Italy is not a democratic country.

At this rate we’ll never know. In any case I would tend to agree on the macroscopic scale: satire is an important tool as you have said.

Personally I think other countries where the satirists seem to be more involved with the issues (Le Iene in Italy to mention some) are more pro-active and effective. I cannot quite shake the feeling though that the way the U.K. media (and the commentator, OH GOD THE COMMENTATOR) acted towards the Eurovision is one aimed towards attaining a feel good factor by bringing others down. That is hardly mature nor constructive.

Rest assured that if the UK contestant were to win the Eurovision Song Contest, the piss-taking would increase. British humour/satire developed in parallel to British democracy: it is essentially a check on power.

And that is why there is no such thing as Maltese humour and Maltese humorous satire, because there was no historic development of democracy in Malta. In countries with no democracy, humour is of the ‘slipped on a banana skin variety’, with some pockets of black humour in private, and satire treated as a matter of great intellectual seriousness, as in the former Communist bloc, with all those ‘deep, dark satirists’ who bore the pants off everyone.

It is much easier to make fun than to work hard to win. Some of the points made might be right or might be wrong, I will reserve my judgement. What I can say for sure is that everything the British media says about a Eurovision song contest, where for the umpteenth time they have done badly, should be taken with a generous pinch of salt.