Terry has long been known as Britain's curious speculator on the Eurovision scene. We have accepted him to be the British (double) face of harmonious participation. After all, his long winded and less than literal interpretations of proceedings have long been covered by the BBC's less than commercial coverage of the actual events.

We have long been protected from the commercial growth of Eurovision by two facts:

• we don't speak Europe
• we hate subtitles

If we did speak Europe, of course, we would not need to skip the semi-finals. This peculiar British exemption comes through over subscription. We pay too much to be excluded from the final, despite being too ridiculous to be considered for several years.

Here in Norn Iron we have long accepted the Irish participation respect. The recent success of Ireland reflects well on us just as the previous British success did. Of course, this pride did not allow for the fact that lots of newly accedent countries would all love each other more than us.

Dustin just proves that Ireland is 10 to 15 years behind the UK in terms of cynicism.

Is that true of the economy as well?