After the bakers’ demand that the price of a hobza should be raised by one cent – an event treated by politicians and journalists like the Cuban missile crisis – we have a thrilling new debacle on our hands. Fabrizio Faniello has placed last in the Eurovision Song Contest. Now we don’t need to think about our real problems anymore, and can fill our newspapers and the political arena with debate about why he lost, why neighbours vote for neighbours, and whether we should sulk and refuse to take part ever again (well, that would be a relief).

Amid other more serious problems that are hitting the country, what obsesses our minds and takes over the correspondence and news pages of the newspapers? It’s the Eurovision Song Contest and the Da Vinci Code, two subjects which consume us.

At the risk of sounding sexist – but you have to admit that this kind of person exists in large numbers – we are like pea-brained women, trained to be children all their lives, fussing and flapping for weeks on end about what to wear to the party as though they are still five years old, while their husband seriously considers having an affair and running off. I hate to conclude that our public reaction to faux crises, and our refusal to acknowledge real ones, is infantile – but quite frankly, that is the only conclusion that I can reach.

What is all this high-camp behaviour about, and how do otherwise serious, suit-wearing men end up acting like this? “Oooooh, Fabrizio lost his stylist! Oh golly gosh, fuss and panic, drama-drama! Headline news! Maaaaa!” Well, it would be high camp if it had the essential element of irony which is intended to amuse – but this kind of camping-it-up is done with no self-awareness at all, and is intended to be taken seriously as real drama, which is why it grates and irritates instead.

The details of Fabrizio’s costume were endlessly reported in the newspapers as though he were a resurrected Princess of Wales about to make the front pages around the world. When he eventually appeared on stage, he was dressed “as a groom”, or so we were told. The bride was conspicuously absent, leaving the audience to deduce that a black sleeveless jacket, very tight trousers and a large satin cummerbund is an outfit in which men usually wait at the altar.

If I had seen my husband dressed like that at the altar, I would have turned round and fled down the aisle, scattering bridesmaids and tripping over my veil in my haste at escaping. The audience, I suppose, was meant to do a Sherlock Holmes and read the clues of the flower stuck in his buttonhole and the fact that he sang the words “I do” – a phrase that only has nuptial significance in the English-speaking world, and not in Moldova, say, or Lithuania.

To me, he looked like a bull-fighter wondering where in heaven’s name the bull was. Had these people any sense of the spirit of the show, or even real camp style as opposed to the tacky version, they would have put Mr Faniello into a shocking pink cat-suit with glitter on it. But no, they have to take it seriously, and then they wonder why nobody else does, right across Europe.

The most embarrassing part of it all is that, because Maltese culture is notoriously devoid of any sense of irony, the Maltese Eurovision obsessives don’t realise they are being laughed at by everyone else. They’re not aware, either, that keenness is off-putting (as keenness always is) and provokes, as in the school playground, the temptation to be nasty and reject those who show they want desperately to be your friend – or to win the Eurovision Song Contest.

All that lobbying, all that touring, all that campaigning, all that government interest – and all for a pathetic song contest. Why can’t we see what everyone else can see: that we are ridiculous and annoying, and that people might even begin to wonder whether we might not in fact be mad? Every year, Terry Wogan speaks for everyone else when he says, as the Maltese singer is about to perform, that “Malta so very much wants to win this contest”, “they’re so proud of their song”, or “they try so hard”. Unfortunately, as he pointed out in words that were all but drowned out by the sounds of hilarity in the living-room, “pity their idea of what’s modern stopped around 30 years ago”. Damn right it has. Thirty years ago, the Eurovision Song Contest was taken seriously. Now, it’s a camp show, and it has to be watched in the spirit of camp – not prancing, second-rate cabaret camp, but Queens of the Desert camp (that should give the Maltasong Board an idea for next year).

The high drama over stylists lost and found, however, was as nothing compared to what happened when the Malta contingent returned home. The chairman of the Maltasong board addressed a press conference flanked by his directors and Mr Faniello. Mr Faniello, instead of laughing it off, blamed “a technical fault in the earpiece of one of his backing singers”. Was there perhaps a pea in his shoe, too? Then he told us that he won’t rule out further participation in the Malta Song for Europe Festival. Well, maybe not – but if he won’t rule himself out, somebody else should do it.

