Verka Serduchka, is a Ukrainian comedian and pop and dance singer. In the role of Serduchka, he represented Ukraine in the Eurovision Song Contest 2007 and finished in second place. In his career Serduchka has sold over 600,000 records in Ukraine.
In 1990, Andriy Danylko started to create the character Verka Serduchka, a flamboyant middle-aged female railroad car steward from a rural family. At a humor contest in Poltava on 4 January 1991, he presented Verka Serduchka publicly for the first time. He invented the character's name by combining the randomly picked first name Verka and the last name of a former school classmate, Anya Serduk.
Apart from pop and dance numbers, Danylko has also performed ambient musical compositions under his real name. His popularity, however, is firmly established on the stage personality of Verka Serduchka, and most of his performances are done under this stage name.
Following Verka Serduchka, Danylko created other characters, such as a militsioner, a soldier and a female ballet dancer. In such a fashion, the Danylko Theater was established, touring cities of Russia and Ukraine. In 2002, Danylko, along with his group, toured in the CIS and Baltic countries, showing the program "I am a Revolution" for the whole year. The next year, soon after the Danylko Theater's concert tour, "I Was Born for Love", Andriy Danylko received the title of Honored Artist of Ukraine.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s he hosted a talk show called "SV-show" ("SV" is an abbreviation for Russian: Спальный Вагон, "Spalniy Vagon", which means sleeping car) on various Ukrainian television channels.
Verka Serduchka was chosen to represent Ukraine at the Eurovision Song Contest 2007 in Helsinki, Finland, with the song "Dancing Lasha Tumbai", and the performance finished in second place. Ukraine had been guaranteed an appearance in the final because of the top-ten finish of the previous year's Ukrainian representative, Tina Karol, with her song "Show Me Your Love".
The participation of Andriy Danylko in Eurovision was not without controversy in Ukraine. One of the nationwide FM radio stations organized a protest action in February 2007 to express their disapproval with the selection of Serduchka to represent the country. Some Ukrainians and even members of the Ukrainian Parliament expressed their disapproval with Serduchka's participation in the contest, because they saw it as "grotesque and vulgar".
Serduchka's song "Dancing Lasha Tumbai" was sung in 4 languages: German, English, Ukrainian, and Russian. The invented words "lasha tumbai" caused some controversy after the performance, because many people noted the phrase's similarity to "Russia Goodbye". In early publicity appearances, Serduchka claimed that "lasha tumbai" was an expression in the Mongolian language for "whipped cream". However, several Mongols on a talk show by Channel One (Russia), which was shown just before the Eurovision Song Contest 2007, stated that there is no phrase "lasha tumbai" in their language, and one of them pronounced the correct Mongolian phrase for "whipped cream". The Mongolian embassy in Moscow also said that "lasha tumbai" was total gibberish.
During the performance, Verka Serduchka wore clothes made by the famous company Dolce & Gabanna.[citation needed]
The single for "Dancing Lasha Tumbai" reached #6 in the French charts and went on to be #28 on The Official UK Singles Chart on 20 May 2007. This was the first time a non-UK non-winning Eurovision entry had made UK charts since 1974.
Danylko later made a brief phone-in appearance on the BBC's The Graham Norton Show, in which his comments made no sense whatsoever. Another call was made, but with a translator in the audience. In this instance, Danylko told guest Andrew Lloyd Webber he was "rubbish". However, in an interview with Andrew Williams in the 60 Seconds column of metro.co.uk (30 July 2007), Danylko clarified his meaning:
AW: Why did you call Andrew Lloyd Webber ‘rubbish’ on The Graham Norton Show? AD: Someone interpreted Serduchka wrongly. I meant I watched "Cats: the Musical" on TV. It was boring. You should watch a musical on the stage. Don't watch "Cats" on TV.
In the same interview, he stated that "lasha tumbai" was a somewhat made-up phrase that sounds like the Mongolian phrase for "milkshake" and that many Russians nevertheless managed to interpret it as saying "Russia goodbye!".
In 2011, a writer from British newspaper The Guardian described "Dancing Lasha Tumbai" as the "best song never to win Eurovision" before going on to describe Serduchka as "an oven-ready Christopher Biggins".
