I have been usurped!!!

There have always been clear and well-defined roles for the village Eurovision party.

• Big A and wife supply venue and catering;
• Narcoleptic Dave and wife help with creche services;
• Short Tony and wife provide post-show karaoke facilities.

(note to self – still need to sort out fuller identities for female characters)

My role has always been to provide scoring sheets, statistical information etc. This is the most important job, as the evening is an empty facade without it.

Last year I put together a master scoring grid, and distributed cards with big numbers for people to hold up (artistic impression and song quality).

Cricket commitments meant that I was always going to be an hour late for the start. But I had it all worked out in my mind, and given some pieces of paper and a biro I could have produced something half-way decent.

You can imagine my anger and dismay when I arrived to find people already completing results sheets. Short Tony had taken advantage of my temporary absence in order to take over the role of scorer!!!

I did not give him the satisfaction of showing my true feelings, but sat and joined in with a heavy heart.

We each had a sheet pre-printed with name of country, comments, score deserved, plus three additional tick-box columns: OD (original dancing), CG (clothing gimmick) and KC (key change).

He is a very sad man.

When all our sheets were complete, he added up our individual totals to produce a group ranking. We then telephoned the results line to register our vote.

Had everybody in Britain taken such care with their choice, we would not have suffered the national humiliation of giving the Irish song some points.

Short Tony was obviously sulking as we had decided not to do the karaoke. Clearly, he had been planning this coup for some time.

It is not a pleasant thing to have ones next-door neighbour plotting against you.

Truly I now understand the pressures mounting on Tony Blair.