EUROVISION THREAD 3. THE UK ARE TOP OF THE LEADERBOARD (FOR NOW)

[RedToothBrush]

JUST THAT.

And yes he did meet Putin.
www.andrewlloydwebber.com/andrew-meets-russian-prime-minister-vladimir-putin/

I wonder whether it's anything to do with the queen - whose imminent demise seems to be a big deal in the French press.

Or maybe, just maybe, we sent a good song, sung well, promoted the hell out of it all around Europe and got a lucky draw in the running order.

I was amused to see that Switzerland, who for some baffling reason sent a carbon copy of our entry from last year, got nul points from the televote just like we did.

The eurovision audience is younger. Why on earth we would enter musical theatre that someone in their 70s wrote and think its a good idea I'm not quite sure.

Apparently the six countries who had their jury votes removed are:

Azerbaijan
Georgia
Montenegro
Poland
Romania
San Marino

Which would mean San Marino got essentially no say in the result (as they don’t have an actual televote)

Just saw some stats on YouTube re viewing figures (so accept may be inaccurate) saying:

'10.77 MILLION viewers watched on BBC1 to see Sam Ryder come 2nd place during voting segment. 79% share of the age 16-34. That’s huge'

Not really fitting the argument that Remainers mostly think Europe hates us. Plus, people vote for in Eurovision, not against. And we've not sent anything worth voting for in recent years.

Not caught up with the thread but what was the dodgy voting about - own countries voting for themselves? Couldn't be in San Marino's case. Or is 'technical error' being described as 'dodgy voting'?

Maybe in fact WE got the ‘sympathy’ vote cos Europe know we’re having to put up with Boris Johnson 🤔

That's my theory, @eatingapie. They feel sorry for us because of our embarrassing government.

Did the Ukrainian jury really like our song the best or were they feeling more positively towards the UK anyway or want to demonstrate that close relationship?

The Ukraine public only gave us 7 points and lots of other juries gave us 12 points as well. I'm sure the war has influenced the jury vote but it's not the whole picture.

I didn’t watch it but streamed Sam Ryder’s song and thought it great

He has an excellent voice, so pleased he did well

nice to have something fun and happy in media

Omg! Thank you so much for finding this - I’ve done searches before and never unearthed this and it always seemed a bit too far fetched to be real. What a bizarre meeting.

Omg! Thank you so much for finding this - I’ve done searches before and never unearthed this and it always seemed a bit too far fetched to be real. What a bizarre meeting.

It’s quite interesting to see how infrequently the winner of the jury vote wins the contest. We’ve known the televote/jury split since 2016. The only time the winner of the jury vote won the contest was in 2017 (and in that year Portugal won both the televote and the jury vote).

Jury winner
2016: Australia
2017: Portugal
2018: Austria
2019: N. Macedonia
2020: -
2021: Switzerland
2022: U.K.

The televote winner has a better correlation with overall winner. But it’s actually surprisingly common for the overall winner to win neither the jury vote nor the televote (so far this has happened 33% of the time).

Televote winner
2016: Russia
2017: Portugal
2018: Israel
2019: Norway
2020: -
2021: Italy
2022: Ukraine

Overall winner
2016: Ukraine
2017: Portugal
2018: Israel
2019: Netherlands
2020: -
2021: Italy
2022: Ukraine

Every year it seems we have to make some excuse Iraq, Brexit etc (admittedly I think it was obvious Ukraine was going to get the public vote), instead of accepting that we put the least amount of effort into it.

The only thing I'm not seeing is people blaming the result on Russian hackers.

Interesting that it was the jury votes that are suspect - I had assumed it would be the public ones.

Oh yes, we could do some cerdd dant 🤣 It's a hard one because you actually sing a different song to the melody that's being played by the musician. Takes some practice but once you get it right it can sound really magical.

Or in Scottish Gaelic that's also beautiful to hear sung. 😊

As a slight aside, I think that any country that doesn’t get through the semi final three years in a row should get automatic entrance to the final the following year.

also, I think that if a country wins two years in a row then the next hosts should be the highest placed nation that hasn’t ever hosted (or have had the longest gap since last hosting)

Oh goodness no, not Scottish Gaelic.

The BBC are currently DESPARATE to get more marketshare of that particular age group...

What are you on about? The vast majority of posters on this thread have said that (a) we did put a lot of effort in and (b) in the extraordinary circumstances of this year being second to Ukraine was the best result.

Sorry to be very boring, but don't you think Sam Ryder's song and atmosphere of performance are rather like that of Babylon Zoo, when performing their hit about space in 2008?

Both amazing songs, vocals and nice tribute to the strange, inventive world which was everything David Bowie.

Yes, and the EU does not equal Europe, even though lots of people seem to think it's the same thing

That really is nonsense. Applying that sort of logic one might have expected France to do so much better both as congratulations for seeing off Marine Le Pen and sympathy for having come so close to getting Le Pen as president.

I think the clue is alphabets and bribes.

I think there is a common link. Kind of sad really.