Some people would pay almost anything to get their choice of Eurovision contestant into the final instalments of You're a Star. Why do they do it, asks Shane Hegarty
Last week, 332,000 votes were cast after the latest instalment of You're A Star. One viewer, Paul Flanagan, cast 100 of them, although 25 were bounced back. His wife cast a further 50. Between them, he reckons, they have spent about €700 in having their say on who represents Ireland at this year's Eurovision Song Contest. Is he crazy?
"Not really. It's not much, €100 a week. Although I suppose it is a bit when you think about it . . ."
Every cent has been spent on backing Shauna and Caoimhe McIlhinney, 16-year-old twins from Glanmire, Co Cork. They have been derided by the show's judges, but backed by the public. For all the evidence each week that their talent doesn't quite match their enthusiasm, they have hung in there. Their parents have engaged in a war of words with the showbusiness world. Their merits are now regularly debated on RTÉ Radio's Liveline.
"I don't like the way the judges treat them," says Paul, a family friend, but who has never met the girls. "They're not popstars, but they're not supposed to be. They're supposed to be Eurovision stars, and if they got a bit of backing and a bit of training they'd be great." Last week was the first time Paul attended the live event at The Helix in Dublin.
As the credits rolled on the first part of the show, he says, the audience of 1,500 - each of whom paid €15-25 for the privilege of being there - took their mobile phones out and began texting their votes.
It should have been a good week for the people behind You're A Star. Last Sunday's show was watched by 650,000 viewers - 42 per cent of the estimated available audience - and attracted 332,000 votes. The show is gathering pace as a light entertainment phenomenon.
Instead, they've had a rather trying time. There have been complaints of votes not being registered and of discrepancies in the costs. There have also been stories of mass voting and voting campaigns.
"The numbers voting exceeded expectations long ago," says RTÉ's Head of Variety Kevin Lenihan. Having last week delayed the live result until just before midnight, from this week on, the results will now be announced on Monday mornings. Given that each vote costs up to 60 cent, it has led to accusations of greed. Not so, he says. The Irish, it turns out, have been voting by text in twice the numbers experienced in any similar programme elsewhere in the world, and it has caught the network providers on the hop and they've been unable to cope.
"The voting window stays the same, only the time given to registering the vote has changed. The money doesn't matter a hoot, because if the integrity of the voting is lost, then the show is lost," says Lenihan.
There has been a student campaign encouraging people to vote for the twins. If a campaign can have A Nation Once Again voted the world's favourite song in a BBC poll, goes the thinking, then getting two girls on a plane to Riga should be no problem.
"I don't believe the impact of campaigns," adds Lenihan.
"The people who deal with the statistics will insist that you need monstrous numbers of mass voting to have an impact. Even if families are voting en masse, it tends to cancel each other out across contestant. I think that there's a lot of people wasting a lot of money."
While it would be possible to limit votes to one text per mobile, Eircom Response, the supplier of the fixed line voting, says it would not be possible to ensure that with land-line calls. According to spokeswoman Nuala Buttner, it would rely on caller-ID being displayed, and ex-directory phones would circumvent this. Besides, she says, all a caller has to do to prevent their number appearing on the phone they are calling is to dial 141 before the number.
"We wouldn't be able to apply restrictions to everybody, so it wouldn't be fair to apply them at all."
In Glanmire, meanwhile, as in the home towns of the other contestants, there has been active campaigning. The McIlhinney twins have visited schools, there are posters in windows, the local paper is backing them all the way.
They are now in the final six. "I'm just trusting that the cream of the crop will always rise to the top, otherwise I'd just go under," says Lynda McQuaid, You're A Star producer/director and someone who has not had a day off since Christmas.
"What I would consider to be the top four or five have always come in topping the poll. The average Joe Bloggs voting has made the difference between the mass voting and the quality votes, the individual vote."
Is there no worry that the result the judges dread may transpire?
"Let me put it this way," says McQuaid, "if Ireland is represented at the Eurovision by Simon Casey, Lisa Bresnan, Michael Leonard, Mickey Harte or Brian Ormond, then we will be very well represented."
You're a Star runs on Sundays on RTÉ 1, at 8 p.m. Results time has been changed since The Irish Times Magazine went to press: now scheduled for RTÉ 1 television and 2FM radio on Monday morning at 8 a.m., repeated on Monday evening at 9.30 p.m. on RTÉ 1