Hello and welcome to another episode of More or Less, the most statistically savvy show on the schedule.

This week we investigate the data behind the prosecution of gay men in Victorian Britain.

We ask whether our loyal listeners should be taking statins,

and addressing the blood pressure raising controversy of last week's show,

we figure out how to pronounce the name of a certain Chinese telecoms firm.

But first, we turn our attention to the continent, to one of the world's greatest exercises

of democratic principles. No, no, not the elections for the Parliament of the European Union,

Eurovision. This was the UK's entry, and it did extremely badly. Out of 26 hopefuls,

it finished in a solid last place. Some people have claimed that Europe has punished us for the

whole Brexit thing. But these are people with short memories. The UK has an almost unblemished record

of utter Eurovision failure over many years. We last won in 1997. I don't think Shalum McDonald

was even born then, and we've tended to languish near the bottom of the table ever since. So what's

going wrong? Charlotte has been speaking to someone who's been looking at the statistics to see what

characteristics winning songs have. The data show him, he claims, exactly what the UK is doing wrong.

Here's Charlotte. So we've managed to dig out the more or less grand piano.

Here it is. Chris, do you want to tell us your full name?

I'm Chris Lockery. I am a writer, and I write a lot about pop music.

So we bought you here today because basically you think that by looking at the stats,

you've managed to spot some trends of winners and losers, and you think the UK in particular keeps

making some mistakes with this entry. Yeah, we're slightly out of step with the competition

as it stands. So whenever you mention your origin to people in the UK, they instantly their minds

go to Abba. They go to Box Fizz, and obviously they go to our last winner in 97, which is Katrina

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