With its strange fashions and slippery grasp of English, the annual Eurovision Song Contest has become a must-see for anyone who loves the camp and the kitsch.

But it wasn’t always so, as Brighton-based writing team Brian Mitchell and Joseph Nixon discovered when they watched a Eurovision documentary a few years ago.

“Up to and including Sandie Shaw’s entry [in 1967] people took Eurovision really seriously,” says Mitchell. “It was a big technical achievement – to link up different television stations around Europe – and the songwriting aspect of it was taken very seriously too. Serge Gainsbourg wrote a song [Poupee De Cire, Poupee De Son for Luxembourg] for the 1965 competition.”

Inspired by this history, the pair wrote a play based around a fictional competition set in Copenhagen in 1966, but after a couple of airings as a work-in-progress, the piece was left to gather dust in a drawer.

“We were looking through some of our old stuff and thought that we wanted to do something with this,” says Mitchell.

“There were a lot of opportunities for fake lyrics and funny song entries with Eurovision. But the play is really about artistic collaboration and how it can end up fraying nerves and driving people mad.

“Eurovision is about ephemera, which is all taken so seriously. We asked, what if the songwriting team, singer and her manager all fell out during the contest?

“Nobody wants to drop out in case the others make it without them, so they are stuck in this situation where they are becoming each other’s downfall.

“I have a gallows sense of humour, so I think it is a comedy, although it is quite grim. It was a lovely process finding this old stuff and finally finishing it.”

The only song comes from Brighton Beach Boy Steven Wrigley, who wrote an original number to close the hour-long play.

“He wrote the music and lyrics from a few suggestions we made,” says Mitchell. “It is great. It is such an accurate pastiche of a Eurovision song.”

Unusually for Mitchell and Nixon they have handed the over project to Otherplace Productions director Jeremy Pike.

“He consulted with me a lot at the beginning but since then it has been hands off,” says Mitchell. “I’ve been incredibly busy and couldn’t take any time off. The first time I see it will be the first night.”

For the Fringe the pair have also been working with Joanna Neary on her Komedia show Same Time Next Week, and Brian is bringing his Radio Reverb show to the Latest Music Bar in Up Yours To The Festival.

At the same time they are working with theatre company New Perspectives on Those Magnificent Men, a play about the plucky British flight pioneers which is going on a 12-week national tour.

With so much going on, long- time festival favourite The Ornate Johnsons, a comedy troupe Mitchell and Nixon write for and Mitchell also stars in, are not going to be at this year’s Fringe.

“At the moment we are concentrating on theatre, which is my first love,” says Mitchell. “It’s always very satisfying putting a large-scale piece on, even if no-one likes it.”

  • Eurovision will also be performed at Upstairs At Three And Ten as part of the Brighton Festival Fringe from Monday, May 4 to Wednesday, May 6, and on Saturday, May 23, from 8.30pm.
  • 7.30pm, £10/£8, 07800 983290