United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest 2006

On 4 March 2006, six artists competed to win Making Your Mind Up, the annual BBC television show which sees the selection of the United Kingdom's entry for the Eurovision Song Contest. The show was hosted by Terry Wogan and Natasha Kaplinsky.

Opinions on each song and performance were given by a panel consisting of four celebrities: singer Kelly Osbourne, radio and television show host Jonathan Ross, television presenter Fearne Cotton, and Strictly Come Dancing panellist Bruno Tonioli. When asked to predict the winner, Osbourne and Ross thought Daz Sampson would win whilst Cotton and Tonioli opted for Antony Costa.

The winner was decided by a combination of regional televoting, internet voting and text voting. Each region awarded 2, 4, 6, 8 and 12 points to the five most popular songs, with votes from the internet being counted as an additional region for this purpose. Celebrities delivered these results in a deliberate echo of the Eurovision Song Contest itself. After the regional votes, each song's score was 'topped up' with one point for each percentage of the text votes received.

Even prior to the actual broadcast of the show, allegations emerged that both the winning song, Teenage Life, and the runner-up, It's a Beautiful Thing, had both been commercially released prior to 1 October 2005, which would disqualify either song from representing the UK under European Broadcasting Union (EBU) rules. The claims were made by a Eurovision news website www.oikotimes.com, although the BBC responded with a rebuttal of the claims.[1]

The original version of Teenage Life was released by Spacekats in March 2004 on the Riff Raff label through Juno Records. It was, and still is, commercially available although only as a 'White Label' record. The BBC maintain that as the song is only available as a 'White Label' it therefore complies with EBU rules.

Teenage Life includes a choir of young girls and during the performance on Making Your Mind Up their voices were mimed by older dancers. Such a performance would fall foul of EBU rules which prohibits miming and restricts the number of performers allowed on stage (i.e. no choirs). For the performance at the Eurovision, the vocals were sung live by the dancers. One of the dancers was replaced due to the complications that would have been involved in taking her to the event.