of the running order
• A way to map countries to guests
• A place to record apposite or amusing remarks about each act as they perform - this is actually makes the voting more entertaining, since without it you’d forget which country had which act. “They gave 12 points to Germany… which was that again? Oh yes, it says ‘Witches of Eastwick’”
• A place to record final placings - usually a job for the morning after

So, divide your paper into as many sections as required, as you see fit. In 2008 there were 25 acts in the final, so we used two columns of 13. We used the top left block for a heading. Using the Eurovision web site for guidance, we glued a flag in each block, wrote the name of the country, and left room for the other information.

Your layout will depend on the dimensions of your paper, and your personal preferences. Maybe you’re less grid-oriented than I am. Do go for practicality over wackiness.

Food preparation

If you need to cook anything, do so.

Decide on your country allocation scheme

Ideally, you have exactly as many guests as there are acts, and then it’s easy. Everyone gets one country at random.

Otherwise you have to get creative.

Remember that backing a successful country can get you drunk, so you have to be seen to be scrupulously fair.

If it helps with the maths, you can take your home country out of the pool - everyone in the room shares the UK.

If there are not enough guests, each person can have two countries. In this case, you can even out the expected drinking load, by getting odds from a betting website, and allowing guests to pick one country from a ‘good odds’ pool and another country from a ‘bad odds’ pool.

It’s likely that some countries might have to be assigned twice.

You’ll come up with something.

Prepare bags

The bags were a 2007 innovation for us. For 2008 the bag idea was refined.

Prior to 2007, there would be a country choosing ceremony in which flag stickers were picked from a hat, and worn. When a country began to perform, the owner of that country would be sent to the kitchen to fetch their delicacy. This involved stepping over other guests, and the fuss detracted from enjoying the show. Hence, in 2007, we put the delicacies in bags, labelled the bags with flags, and guests took the appropriate bag with them to their seat.

In 2008: brainwave! Rather than draw stickers from a hat, we made sure that each bag was not labelled on the outside, and by choosing a bag at random, a guest would be choosing a country.

So, place in each bag:

• A delicacy
• Any paraphernalia required for serving the food.
• The corresponding flag sticker
• A shot glass

It can be useful to paper-clip the stickers to the outside of the bags while you’re organising things. Hide the stickers in the bags once everything is sorted out, and seal the bags shut.

If anything can’t go in a bag for some reason - too big, too gooey, needs cooking later, then place some analogue in the bag. For example, one of our 2008 bags contained an empty serving bowl, and a note saying “When Turkey begins their performance, please go to the kitchen and turn on the oven. When Sweden performs, get the Mini Kievs from the freezer and place them in the oven. Serve these when Ukraine performs.”

And…

Hang up your flag bunting.

Lay out the Buffet of Failed Nations (see ‘Food and drink’).

Party time

Before the show

When your guests arrive, at 7:30 on the dot, because you were so firm about lateness, have them pick as many bags as appropriate for your assignation scheme. Ask them not to show anyone else their delicacy, but to wear the sticker and keep the bag with them. Write their name on the wall chart, against their country/countries.

Someone needs to take charge of the wall chart at this point.

Then, watch the show.

The songs

Each time an act is announced, the person with that country must delve into their bag, get the delicacy, and hand it out. If it’s a drink, it’s poured into shot glasses. If it’s food, it’s handed around.

Before the act finishes, write something about them on the chart. It only has to be enough for you to remember the act later. We often feel compelled to note when specific things are present in the act. Wind machines and fire effects were notable in 2008. Key changes have always been ubiquitous.

By now, you should be having fun.

Some of these songs are actually OK, aren’t they?

By the end of the songs, the board should be well on its way to looking like this:

The voting

The interval show is diabolical. Turn the volume down and use it as an opportunity to explain the rules of the drinking game.

It’s time to put the vodka, wine and advocaat away now. The drinking game works with beer. Beer from obscure parts of New Europe is best, of course.

