Eurovision: The Results

[RedToothBrush]

You've Survived Flat Madge.

Well Done.

Here are the finalists

1. Malta - Maltese Molly And Her Pet Chameleon and Support Socks
2. Albania - Rylan’s Nashers Channel Khalessi Yodelling
3. Czech Republic - The Wiggles EuroFwend
4. Germany - Meghan Markle and LeAnn Rimes
5. Russia - Vanity Shower Screens
6. Denmark - Ladders and Clouds
7. San Marino - Right Said Fred Goes to Benidorm
8. North Macedonia - Mel Off Eastenders
9. Sweden - Gospel Lionel Richie

10. Slovenia - Dull and In Love. Apparently. Snore. Slow-venia. Creepy 11. Cyprus - Chandelier pants and PVC 12. Netherlands - A Nice Moody Ballad from Duncan the Dutchman 13. Greece - Nasally Don't Tell The Bride. 14. Israel - Is it Ross or Howard? What Freddie Mercury would have looked like had Borat played him. Is it David Blaine? 15. Norway - Ken The Spirited Club Style Yoiker. Come on Barbie! 16. United Kingdom - The John Lewis Christmas Ad 2019 17. Iceland - Do I Really Need to Remind You?!! Mad Max the Musical. 18. Estonia - Mr Wholesome with the Disappearing Guitar 19. Belarus - Britney Belarus 20. Azerbaijan - Shut Up! Lazzzzeerrrssss 21. France - Wigman. Gaga's Little Bro. 22. Italy - It wasn't me. Shaggy 2.0 23. Serbia - Wicked Ice Queen Angelina Jolie's Stunt Leg 24. Switzerland - Red Dirty Dancers and Rylan’s Outfit 25. Australia - Glenda The Good Witch on a Bouncy Stick. 26. Spain - Mel C and Bryan Adams Changing Rooms on IKEA Kallax Shelves

I do sometimes wonder how much of what looks like political voting is actually just people who live near each other having similar tastes in music.

When Ireland get through to the finals, they tend to get a fair few points out of the UK. You could call that political voting and it partially is. But good Irish entries also appeal to the British ear in particular on their own merits.

We all love to complain about the former USSR states voting for each other, but if a country in that bloc sends one of their best pop stars with lots of record sales behind them, it's hardly odd if the people in the countries next door also think s/he is pretty cool.

Political voting doesn’t really affect the televote all that much. After all, people are generally only voting for their favourite song. I think it has more of an impact on the jury votes.

If you have a good song, you will get votes from the jury - even if they give 12 points to their neighbouring country, they’re still going to be giving 10 points and 8 points to someone else’s song. But if you have an OK song, this is where the politics come into play. To finish mid-table, you probably need to be picking up the jury points awarded for 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th place. I'd say that for an equivalent standard of song, we tend to pick up fewer of these points than other countries. This is where politics are against the UK. Mostly our issue is that we bought our slot in the final. If you’re on a national jury, and you think the U.K. and, let’s say Denmark, have reasonably OK songs, you’re likely to rank Denmark higher because they got through their semi.

And unless someone can come up with a breakdown of votes showing clearly that EU voters have refused to vote for UK entries, it is time to stop the whinging about political voting.

This year our points from the jury vote came from

5 points from Belarus (but this was the amalgamated fiction after they got banned so no idea how true it is or that Belarus were giving out pity points here there and everywhere bless them)

2 points from Norway, Hungary, Armenia
1 point from Switzerland and Georgia

Interestingly the irish jury did not rate the song whereas our only televotes came from the Irish phone voters - they gave us 3 points.

That might be the neighbouring country loyalty or his nan's irish background coming into play.

We came 24th/26th last year (Portugal and Finland came last and second to last, I liked both their entries. The jury vote alone put Australia last and the televote alone would have gone against the Ukraine). Surie got televotes from Australia, Denmark, Albania, San Marino, Malta, Germany and Ireland.
Our jury votes came from Israel, Italy, France, Montenegro, Latvia and Croatia (interestingly no irish jury votes).

The only prejudice is the Irish-UK neighbouring country loyalty/similar taste in music. Other votes are random and based on the song quality surely?

Sorry should have put EU countries in italics.
Last year we got votes from either juries or fans from the following EU members: Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Malta.
This year our EU votes came from Hungary and Ireland.

