The Eurovision Song Contest

I managed to perform my usual trick with the Eurovision Song contest switching on a couple of minutes before the 30 second recaps of each song; so much better than the whole thing :-).

Using that I made a varied selection of about five I thought weren't that bad or might well appeal to the masses. Although it was difficult to judge the first two what with Graham prattling on over the top of them. Yes we get it dial the number for the one we want; yeesh we do have X-factor you know

So ones I liked: Austria, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Serbia

and ones I thought might do well: Denmark, Ireland, Romania, Russia, Sweden

Note I'm not including our entrant here, not because I wouldn't be able to vote for and not because I didn't like it; but because I couldn't hear it. I'm unsure what happened but the boys were drowned out by their music. Oh and a special mention to Moldova; you crazy, crazy people.

Time to tally all the votes, but that means having to endure enjoy Mr Jan Delay. How many acts do you see where it would be improved by removing the main vocalist? Neither song went anywhere, we got a prelude and just as you thought the song would kick off with a key change or such we went straight back to what we'd just heard. He himself was pretty inaudible with his backing singers doing a better job of projection; the music wasn't bad either. So just kick him off then.

Oh at last the votes with each scorer doing their own bit to hog the limelight. I thought I'd act as the inner voice of the women receiving them and thus spent most of my time going "Yeah yeah but can you give us the scores now?" Except for the German scorer for which it was "Hah hah it's me here and not you".

But anyway the votes and this year we had a different scoring system. 50%  of the vote from the general public and 50% from each a professional board of judges in each country. At last an end to the blatant favouritism that blights this show. No more having one country simply voting for its neighbours or whoever it wants to curry favour with this will be a show judged on the merits of its performers for once.

Needless to say a country still tended to hand out the top marks to their neighbours, but there were a couple of surprise that indicate this system at least is tipping the right way. Still had a few boos as some countries awarded one of their top three to a country that no-one else had.

At the end of the 41st vote Azerbaijan was 35 points ahead; with only two remaining votes to come in and a maximum of 24 they'd won. It did take them until the end of the 42nd vote to realise this though - I blame the free booze :-)

How did my picks do? Out of a 25 places
Austria 18
Estonia 24
Germany 10
Hungary 22
Serbia 14

Hey I managed one in the top ten yay me. As for the others

Denmark 5
Ireland 8
Romania 17
Russia 16
Sweden 3

Hot damn three in the top ten with one in the top three. Let's see how well I do next year.