The King of Romance, Engelbert Humperdinck has been chosen to sing for the United Kingdom at this year's Eurovision Song Contest. The chosen song has not yet been announced but the 75 year-old crooner will be recording it in Los Angeles, Nashville and London, according to Bbc and it will be written by the Grammy award winning Martin Terefe and the Ivor Novello award-winning Sacha Skarbek - the man partly responsible for writing James Blunt's hit song 'You're Beautiful.'
The last time Humperdinck was in the UK charts was 40 years ago, when he released 'Too Beautiful to Last' and he is best known for the song 'Release Me,' which famously kept THE BEATLES' 'Strawberry Fields Forever' from number one in 1967. Engelbert has said that it's "an absolute honour" to be taking part in the Eurovision Song Contest but opinion amongst fans of the long-running competition seem to have mixed opinions. The music journalist Simon Price said, via his Twitter page "Who killed A Song For Europe? Why have we let a handful of Nathan Barleys at the Bbc hand-pick Engelbert Humperdinck as a tired kitsch joke?" And the TV producer Jo Bunting, referring to the fact that Humperdinck's name was trending on the social media site, said "Assumed Engelbert Humperdinck had died. But it's much much worse than that."