I don’t want to be too prescriptive about this. Your choice of rules will depend on your age and irresponsibility. So will your strictness is refereeing.

When we first began doing this, the rule was that if your country’s score passed a threshold of a multiple of 10 points (e.g. if you move from 29 points to 31 points) you would drink two fingers. If your country got ‘douze points’, you would drain your glass. I think on one occasion the rule was changed so that ‘douze points’ meant a shot of particularly cheap and rough vodka.

Later we toned things down such that if you were award 8, 10 or 12 points, you took a drink. And nowadays nobody keeps tabs on anyone else anyway. It’s somehow more civilised that way, but no less fun. Perhaps I’m getting old.

So: choose your own rules.

After the show

It’s just a party now. Do what you’d normally do. Hope that the guests in your spare room wake up earlier than you do, and start tidying up.

Food and drink

By far the biggest job in all of this, is getting hold of delicacies for all those countries.

Food/drink mix

It’s tricky to balance the level of food and alcohol. Get it wrong and people will be vomiting in your fish tank, or complaining that there’s been too much sugary food, or too much cheese and sausage. Or, heaven forbid, everyone might make it to the end of the night stone cold sober.

Due to the semi finals, you don’t have all that much control of this, but just try and avoid having a spirit for more than a few of the countries, and things should be OK. With so many former Soviet countries involved nowadays, it’s tempting to have vodka for them all (we have in the past lowered ourselves to falsifying labels: “Product of Albania”).

What to get

For each country, you need one of:

• An established national dish or drink. For example, in France they eat snails. In Russia they drink vodka.
• Something made in that country. A packet of crisps isn’t very exotic, but if it says ‘Made in Latvia’, then it ticks the Latvian box.
• Something that probably has nothing to do with the country, but contains their name. Swiss rolls, for example.
• Something with a tangential connection. We nearly served chocolate coins, in reference to the Armenian Money Train in The Shield, but then realised none of our guests would get it.

Failed nations

Nowadays there are semi-finals in the week running up to the final, so you don’t even know exactly what countries you’re going to need to represent, until Thursday evening. For this reason, you need something for every single country. Even hedging your bets, and buying things that could apply to more than one country (all those Baltic states eat much the same food!), you’re going to end up with spare food.

• Nice things - keep them and enjoy them later
• Non-perishables - keep them for next year
• Everything else - serve it up as the ‘Buffet of Failed Nations’

Where to buy

You can put as much effort into this as you like. You can probably cover most countries by visiting supermarkets, but for full coverage you need to go a little further afield.

Eurovision’s growing boundaries are your enemy in the pursuit of goodies (as you will realise when struggling to find a delicacy for Azerbaijan). But EU border relaxation is your friend, as immigrant entrepreneurs and Tesco alike vie to supply migrants with home comforts.

One year we found an excellent mail order beer supplier who had beers from most countries. Unfortunately it seems to have disappeared.

Polish shops are pretty common in Britain now, and tend to also stock products from the Baltics and other parts of Eastern and Central Europe.

Last year we had a nice day out in London shopping for Eurovision supplies. Special mention goes to:

• Jacob’s, an Armenian deli. You can have lunch there, and come away with an Armenian delicacy for the party. It’s at the North end of Gloucester Road, Kensington.
• Vardar in Shepherd’s Bush. This is a Macedonian shop, where a helpful lady also supplied us with products from Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Slovenia.

The exotic food shops on Uxbridge Road, Shepherd’s Bush, have goodies from all over the place.

No substitutions

The following staples are compulsory:

• Turkey - Turkish Delight (Fry’s, ideally)
• Malta - Maltesers
• Macedonia - Macadamia Nuts (to be referred to as Macedonia Nuts at all times)
• France - Walkers French Fries
• Ukraine - Bernard Matthews Mini Kievs
• Netherlands - Advocaat
• Iceland - cocktail sausages from Iceland (the one mums go to)