Nul Points

A hilariously funny book about the Eurovision Song Contest from our funniest travel writer.

Once every year, on a Saturday night in May, occurs a festival of kitsch inanity called the Eurovision Song Contest.

It entertains us for all the wrong reasons: we chortle at its mindlessness, its stubborn reinforcement of the crudest national stereotypes, at a scoreboard shamelessly corrupted by cross-border amity and hatred. It’s a ludicrous lamé farce, three hours of Austrian power ballads, hand-jiving Latvians and Maltese electro-folk.

Tim Moore’s Nul Points is at once a celebration of the Eurovision Song Contest, its one high point (Abba singing ‘Waterloo’) and its many low ones.

Among the latter are of course the legendary songs that managed to receive not one point from the scorers, a feat that only the very worst achieve. There are fourteen such songs, from ten different countries, and in this hilariously funny book Tim Moore sets off to discover from the singers themselves just what it is like to find yourself atop the lonely, windswept summit of Mount Fiasco.

About the Author

Tim Moore's books include French Revolutions, Do Not Pass Go and Spanish Steps. He lives in London. Tim Moore is a rare comic talent, ‘without a doubt, the funniest travel writer in the world’. In the Eurovision Song Contest and its luckless participants he has found fertile ground. Nul Points is his best book to date.