Eurovision
How many people, I wonder, were as sad as me and spent all week looking forward to that most fantastic of all comedy shows - the Eurovision song contest? 
I had a thoroughly enjoyable evening, although it was a little sad that for the first time ever I wasn’t able to watch it with my sister. She kept in touch throughout the competition though to be updated on what Wogan was saying and to give us a flavour of the German commentary. The German presenter was apparently taking things quite seriously, and after the UK entry announced in surprise, “What is happening? The British have actually entered a decent song!”
To be fair to Andy Abrahams, it was actually a better song than we have had for the last three years, which is as far back as I can remember. He was, of course, doomed to failure before he even opened his mouth. Not just because of the political nature of the voting, I hastened to add. Without meaning to be offensive, I think it was highly unlikely that most of Eastern Europe was going to vote for a black singer.
In terms of the entries, I voted for Denmark in the end because I thought it was cheerful easy listening and the German entry was rubbish. I also quite liked the controversially in English French effort, as I felt it was different. My money had actually been on Latvia to win as I thought dressing up as pirates made them stand out, and the tune was also quite catchy. I was utterly astounded by how many people voted for Armenia and Azerbaijan! I was also doubtful as to whether those countries are actually in Europe, my atlas classing them as Asia. Of course, they are probably closer to Europe than Israel so I guess it doesn’t really matter 
I didn’t think the Russian entry, which ultimately won, was too bad. The song wasn’t terribly memorable, but the skating in the middle was quite cool and the singer wasn’t bad looking compared to some of the horrors the night produced. The Polish girl was highly unattractive, as was the Portuguese representative, and the guy who sang for Turkey looked so much like an incarnation of Satan that I chose his song as the optimum time to make a round of tea The Russians weren’t the best by any stretch of the imagination, but if they had the power to control my fuel supply then I guess I’d have voted for them too…
The commentary from Wogan seemed a little subdued this year. He seemed too sober to be genuinely funny, which was a shame as he’s normally the highlight of the evening. By the end he actually sounded so hacked off that I’m not sure he’ll be going back to cover it next year 
That’s rather sad - I can’t imagine anyone else who would do so good a job, except possibly Simon Cowell who wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole He also made the salient point as the credits rolled that he wondered how much longer the Western European countries would continue to bother entering. The Belgians seemed pretty upset this year to be booted out, and Malta were a particularly notable exception from the scoreboard, so who knows.
Tags: eurovision