Is this Eurovision’s most controversial year?

0:05Hi, I'm Charlie Duffield and welcome back to The Standard Podcast. If you're new here, hit follow and give us a rating. For the latest news, head to thelondonstandard at standard.co.uk. Coming up later in the show, the wartime top secret goings-on at one stately home in London. This operation was so clever. One of the highest-ranking prisoners ever to be captured in the war, who was held here for a short time, was Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy.

0:47But first, this Saturday, 26 countries will take to the stage in Basel, Switzerland, for the chance to be crowned winner of this year's Eurovision Song Contest. The competition is in its 69th year, but behind the all-singing, all-dancing, often ridiculous spectacle, lies a deeper mission. Born in the aftermath of the Second World War, it was designed to reunite a fractured continent through the shared language of song. Organisers, the European Broadcasting Union, maintain that Eurovision should be a universal event that promotes connections, diversity and inclusion through music.

1:37Love, peace, peace, love, make it unforgettable. You will be the best. And when the innovations are coming. Except in recent years, the cultural institution has been overshadowed by controversy. Joining me now is the London Standards commissioning editor and culture writer, Vicky Jessup. Vicky, Israel's entrant has had to contend with protests regarding her country's participation. Will Swiss neutrality prevail or can we expect more chaos? There is always chaos at Eurovision. But yeah, I mean, there have been protests. So this year's contestant for Israel is called Yuval Raphael and she's 24 and she's a survivor of the Hamas attack on the Nova Music Festival.

2:27I think she was just one of 11 survivors from a group of around 50 people and she'd hidden a pile of dead bodies for eight hours until other survivors were rescued. Yeah, a horrific story. And her singing career kind of only started after the attack. She's gone on to be quite successful back in Israel. But yeah, her appearance is controversial, of course, due to Israel's ongoing attacks and conduct in Gaza. She's not been speaking to journalists due to security reasons. Last week, over 70 former Eurovision contestants signed an open letter calling for Israel and its official broadcaster to be banned from the competition.

2:56You know, Eurovision is neutral and they have said any signs pro and anti-Israel or Palestine will be banned. But even last year there were protests and people smuggling in Palestinian flags. Raphael has said that she's practised singing with distractions in her rehearsals, so she's clearly preparing to be booed. Neutrality is a nice idea. I suspect it will not happen on the night. Do you think the contest's apolitical stance should remain? Yeah, I think that's very much up to your personal opinion. I think the aim is good and laudable. In this kind of very fractured age, I don't know if it's tenable to be apolitical.

3:29I mean, well, clearly it is political in some sense because it's a lot of countries going against each other. Not to say that the UK doesn't do well because the songs aren't great, but also there is a certain element of it. I feel like that's getting snubs each year for various reasons. Eurovision does like to hide its head in the sand somewhat when it comes to addressing issues like Gaza, Israel. And clearly that isn't working because there is still so much furore around it. I think basically Eurovision does need to just sit down at some point and work out a new strategy for dealing with these issues, because clearly this one doesn't work and it's not going away.

4:01Tell us a bit more about this year's UK entry. Remember Monday, they're a three-piece girl group and they're comprised of Holly Ann Hull, Lauren Bryce and Charlotte Steele. You know, they've been best friends since they met in sixth form 12 years ago. They formed a band. At first it was a country band and then they went to Nashville and apparently were told you're not country. so they've changed and had a course Remember Monday as an ode to the free periods in their school time when they would get together and practice. They've all gone on to have careers in musical theatre, they were on The Voice in 2019 and they were coached by Jennifer Hudson.

4:35They didn't win but in 2023 they all quit their jobs and went full-time with this and by all accounts they are very very excited. Three years ago the UK's Sam Ryder came second to Ukraine. Do you think we're in with a chance of scoring big this year? The UK, as I mentioned, traditionally doesn't do well at Eurovision. I kind of think Sam Ryder was bucking the trend rather than setting a new one, unfortunately for us. Last year, Oli Alexander, who is like a bona fide pop star. I'm still not sure why he went on, actually, but he finished a rather humiliating 18th place with 46 points, which is chump change in Eurovision land.

5:12That said, remember Monday, they do seem to have pulled out all the stops this year. The song was co-written with Billy and Ted, who collaborate a lot with Little Mix, as well as Thomas Stengard, who wrote the Danish Eurovision winner in 2013. It was a song called Only Teardrops and an artist called Kill Jay. And their performance is being staged by a creative director called Ace Bowerman, who's worked with Julie Perfredega and Ed Sheeran. So they're really going for it. And if it doesn't do well, you know, at least they'll have given it a good go. So what are the acts to look out for? If you want to talk odds and favourites, there's a Swedish comedy trio, KAJ.

5:48They're the favourites currently to win with a song Barabada Bastu. The Austrian singer JJ is a second favourite to win. He's got a kind of operatic ballad called Wasted Love. And then the French are in third with a song called Maman. Of course, we don't watch Eurovision for the winners, so we watch it for the most bonkers, crazy camp entries out there. And of course, they are delivering the share. we've got Finland Act which features a former tango singer called Erik Vikkman with a very innuendo laced song and he is riding a giant phallic microphone in his set Latvia's folky pop ballad which has the performers all dressed up as extras from the horror film Midsommar I think my favourite there's Estonia's got a song called Espresso Macchiato which features some really truly bonkers bad Italian including I work around the clock oh that's why I'm sweating like a mafioso.

