Column | I will survive

When Cornald Maas and Jan Smit recently asked me what I’m going to do next year after my last cabaret performance, I told the expert gentlemen that I hope to get a nice solo at the Scapino Ballet. And if that ambitious dance company doesn’t want me, I’ll talk to the Concertgebouw Orchestra. I want to become a concertmaster there. While I am also talking to Edwin van der Sar and Klaas-Jan Huntelaar from Ajax because that club yearns for a skillful scoring striker after the last disaster season.

“Maybe you will join Daley Blind in the team,” suggested Jan Smit, “he has now been asked back by Ajax. Just like Sjakie Swart, Klaas Nuninga and Wesley Sneijder.” That will indeed tremble for the opponents next season.

I asked how Jan & Cornald came across the remarkable duo Mia & Dion. That turned out to have been mainly the work of the invincible Duncan Laurence. He had made the choice. He knew Dion as a pizza courier and Mia was behind the cash register at his supermarket. And then he thought: those two seem like a nice duo to me. Young, energetic and enthusiastic.

And that is typical Duncan. He will experiment with such a duo. He first had a song written by his laptop. That’s right: artificial intelligence. Thrown in his winning song from last year and asked the hard drive to make something like this again.

Only he had forgotten to check the correct pitch. Beginner mistake. It was also his first Eurovision song contest for that laptop. But that was recovered fairly quickly. When the performance turned out to be a bit dark and reformed, he and his team put the set on a turntable.

Team? Yes, about forty specialists swirled around the duo. Nail polish consultants, eye shadow mixers, clothing consultants, fanatical dietitians, vegan chefs, oat milk inspectors, shoelace meters, emotion-driven psychologists, ordinary production workers, sound yo-yos, light freaks, camera fetishists plus a whole crew of unavoidable broadcast bigwigs with a pass around the neck.

And Duncan was satisfied afterwards. Just like Cornald & Jan, who have had it a bit with those helmsmen who are all shouting from the shore that it was bad.

What I thought of it? I said I hadn’t seen it. That seemed like a safe answer. Then they asked if the rumor is true that I will also go to SBS next year. Also? Yes, in their eyes I was still the only believer from the left-wing church who did not succumb to the big money of uncle John de Mol. Suddenly I saw myself at SBS in a docusoap in which I visit a doctor in a hospital with my wife. And then that doctor tells me that I only have two months to live, after which she congratulates the viewers on the fact that they will soon be rid of me.

And then Cornald whispered whether I wanted to put my dance, violin and football plans on hold for a while and whether I would like to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest next year.

“I can’t sing,” I said modestly.

“It’s all right,” laughed Jan, “we’ll take some crazy jackets, trousers, hats and caps from King Charles’ dressing-up box, you’ll get a scepter and a silver ball in your hands, you’ll come on stage in a golden carriage that is pulled by ninety bronzed sailors and on your trouser leg we embroider a bunny as a reminder of Flappie. So did crazy Camilla. She had her shelter dogs depicted on her dress. And on her panties the image of Diana, but that’s a secret. Furthermore, there is always a bishop with the text in front of you and you sing it as spontaneously as possible. Hard beats and the basis is ‘I will survive!’”

I thought of Vincent van Gogh, who made seventy colorful paintings in the last seventy days of his life and then shot himself.

Then I said to Cornald & Jan: “I’ll do it!”

A growling applause sounded through Hilversum.