The Daily Tonic: Total Eclipse Of Jihad

The last couple of days have seen us showing a softer, more wholesome side to The Prodigy – what with Liam Howlett’s model-making hobby and Keith Flint’s thirst for good gardening tips. At the risk of tarnishing their hard-edged image completely, it brings us absolutely no pleasure to report that Maxim is a sweet-natured little angel too.

Someone who worked on the Firestarter video says that after each shot was set up and was ready to be filmed, Maxim would invariably have gone missing and someone had to be sent out to look for him. Expecting to find him engaged in some hardcore shenanigans somewhere, it turned out his nan was ill and he was on the phone to his mum checking in on her whenever he had the chance.

As today would have been the Eurovision Song Contest, we’re going to turn the rest of this issue over to a few treasured Euro-memories, but we’ll return to your tales of celebrity entrances and exits tomorrow.

In the meantime, for the sake of consistency, we’ll pose you this quick question.

What on earth could have happened after the Eurovision grand final in Oslo in 1996 that caused staff at the Radisson SAS there to unofficially rename one of the rooms on the 14th floor the “Gina Wee Suite”?

Even though they still hold the record for the most wins in Eurovision history, the luck of the Irish hasn’t quite held up in recent years. In fact, their only top ten finish in the last decade has been thanks to Jedward.

The achievement hasn’t gone without recognition. The boys are now proud owners of a special gold card for Irish kebab chain Abrakebabra.

The card allows them to order everything on the menu – which they do. Even though they don’t eat meat. They only eat shellfish as their mother insists it will keep them looking young. (And, fair play – it seems to be working…)

BM writes:
“In 1990 I met some Mujahadeen fighters in the Northwest frontier of Pakistan. They said their biggest regret about the jihad against the Russians was that they couldn’t listen to pop music any more.

“When I asked what kind of music they liked, one told me, ‘Bonnie Tyler’.”

Every year, some clickbait operation will remind us that Katie Price almost represented the UK at Eurovision in 2005 and have a little chuckle imagining what that might have looked like – but the glamour girl gimmick was already old hat by that point.

In 2001, a German girl band called Love Rocket had their hopes of representing Germany dashed after it was revealed in the tabloid Bild that they were planning to strip on stage for their final chorus. That might sound like a gratuitous stunt, but it would have been perfectly in keeping with their song “0190 – Hey Du Da” which was based around the jingle from a TV ad for a phone sex line.

[Oh, what could have been]

Today’s audio round is made up of ten songs by bands and artists who have performed at Eurovision – but not the songs they entered.

All you have to do is tell us who they are (for one point) and what the song’s called (for another point). Ten songs, a total of twenty points.

[Play it here]

NB: If you’ve bought the Teal Edition Popbitch Popquiz, this is the same theme as that audio round but it’s ten totally different songs. So you can play this one too.

A blast from the internet past
[The literal Total Eclipse video]

Indian nuns coronavirus music video
[Take note, Gal Gadot]

If you missed the 8-bit Icelandic synth-wizard doing his live-streamed Eurovision concert last night…
[…it’s here]