6:56Earlier this week, Celine Dion made a rare appearance at the semi-final, leaving fans in tears. I'd love nothing more than to be with you in Basel right now. Switzerland will forever hold a special place in my heart. It's a country that believed in me and gave me the chance to be part of something so extraordinary. She won the competition in 1988, but is the contest still a viable way for musicians to kickstart their careers? I think we're long past the days of Abba and Celine Dion. I think if you're maybe a very new musician, it's good practice and probably good exposure. If you're someone like Oli Alexander, I think you're kind of just storing up trouble for yourself in the sense that you've gone past the point where Eurovision is going to be helpful to your career.

7:44Man of Skin won the Eurovision Song Contest in 2021, the kind of Italian, gothic, leather-clad rockers. And they've kind of gone on to have moderate success on the back of that. Sunrider, again, he's built a kind of career off the back of his second place performance, but he was also big on TikTok beforehand. And the issue is that Eurovision is still treated like a bit of a joke, especially in the UK. Like, we don't really take it seriously, especially not as a kind of launching platform for musicians. These days, the music and the pop space is so crowded. It's so much harder to get cut through.

8:13You do have the benefit of these millions and millions of viewers, but you get the same exposure these days just by going on TikTok or Instagram. And I think if you're starting out in that space, social media is probably where you want to be these days.

8:29Let's go to a break. Coming up in part two, how one stately home became the site of an incredible World War Two spying operation. We'll see you back here in just a moment.

8:48Welcome back. Did you know that at the end of the Metropolitan Line lies a relic of Britain's military past? It's a little-known fact that Latimer House was where intelligence services went to incredible lengths to extract secrets from senior Nazis. World War II historian Dr Helen Fry is here to explain more. So Helen, tell me a bit more about this estate and the intelligence operation which took place here. Latimer House is an old country estate in Buckinghamshire that once belonged to Lord Chesham. Its identity remained top secret for over 70 years. and here at the heart of operations in World War II, it became one of the nation's most important intelligence operations.

9:43And there was a theatrical element to it all, is that right? We went on the charm offensive. So we gave them like a phony interrogation and they just thought we were incompetent. Yeah, the British, they don't know how to interrogate. But really it was a whole dramatic stage set. And the German generals in particular were treated to a life of relative luxury. This place and its sister site Trent Park in North London just became like a gentleman's club. And they were given nice food, relaxed surroundings, they were given whiskey and wine. But the most, I think, incredible story about this is the fake aristocrat.

10:28So our intelligence Services under Thomas Kendrick created this fake aristocrat, knowing that the German generals in particular, they had huge egos. They loved to be wined and dined and to be befriended by one of our aristocrats. Well, he was in fact, Ian Munro, just an ordinary intelligence officer, but he was given the title Lord Aberfeldy. Of course, such a title doesn't actually exist. But those generals started to relax with him and begin to spill some of the secrets. And if they didn't tell him when they were back in their rooms in their private bedrooms, of course, they were all mic'd for sound.

11:14So they were being picked up. All their conversations were being picked up by hidden microphones. And right away through until the end of the war, until after victory in Europe in May 1945, we are collecting what becomes here at Latimer House, industrial scale intelligence. And we're picking up tons of information on new German technology. And that could be new equipment being used on aircraft, night fighter tactics. It could be to do with U-boats, torpedoes. Of course, one of the big ones is the secret weapon program, the V1. And the prisoners saying, well, we've got the V1, but we've got a V2 coming.

11:56And also, particularly from Hitler's top generals, they start talking about the atomic bomb program. And it's now been recognized that the sheer mass of intelligence, particularly on the V weapons, actually made a difference to the outcome of the war and has officially been described as war-winning intelligence alongside the code breaking at Bletchley Park. Tell me about the people who were doing the actual listening. At the heart of this story is a very interesting group of men. They were known as the secret listeners. They were German Jewish refugees who'd actually fled Nazi Germany for their lives and now they're based in a secret site here, Lattimer House, spying on the people they've run from.

12:48And they amass all this intelligence for British intelligence. They are part of the heroes of this whole story. Right across the wartime, these secret listeners recorded over 100 ,000 conversations, and they all survive in their typed form in the National Archives in London. I mean, it's utterly incredible. Why was this kept secret for so long? 1999, the Berlin Wall has come down, and it was now deemed okay for this to be released into the National Archives. So I was one of the first historians, certainly the first British historian, to work on these files. And that was because of a very special secret listener, Fritz Lustig, he worked here at Latzmer House.

13:36And he said to me one day, Helen, you've done all these other stories around espionage and 10 ,000 Germans that fought for Britain, including my colleagues. What about us? What about the secret listeners? I was stuck in the Buckinghamshire countryside with these headphones on. And his question was this, did we do anything, secret listeners that made any difference to the outcome of the war. And I went on a journey with him and a few other surviving secret listeners to uncover precisely the legacy. And, you know, so many of their colleagues had gone to their graves, never speaking about their work.

14:15They signed the Official Secrets Act, but neither did they know the humongous legacy that they'd left behind. And, you know, I just thought Fritz had lived for 70 years since the outbreak of war, not knowing how he'd impacted in real terms on that war. So that was a very important moment for that recognition for those that were still alive. And what can visitors enjoy if they make a visit to Latimer House? One of the cocktails that was favourite of the intelligence teams here at Latimer in the wartime was pink gin. They loved their pink gin. So Latimer House has commissioned its own pink gin and it's taken from herbs around the estate.

15:03So it's got a very unique flavour and little secret, it's the only gin that doesn't give you a headache. But it really is worth sampling. Come here, come to the bar and sample the pink gin and perhaps raise your glass ever so slightly, tilt it in recognition of what the incredible intelligence officers and personnel did here in World War II to secure our democracy today.

15:36And that's The Standard. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk and please do drop us a line at podcasts at standard.co.uk. this podcast returns on Monday at 4pm we'll see you then