How did Ollie get no points in the public vote for Eurovision?

[FatAndFiftySomething]

I don’t mean ‘because people didn’t like his song’, I mean, literally how do the voting points work?

I’ve googled and not found an answer. It’s not percentages as some people got a few hundred.

Is it like 1 point per thousand public votes (or whatever the numbers are ) and he didn’t reach 1000 votes from any single country?

I think it was a massive miscalculation that because Eurovision has a large gay following this staging would automatically be a vote winner. Quite insulting really.

I think it was just a poor song. It didn’t have broad appeal and felt out of touch with the time period we’re in relating to the type of music and way it was staged. I also can’t remember the lyrics, which is saying something as usually I get songs stuck in my head pretty easily. There is an element of political voting and always has been, but also it’s about music that suits the audience and they didn’t rate this song compared to the others.

As I understand it, its the same method as the jury vote but all the scores are added together and given as a lump sum.

There were 37 countries in the final.

When you count up all the votes the UK made, the country that got the most phone votes from the UK audience gets 12 points. The act that got the 2nd most votes from the UK audience gets 11 point and so on.

Then all those points are added together and given as a total. For example if Sweden got 120 points, that could be because 10 countries voted them top and they got 12 from each of them in the phone vote.

If France gets 25 points maybe they got 12 from Ukraine, 10 from Ireland and 3 from Norway in the phone vote.

In the jury vote your hearing who voted them highest per country, in the public vote your hearing how many countries in total gave them 12 points or 10 points or 3 points all added together.

I liked France, Germany and Croatia and, a bit less, Ukraine and Israel, then Greece and Armenia. Finland and Spain were hilarious!

It was the first time I heard the U.K. song and I didn't particularly like it, or think it was a great performance.

It was really awful staging. All that writhing around on that grotty floor 🤮 Who is going to vote for a song that makes you want to reach for a bottle of Flash?

Yes but the rules are the same for everyone. Bambi Thug nailed some complex vocals (even if not to your taste) while doing ballet poses. Switzerland was vocally flawless while running around the spinny disc and doing all sorts. Basically the team fucked up by giving Olly staging that he couldn't do while singing perfectly.

That said, any time you see a gorgeous singer highlighted on stage at Eurovision doing high impact choreography surrounded by exactly four dancers, I cynically suspect that the additional permitted sixth performer is standing in a dark corner of the stage well away from the cameras doing fill-in vocals. It's a thing.

Not to mention Eurovision has a large gay following in the UK but is it the same elsewhere in Europe? If it’s seen as a family show in other countries or taken seriously as a song contest, then it’s another reason why it didn’t go down well.

There almost always is a back up vocalist, yes. And now a backing track with vocals is allowed too! I think that started in 2021 to minimise the number of people during covid, but hasn't gone away.

Malta's backing vocalist posted a video of her "supporting" vocals, it was pretty interesting. But she stopped singing for the middle 8 and the main artist did all the acapella high notes herself, so it wasn't complete trickery. Chanel a couple of years ago also relied heavily on backing vocals. There is no way you can sing like Slimane while being flung around in the air by 4 hunks.

When I went a few years ago the crowd was overwhelmingly gay people from multiple countries. But the gay people I know weren't impressed by the grubby shower, weak vocals performance.

I couldn't even hear the song because I was so in shock/confused/appalled by the gay sex choreography in a boxing club showered...dirty showers, I might add! I mean, what was that? It's hardly fun or uplifting is it? More like seedy and desperate...

The UK getting NIL points is nothing new. Honestly growing up that’s all I remember!

This image shows where UK came in each televote. It's not good.

Oh yes, of course! 😁

Plus George's video had a clean, sparkly disco toilet, a sense of humour and better vocals.

You must be very young- it's only happened twice- in 2003, and 2021.

We have also come last or close to it several times

Or older. Nil points was common around the Abba days of Eurovision.

Because we keep sending rubbish songs with ropey singer. We send a great song with a fantastic singer and we come second. Magic!

It was generic, boring and immediately forgettable.

I wouldn't have voted for him even if I could vote for my own country.

I guess it goes to show that most people don't want to watch blokes cottaging in a dirty public toilet.

Nul points was indeed common back in the day. But UK never scored it until Jemini in 2003 (again an atrocious vocal, the guy was ok but the poor girl was singing in completely the wrong key. It must have been technical issues though, because she proved to be a decent singer in other performances).

In theory you can get nul points because you're everyone's eleventh favourite act, but statistically that's not the way to bet, it's much more likely that you're very low down with almost everyone.

Ireland and Ukraine came closest to giving him a point - I was surprised he didn't even scrape a point from Ireland, if only from the British population.

That's what I am making myself believe about Malta! She was just 11th everywhere.

I guess even British people living abroad weren't impressed enough to vote.

Vicious circle though, no decent songwriter wants to do it as it’s seen as a joke and we always do so badly. I hoped Sam Ryder’s success would change that perception but seems not.

Yes, famously Norway kept getting nul points. Then suddenly started winning .

2003 was that was the first time the UK did- we had a run of coming second in the late 80s early 90s.

Jemini have been good sports about it since though.