The chairman of the board, in tones more suited to Watergate, addressed the nation. He blamed the Eurovision Contest itself, and called it “weird”. He said that other countries fared badly (oh, so that’s all right then). Well, obviously other countries did badly; you can’t have a contest in which everyone does well. He blamed the “changing trends” in the contest, as though these have crept upon us unawares, when the switch from seriousness to campy-jokey-bit-of-fun happened years ago. Even the former Iron Curtain nations have caught on that it’s meant to be amusing, and they lived completely cut off from everything for generations.

Then the chairman blamed “neighbour voting” and said, pathetically, “We would have expected Greece or Cyprus to give us at least some points, but this did not happen.” Oh, for heaven’s sake – on what basis, Mediterranean island solidarity? When Ira Losco – with her sexy lace cat-suit act – placed second, who were the neighbours then? Lordi didn’t win because of neighbour voting. They won because they’re a great act in the let’s-not-take-this-seriously spirit of the thing. Everyone voted for them. The trouble if we try this next year is that Maltese people consciously not taking themselves seriously are like Germans doing the same thing: it falls completely flat, like the German Texas act.

Mention of the word “sexy” reminds me of the worst thing about Mr Faniello’s performance. It wasn’t the flat notes or the backing-singer’s faulty earpiece. It was the fact that men should never, ever, ever, ever try to look sexy because they only end up looking ridiculous and off-putting. The Maltese idea of male sexiness appears to be the 1970s Spanish waiter cliché: both Mr Faniello and Mr Camilleri, singing for Switzerland, were in this genre.

Is there a woman alive who finds tight pants, little hippy gestures, and eye-flashes sexy? Well, show her to me. I’d be fascinated to meet her. The look doesn’t do anything to earn the respect of other men, either, but the very opposite. Appeal to neither men nor women, and that’s what you get – one vote from the grateful Albanians.

The Maltasong chairman announced that he and his board stand behind Mr Faniello. Who cares? They can stand behind him for the rest of time like a bunch of backing-singers with broken earpieces for all the rest of us down here in real life are bothered. They can put on pink cat-suits and golden wigs and turn themselves into next year’s act, and that would be better use of their time than all their dramatic angst and their ribbons-and-bows fussing and flapping. Prompted, no doubt, by the Watergate atmosphere of the press conference, one of the journalists asked the chairman whether he would step down because of the debacle. There was some humming and hawing and then he said that none of the members of the board was going to resign “at this point in time”, but if there was to be a call for them to do so, then they would not hesitate.

Such are the finest hours of men. But who can blame them? As he said, the run-up to the festival is “no walk in the park”, and they have been “drained” by the amount of work involved and the need to “fork out money from their own pockets”. Perhaps they should try being aid workers for a day.

That was as nothing compared to the rival press conference thrown by the former chairman. She was accompanied by the Maltese singer who performed under the Swiss flag, Keith Camilleri. Oh, what drama! The former chairman tore into the present chairman and his board, and accused them of sidelining Mr Camilleri, who was described by one reporter as “being on the verge of bursting into tears.” Asked whether he was there to represent Malta or Switzerland, he said: “Both”. He seems to be of the same mind-set as Arnold Cassola, who says that he is representing Malta in the Italian parliament.

There was more drama to follow. The former Maltasong chairman said that the tourism minister should apologise for ignoring her protégé in the airport arrivals lounge when he returned from Greece. According to the tourism minister’s version of the story, the former chairman put her arms around Mr Camilleri when she saw him try to approach, and yelled abuse in his direction. “I kept my calm,” the tourism minister said. He’d be useful in a missile crisis. Gosh, how I would have loved to have been there: an airport brawl involving the tourism minister, the present and former Maltasong chiefs, and a sobbing male singer. How thrilling.

Roll on next year: more screaming, flapping, fussing, great debates about pants, old-fashioned ideas, and the absolute refusal to look up camp’s third definition in the dictionary. While that limited part of the nation pursues its dream of winning the Eurovision Song Contest, bankrolled by the government, Joseph Calleja conquers the world stage in real music. And we barely notice.