Tatu on the Eurovision Song Contest were as amazing as I knew they were going to be ever since I heard that the title of their entry translated as ‘Don’t Believe, Don’t Be Afraid’ (apparently taken from Solzhenitsyn’s rules for surviving the gulag, and a former and probably future byline for this blog). Nearly a decade ago now, in the sweet rush of the early Britpop skirmishes, it was suggested that the UK should enter something by one of these new guitar bands – if not actually an Oasis track, at least something penned by Noel Gallagher (remember, this was circa ‘Whatever’, arguably the band’s zenith and certainly a long time before they became as inarguably, hopelessly shit as they have now been for some years - they were an excitingly effortless guitar pop band). The argument went that of course, we probably wouldn’t win: the rest of Europe was still far too fond of syrupy power ballads and mindless disco pop (conversely, remember that this was a time when disco pop meant unspeakable Belgians, not Kylie cyber-fucking with Fischerspooner and Tiga). Our boy/girls wouldn’t win, we’d even get a few “nil points”, but we’d put on one hell of a show, and afterwards we’d know that we’d been right. That we’d been the best thing on the night.

That was Tatu on Saturday, screaming out the words defiantly, running round the stage and using the space in a way no act before them on the night (of course I didn’t watch the ones after – jeez!) bothered to do – like they owned the place, which is also how they reportedly acted prior to their performance. What ‘Don’t Believe’ really has going for it, to a greater extent even than ‘All The Things She Said’, is that sense of desperation – and I know I’ve been over-using the word ‘yearning’ lately when talking about music, so let’s use ‘plaintive’ instead – which was only added to by the euphemistic nature of their hand-clutching and eye-to-eye staring... Because they were quite literally forbidden to do anything else.

"If I were to kiss you here, they'd call it an act of terror" - Hakim Bey.

If you don’t like Tatu, it’s worth considering that perhaps you’ve become a big old cynic, and the time has come to buy only Sting records. Or Billy Bragg records, which is pretty much the same thing.