I wasn’t a fan of Bambie’s song, but what an amazing spectacle AH, Bambie Thug

Despite the blazing sunshine, last week was dark, dark, dark. A week of ill omens if there ever was one. A week of asking ourselves, how did we ever get to this?

The army of homeless tents springing up on the banks of the Grand Canal, the unspeakable mess that has resulted, the terrifying spate of vigilante attacks on foreign nationals and the filming and posting online of those attacks. On the other hand, people saying they’re afraid to enter Skibbereen after 6pm or go for a walk in Killarney National Park.

Seriously, nobody could claim Ireland was a paradise – not even in the glory days of Fionn ma Cumhaill and the Fenians, who it’s now believed (in some quarters anyway), were little more than an entitled gang of misogynistic thugs - but at the same time, how did we get to this?

On Saturday night, our Eurovision non-binary Doomsday Blue black magic-themed Eurovision spectacular, complete with horns and pentagram, did little to reassure.

Bambie Thug’s fearsome performance propelled Ireland into the finals for the first time in years, through a routine which seemed to mostly constitute shrieking and shouting, and which relied heavily on extremely good lighting, eye-watering choreography and triple gold star-standard make-up.

I thought the Dustin the Turkey year was our Eurovision bedrock year, but for sheer unassailable weirdness, this outing beat the socks off Dustin. 

Though nearly everyone else seemed to like it - even Simon Harris gave Bambie Thug the thumbs up.

Bambie Thug, though, was not for me. I disliked the act from the very start. I was unsettled by the lyrics – Avada Kedavra is a killing curse based on an Aramaic phrase meaning ‘I destroy as I speak’ or ‘Let the thing be destroyed’. Haven’t we enough of that going on around the world already, I thought.

I found the song weird and a bit creepy; I found the Black Magic overtones - the pentagram, the horns, the long nails, the twisted tongues, the talk about hexes and the references to Ouija – repellent.

Yes, I KNOW Avada Kedavra was used in Harry Potter where, I admit, I hardly noticed it, and where, when I did, I didn’t mind at all.

Hands up. It should be stated here that, in its totality, Bambie Thug staged a highly creative, powerful and immensely spectacular performance. I just didn’t like it. Any of it.

I reacted to it the same way as I did to the book and the film of What We Need To Know About Kevin and the docu-series Baby Reindeer and Kin – in other words, I loathed the Bambie Thug performance but at the same time found it hugely compelling.

Nope, I wasn’t a fan. Not of the lyrics, not of the melody, if you could call it that – yes, yes, I know Bambie Thug explained that the Doomsday song was a mix of spoken words, pop lyrics, screaming, crooning and electro-metal screeching – but nonetheless, it just sounded like a burst of chaotic shrieking to me.

I didn’t like the get-up or the emaciation. I was weirded out by the dance partner with the teeth; ah, look, I found the entire thing repugnant.

But then I read about how Bambie Thug was going around with pro-Palestinian, pro-peace messages in ancient Ogham on their face and legs. I stopped worrying about the pentagrams and the horns and the weird get-up and I started laughing.

For a while, I forgot about the homeless tents and the filth scattered around our lovely old Grand Canal, I forgot about the crazed viciousness of the vigilantes and their mad filming of attacks; instead, I started imaging all the research that organisers in the European Broadcasting Union had to do - presumably once someone had tipped them off to it - to be able to interpret those incendiary messages scrawled in Ogham on Bambie Thug’s face and legs.

I laughed and laughed and laughed. Fair dues to Bambie Ray Robinson, I thought. I don’t know which was more incredibly impressive – Bambie Thug for having the knowledge and the nous to try it on, or the EBU for copping it.

A pity the Thug conceded to the bureaucrats and allowed those pro- justice and pro-peace messages in ancient Ogham to be scrubbed off and replaced by Crown the Witch.

In the end, the jarring performance – and yes, I hold the line here, I found it extremely jarring – scored the best Eurovision result for Ireland in 25 years. They didn’t win, but it was Bambie Thug’s night, no doubt about it. And well deserved.

It was a Eurovision to remember, and one of the best nights out that Macroom has enjoyed in years. It was a performance and a controversy that will be remembered in the annals of the Eurovision Song Contest for decades to come.

For a contest that studiously claims to avoid political statements, this one jumped straight into the political frying pan and from there into the fire, and ran screaming around the big expensive stage, set beating at its designer clothes - and all thanks to Bambie Thug.

Which, ironically, gave us all a much-needed laugh over here and helped me, for one, to forget what a Godawful mess this country is in.