Ah, don’t you just love the soap opera which is the Eurovision – the drama, the tears, the shouting matches at the airport?

If your answer to this is no, and you are heartily sick of the whole subject, quick! Turn the page now – this article could be hazardous to your health.

If anyone is still reading this – what can I say?

You can have a great song and sing it brilliantly.

You can have a mediocre song, but give an amazing performance.

But no one can get away with singing a lame song badly.

Unfortunately, as we all could see while watching the Eurovision, something vital was missing from Fabrizio Faniello’s performance. There was no energy; his voice was weak, and worst of all he (or the male backing vocalist, or both of them) was singing flat. It was painful to our ears. Most of all, the poor guy looked unhappy.

It was therefore rather bizarre to watch Bla Agenda, Bondiplus and attend a press conference by the MaltaSong board where everyone involved was giving helpless shrugs and lamenting, “we don’t know what went wrong”.

As one SMS message scrolled across the screen during a TV programme succinctly put it, “mela Malta kulhadd trux!” (“so the whole country must be deaf!”)

The public has a genuine affection for Fabrizio, but even his most fervent fans agreed that this was not exactly the greatest performance of his career. And, although he finally admitted to “a few flat notes” (but only after repeated questioning by the press), I think Fabrizio would have been wiser to have simply said, “Look, I’m sorry, I screwed up, I could have sung it better.” End of story and let’s move on. His adoring public would have loved him even more for being sincere.

As it is, the general feeling is that we are sore losers, grasping at any straw that floats our way.

The excuses, the farfetched, convoluted explanations, the getting ourselves all tied up in knots over the choice of outfit, the faulty monitor, an inability to dance and sing at the same time (he wasn’t exactly doing acrobatics on stage, and by the way, wasn’t he dancing when he performed Another Summer Night?) – oh please! I’m surprised no one said it was because Fabrizio forgot to wear his lucky underpants that night.

Then there was the finger pointing at those “upstarts” Lordi who infiltrated the sacred halls of the plastic pop world and had the sheer nerve to obtain so many votes (which by right should have come to us) and actually had the gall to win with a heavy metal song! Gasp! Whatever next?! Someone hand me my smelling salts.

(By the way, Lordi’s song Hard Rock Halleluiah is already top of the charts throughout Europe).

Many viewers have remarked that Fabrizio was not his usual self on the night. (Maybe one day when this is all over he will spill the beans about what really happened like William Mangion, Debbie Scerri and Miriam Christine did before him. My gut feeling tells me that there were too many cooks, which is why we ended up with a kawlata).

And yet, as devastated as he must feel, life, as we know it, will really go on. I promise.

Because for me, the most telling point that has come out of all this goes beyond the pop culture phenomenon which is the Eurovision. The truth is – taking responsibility for failure to deliver is almost unheard of in this country. Heck, even our politicians are always trying to blame the disastrous decisions they take on someone else.

Meanwhile, we are still tapping our fingers and waiting for someone to be man enough to say mea culpa, so that we can start arguing about something else for a change. After all, the World Cup is sure to keep us at each other’s throats for a good few weeks.

I can’t wait.