Surie was more successful than Michael.
He faltered at the start of his performance, lacked charisma and had a major key but beige song.
She was confident throughout and continued even with a stage invasion.

Ah, the age old bond between the UK and Hungary.

Then there was Scooch and Flying the Flag, which was another case of the dance routine making a bad song worse

I liked Scooch. I thought they got the Eurovision feel exactly right.

Valóban. És még azt sem vettem észre, hogy Magyarország az Európai Unióban volt.

Would you like something to suck on for landing Sir?

Second to last place but 12 points from Malta [I always did like Maltesers] and 7 points from... Ireland. Well, there's a surprise

Malta usually affectionately/politically votes in our favour. We never return it.

I think this shows how absolutely pants the song was this year!

I do have fond memories of me and 5 year old DD doing that dance routine!

Obviously missing something

Why wouldn’t you think Hungary wasn’t in the EU

Because I am an eejit Olly - I am hopeless at naming the 28 EU members but am improving since playing Pointless with DD when she was appalled that I thought Switzerland was one.

We are in Italy. DD loves Eurovision and is proud of being British/Italian and we voted for Surie last year - even she didn't want to vote for the UK this year! (Interestingly though she told me this morning that she voted for Sweden because she loved the song AND she wanted to support the UK - DS asked her what countries are in the UK and apparently there are England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Sweden ). She is also still singing Surie's song but has already forgotten this year's UK entry.

Rage Kérem szépen to that.

(We have a mind-numbingly boring game at home which is just cards with flags of all the nations of the world - my flag nerd of a son loves it of course. I lose so hard. There are so many countries I'd never even heard of, folks.)

Although I did surprise her by giving Vilnius as an answer the other week for EU capital cities - she thought I was making stuff up again and when I was Ha! in your face! accused me of revising I had been revising

She means Swindon, I expect.

I have watched UK's entry three times on catch-up and I still can't remember the lyrics enough to sing them. It's not her, it's the song.

Chorus of Sister from Germany though? That was stuck in my head after they'd done the recap of entries a couple of times while we waited for Madonna to come on!

It's to my shame bani - I have to double check them despite both kids having done the EU in school a number of times and me doing a jigsaw with them to learn the map. It's my blind spot. Eldest DD teases me mercilessly as does DH. It is the same for me with flags. My youngest DD takes great joy in beating me every time and whenever it comes up as a Pointless round they groan and make me go first. When I say the bleeding obvious they then go Duh! at me and run off to tell their Dad that Mum's being thick with flags again.

I then beat their asses in all the other rounds and they have to take it back or else. we need to get out more

Well I have learnt Turkmenistan's flag.

Incidentally, yesterday I went down a rabbit hole of "why is Australia in it" and learnt that it is because Australia is an associate member of EBU. In theory all associate members of the EBU could take part if they want I think? Which would include China and the US :O

Ooh. And India, Canada, Brazil and Japan. The more the merrier, I say.
Bhangra, samba - all's good. But I fear we are the lone voice supporting this motion.

While we're on embarrassing Eurovision misconceptions, I had a argument with DP about Dana being the first transsexual person to win Eurovision.

I said that I was sure she wasn't, and how likely was it that Ireland would have sent a trans teenager to compete in 1970? He asked why I was talking about Ireland when she was from Israel (admittedly more relevant for this year's competition) and I said that he was the one to have brought up Dana.

Of all the names to have won twice, who'd have put money on Dana?!

Polka that's hilarious!

Polka Your reasoning was absolutely sound.

Note to self: must call any future child Dana in order to ensure Eurovision success.

Polka - thanks to your post I have only just realised that the Dana on Eurovision the other night was NOT the Irish Dana. To be fair, I missed a bit of the show as I was clearing up in the kitchen, picked up that "Dana International" was performing and presumed that Irish Dana had added International to her name to relaunch her career. Ahem, I'll get my coat.

I'm too young to remember Irish Dana because I was born in -75. #smug

A word of advice to you all. Do not let Flying The Flag be the last piece of music you hear before going to work. Ver very bad earworm.

A lot of European countries are more conservative with regard to homosexuality than the UK. Innuendo for Eurovision is good but maybe gay innuendo lost scooch some points? Or it could just be that the sound was bloody awful on the night - I saw one line get mouthed but not a sound peeped out!