Now it’s all been a bit slow for the rumour mill so far, but I’ve heard a couple of semi-interesting snippets with a Turkish flavour in the last little while.
Turkey’s 2006 entry was Superstar (also styled Süper Star), performed by Sibel Tüzün. A nice Turkish gentleman was reading my reporterising over my shoulder and asked my opinion of their song. I mentioned how I feared she wasn’t looking awfully confident on some of the flying elements of the routine, and he gave me a kinda knowing look and whispered…
Of course, she may be hiding a surprise. Do you know she brought a belly dancer with her on the plane? And there are only five peoples on the stage …
… before giving me one of those “But you’ve not heard it here” kind of looks.
The idle gossip of a deranged fan or a bit of insider information? Only time will tell!
Also, we heard that all of their backing dancers are in fact British – one of them being Glenn Ball from Waterman’s under-achieving Pop! act. Our Chig tells us he also appeared as one of the dancers on the Crazy Frog hit. His career just keeps getting better, eh!
Post-contest clarification: the British-dancer part was substantially right, although the available records don’t establish that all four dancers were British. Glenn Ball was one of the four male dancers supporting Tüzün, alongside Arthur Gourounlian, James Robinson and Scott Marshall.
There was no belly-dancer surprise in the completed televised routine. The “only five peoples” line did, however, turn out to be a fairly accurate count: Tüzün plus those four dancers. Turkey qualified from the semi-final in eighth place with 91 points, then finished 11th in the final with the same score.
More foul slurs when I’ve made them up,
your servant,
RDH
