Cheryl Baker and Jay Aston, who won Eurovision for the UK with Bucks Fizz in 1981, have described the country’s 2026 entry Look Mum No Computer as “marmite”.
The pair, who now perform as The Fizz, are best known for their Eurovision-winning performance of Making Your Mind Up, which saw the group’s male members rip off the female members’ colourful skirts at the conclusion of the song’s chorus.
Hoping to repeat Bucks Fizz’s heroics in Dublin is this year’s UK entrant Look Mum No Computer, real name Sam Battle, with his song Eins, Zwei, Drei, who will perform in Saturday’s grand final at the Wiener Stadthalle in Vienna, Austria, having appeared in Thursday’s semi-final.
Baker said: “I like it, I think it’s really good, but I think it’s a bit like Marmite, I think there’s a few people that can’t bear it.”
Aston added: “It’s definitely a marmite job, you either love it or you hate it, it’s definitely out of the box, and I think it’s quite different, obviously, to what we’ve been sending, but sometimes you have to do something a bit more radical.
“We wish him every luck, it’s just how it goes on the night, you never really know.”
Aston added that “singing it in German” was one of the elements making it a love or hate track, as well as the fact that Battle is “a bit of a wacky character”.
Battle is best known for his YouTube career, which began in 2013 and sees him make his own quirky musical instruments, including an organ from Furby toys and a triple oscillator synthesiser made out of Nintendo Game Boy consoles.
The UK’s last three Eurovision entrants, Remember Monday, Olly Alexander and Mae Muller, all failed to receive a single point from the public vote, and Aston said this was the fault of the songs not the singers.
She said: “We haven’t had good enough songs, I reckon it’s just you’ve got to have a really good song, good performance, good singer.
“And if you lose one of those elements, then, in particular the song, then you know you’re not going to do very well.”
Baker added that she thought Eurovision is “so much better now”, adding that it is “bigger, brighter, brassier”.
Asked about protests against Israel’s inclusion amid its actions in Gaza – including Ireland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Spain and Slovenia boycotting Eurovision – Baker said it has “always been political”, claiming the IRA (Irish Republican Army) “threatened to disrupt” their contest.
She added: “We had armed guards on our rooms because they feared for our lives, so there’s always politics in it, and why wouldn’t there be?
“If you think about it, Eurovision is the biggest TV stage in the world, more people watch it than anything else, so if you want to put across a political statement, it’s the perfect place to do it.”
Baker and Aston were speaking after they released a new single called A Crazy Shot In The Dark to celebrate 45 years since their Eurovision win.
