United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest 2006

Eurovision: Making Your Mind Up was the national final developed by the BBC in order to select the British entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2006. Six acts competed in a televised show on 4 March 2006 held at the BBC Television Centre in London and hosted by Terry Wogan and Natasha Kaplinsky. The winner was selected entirely through a public vote.

BBC collaborated with radio director and Fame Academy judge, Richard Park, to compile a shortlist of entries and select six finalists to compete in the national final.[1][2] An additional entry route was provided to Park and the BBC by BBC Radio 2's Sold On Song competition which ran an open submission process where a professional panel including Mike Batt, Simon Webbe, Hugh Goldsmith (founder of Innocent Records) and Radio 2's Colin Martin and Mark Hagen selected the winning song from the received submissions.[3] From the ten shortlisted songs, "I Wanna Man" written by Toby Jarvis was selected by the panel as the winner.[4]

The six competing songs for the national final were announced on 16 February 2006 but did not include Radio 2's submission.[2]

Six acts compete in the televised final on 4 March 2006. A public vote consisting of regional televoting, online voting and SMS voting selected the winner, "Teenage Life" performed by Daz Sampson. Each region awarded 2, 4, 6, 8 and 12 points to their top five songs. An additional set of votes were the results of the online vote, which had a weighting equal to the votes of a single region. Celebrities delivered these results in a deliberate echo of the Eurovision Song Contest itself. The SMS vote was awarded based on the percentage of votes each song achieved. For example, if a song gained 10% of the SMS vote, then that entry would be awarded 10 points.

A panel of experts provided feedback regarding the songs during the show. The panel consisted of Kelly Osbourne (singer), Jonathan Ross (radio and television show host), Fearne Cotton (television presenter) and Bruno Tonioli (Strictly Come Dancing panelist). When asked to predict the winner, Osbourne and Ross opted for Daz Sampson whilst Cotton and Tonioli opted for Antony Costa.

Prior to the broadcast of the final, claims were made by Eurovision news website Oikotimes that "Teenage Life" (which eventually won), and "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 BBC responded with a rebuttal of the claims, stating that the original version of "Teenage Life" was released by Spacekats in March 2004 on the Riff Raff label through Juno Records, only as a 'White Label' record. Therefore the song complies with EBU rules.[5]

"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). Therefore, for the performance at Eurovision, the vocals were sung live by the dancers. One of the dancers were replaced due to the complications that would have been involved in taking her to the event.