Webber says Eurovision show is 'poison chalice'

Not only is Andrew Lloyd Webber penning the next Eurovision song entry, but he's also embarking on an X Factor-style quest to track down the act who's going to sing it. He spoke to Newsbeat about whether the re-vamped show will make Eurovision cooler, what we can expect from the song and why the task is a poison chalice.

Are you feeling apprehensive about it because we seem to be a bit jinxed with Eurovision?

It's the biggest poison chalice I've ever been given in my career. I quite like poison chalices and this is a particularly interesting brew if you ask me.

Do you think you can make a song good enough to soften the voters across Europe who like to give us nil points?

It will come down in the end to whether or not the whole thing is still political or not.

I'm not going to do anything other than try and get the best song and the best act.

Whether we win or not in a way is not really the point, providing we've got a really great song. Over the years Eurovision has come up with an awful lot of very good songs and they haven't necessarily won it.

If we get a decent act and hopefully write a good song and I get a good lyricist with me, who knows?

Are you going to write the song before you find the person - or the other way round?

I would like to get well into the whole audition and selection process before I even think of writing a song because I don't really know who I'm going to find or what I'm going to find.

Lord Webber, Graham Norton and the I'd Do Anything team

If I find someone who's got a spectacular voice in a certain direction, then you want to write for that. Who knows - it could be a boy band? I'm going to keep completely open-minded.

Do you think doing the X Factor-style competition might make it seem cooler?

People might feel that they're more in touch with it than the have been in the past. I really want to be completely open-minded. For example, if a boy band came and one of the boys was good, I'm not going to rule out the possibility of saying 'I want to take that band member and put them with someone else'.

If we had been casting a girl band out of the Oliver programme I did, there were four girls who came out through that programme who would be a match for Girls Aloud any time of the day.

So would you take a celebrity if they auditioned?

Yes, if it was the right one, I would. Cliff - where are you?

Should we expect a show tune or will it be more poppy?

I'm quite proud of the fact that most of my musicals have had big pop hits out of them and therefore I'm going to write this for the charts - I'm not going to write it as if it's a show song.

Unless the impossible happens - if there was a singer who came through who was really strong and wanted to do something which was essentially very dramatic.

This song is never going to appear in a musical so it's got to stand on its own little two feet.

How long do people have to get in touch?

The closing date is 21 November, so it's not very long - it's only about three weeks.