John Oliver had a favorite performer in this year’s Eurovision contest.
On HBO’s Last Week Tonight, the host opened the show by addressing the annual international music competition, which crowned its latest winner this weekend.
“The Eurovision Song Contest took place amid a slew of controversies, from calls for boycotts over Israel’s participation to the last-minute elimination of this Dutch contestant for alleged unlawful threats backstage,” Oliver said. “It was a lot of serious news around what is usually a magnificently silly competition, which to be fair still had some striking contestants, from Baby Lasagna from Croatia to Bambi Thug from Ireland to my absolute favorite, this guy from Finland.”
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Oliver then played a clip of Finnish competitor Windows95man, who kicked off his performance of his song “No Rules!” while inside a large egg covered in denim. Watch the full performance below.
Oliver’s take: “Yes! 14,000 out of 10. A man with flowing blonde locks and pervert glasses hatching out of a denim egg? It’s like Botticelli’s Birth of Venus — only this time, it’s actually good.”
He went on to describe the performer (real name: Teemu Keisteri).
“The name of that artist — and I do mean artist — is Windows95man,” Oliver said. “His stage costume consists of a Windows95 T-shirt, hat and, importantly, not much else, which is why performances basically consisted of doing an extended Austin Powers bit. But maybe the best thing about Windows95man — other than his name, face outfit and partial nudity — is that during Finland’s contest to pick its representative at Eurovision, the jury ranked him dead last. But he took the audience vote by such a large margin, he won anyway — which makes sense to me. The people of Finland are naturals at ski jumping, sauna and knowing a fucking star when they see one.
“I don’t know what their other contestants were like, but I highly doubt that they had stagecraft like a pair of jean shorts descending from the ceiling followed by this,” he added. showing the bit where Windows95man shoots fireworks out of what looks like rope attached to his jean shorts after he puts them on.
“Fuck all other music. It is dead to me now,” Oliver said.
He then referred to some lyrics from the song: “To quote a great poet clad in exploding denim: ‘I don’t care what’s wrong or right, it’s how I live my life,’ and that is my champion right there.”
Because Last Week Tonight tapes on Saturdays, Oliver did not know the outcome when Sunday’s episode was recorded. But he was likely disappointed as Swiss performer Nemo won the competition, while Window95man came in 19th place.
