What does Europe mean to you?: 5

And so the annual "choose an anthem for the Bournemouth University Summer Archaeological Excavation" (known to the rest of the world as the Eurovision Song Contest) cranks up a gear. This time next week it will nearly be over, bar the shouting (and, as I've noted before, it's the shouting that represents one of the most enjoyable bits).

The dark beating heart at the centre of the European superstate is beautifully revealed once a year in this rather magnificent and complex competition. Forget the Euro-crisis, forget the EU, forget two millennia of conflict, collaboration and comradeship; if you want to know how nations speak unto nations, how cultures interact and mutate, how old scores are settled and new ones arise, then Eurovision is where it's at.

It's really nothing to do with the songs (although they make it far more entertaining than a visit to the European parliament); it's politics pure and simple. And, to be honest, I'd rather see badly-dressed, über-permed representatives from different nations howling and 'hey hey-ing' to a cheesy disco-beat as if their lives depended on it (and they probably do), than seeing news footage of over uniformed, crew-cut representatives from different nations laying into one another with bullets, bombs and mustard gas any day.

So, the tannoy systems across the dig site are under construction and the CD of songs is primed to play on continuous loop; but which of the 39 songs under consideration will win this year's coveted title of Big Dig Anthem? Can anyone surpass the inspired lunacy and infectious insanity (that triggered much frenzied mattocking and shovelling across the dig) of last year's Lautar by Pasha Parfeny...

...I sincerely doubt it 

As we speak, bands, singers and dance-coordinators are rehearsing in Malmö, Sweden for this year’s slugfest. Just two semi-finals and one epic final to go and we will have our result. Can Moldova win for a third year (if they have trumpets anywhere in their song I suspect that's a given) or will another nation sneak the much coveted top spot? Will there be glitter? Will there be cheese? Will there be glorious cultural incomprehension and mutual confusion? Will the UK song get nul points and / or come last, triggering another blast of UKIP styled Euro-loathing in the British Press (if you're wondering the answers are 'probably', 'possibly', 'yes', 'yes', 'yes' and 'of course, why bother asking?').

It's time to say once more: "Bring on the Brawl"