United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest 2006
[2] The BBC has traditionally organised a national final featuring a competition among several artists and songs to choose its entry for Eurovision.[4] The BBC collaborated with Magic Radio programme director and Fame Academy judge, Richard Park, to select six finalists to compete in the national final.Televotes cast via mobile phones and SMS were also converted to points and awarded based on the percentage each song achieved.[11] Prior to the national final, Eurovision news website Oikotimes claimed that the songs "Teenage Life" and "It's a Beautiful Thing" (both of which eventually placed in the top two) would be disqualified from the competition as they had been commercially released before 1 October 2005.[13] The BBC later responded by stating that both songs comply with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) rules as the original version of "Teenage Life" was released under Daz Sampson's stage name Spacekats only as a white label record, while "It's a Beautiful Thing" was never commercially released as it wasn't available legally on the Internet.[14] According to Eurovision rules, all nations with the exceptions of the host country, the "Big Four" (France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom) and the ten highest placed finishers in the 2005 contest are required to qualify from the semi-final in order to compete for the final; the top ten countries from the semi-final progress to the final.[15] The British performance featured Daz Sampson, joined by five dancers/backing vocalists dressed in school uniform, performing on a multicoloured stage which featured props, including desks which papers were thrown out from, and a blackboard with Sampson's name written on, with the background displaying the words "class", "school", "history", and "book".