For those few of you who haven't read the Iceland Review of 28th April 2007, you will not be aware of my recent trip to that magnificent country. My good friend Chesney (Hawkes) and his good friend Ginny organized a song writing retreat in a secluded hotel on the banks of an un-pronounceable Fjord very close to the middle of nowhere in the south west of the island.

On landing, as the plane emerged through the low cloud, you could've forgiven any one of us for believing we had arrived on another planet. The vast expanse of black volcanic rock, covered in light brown and pale green lichens was alien to anything I had ever seen.

Within an hour and a half of the plane touching down, we were all getting our kit off and jumping into a hot bath together. The bath in question was the Blue Lagoon (a natural lake fed by hot springs). This was a great way of getting to know each other, at least from the neck up!

As for the song writing part, there were six sessions altogether (one each morning and one each afternoon) where you were thrown into a room with a couple of people you've only just met and expected to come with a song. It was a bit like speed dating but with guitars. I think everybody there (15 of us) found the week rewarding, managed to forge new freindships/writing relationships and came away with a few good songs into the bargin. The people were wonderful, the food was fantastic (put on 4lbs) and the scenery was breathtaking. All in all, it was quite alot better than staying in bed.

On a sadder note, it would be impossible to continue without a mention of Tony Blair. It was with heavy heart that I heard of our glorious leader's imminent departure. How will we possibly manage without him? Who's going to walk about quite alot with his jacket off? Who's going to grin inanely whilst his country's health service crumbles? Who's going to invade middle-eastern countries without asking us? Who's going to save the world?

Whoever it is, I hope and pray that their first priority is to restore this nation's pride and put it back where it belongs... at the top of the scoreboard in the Eurovision Song Contest.

At this point, for the benefit of our friends living outside the European Economic Union, I believe an explanation may be in order:

The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual event hosted by the nation who was unfortunate enough to win the previous years debacle. The final is televised and watched by hundreds of millions of partisan viewers throughout Europe, all hoping their "team" is going to stick one in the back of the metaphorical net. It's more a sporting event than a song contest.

There was a time (mid 60's) when the UK walked away with the silverware on a regular basis. Pop Stars of the day queued up for the honour of representing their country and, one Saturday every year, I got to stay up late and eat cheese on toast. Then we started doing "not quite so well" and began pretending we didn't care and it wasn't important and we didn't take it seriously and what do the People's Republic of Uturkercroatiserbekistan know about pop music anyway? Year upon year our points tally deteriorated along with our brain cells until, a couple of years ago, we suffered the ultimate ignominy.... nil point!

This year (last Saturday) the nation that brought you Vaughan Williams and The Beatles was represented by the mighty... "Scooch". A camp collection of X-Factor rejects dressed as flight attendants, doing Kenneth Williams impressions. As usual, although we don't care and we're not that interested and it was crap last year and the year before and it'll probably be crap this year and it's not even funny anymore just horribly mediocre, we all sit around drinking Pimms and watching the TV through our fingers.

The outcome is horribly predictable.

Traditionally, there then follow several days of mourning and indignant whinging. Every time you switch on the radio you'll hear such pearls of wisdom as: "The political voting was a disgrace"; "the Scandinavians all vote for each other, the Balkan states vote for each other..."; "why doesn't anyone want to be our friend?"; "If it wasn't for Iraq", etc. Newapapers run editorials, Members of Parliament are interviewed and, once again, everybody managed to ignore the elephant in the room: THE SONG WAS SHITE!

The competition was won by Serbia. Don't ask me to whistle it.