So, how did your favourite song do on Saturday night?
I thought that it was a really entertaining evening, from the opening act of Cirque du Soleil, through all the songs to the stunning interval act. I hear favourable things about how Graham Norton handled proceedings, which is good as it must have been a daunting prospect to replace Terry Wogan.
Row 5 seats were awesome – although it was irritating to be sitting with people who seemed obsessed with getting on the television! Funny also that there was a guy who was obviously the ‘flag police’ for the front section of the stage. Each time that anyone lifted a flag too high during a performance, or attempted to stand to take a photo – he pounced, and would shine a torch in the face of the offender. It seemed to work! As the floor manager says to the audience before the start of the broadcast, a lot of effort goes into perfecting the camera angles, vision mixing etc. – so to have the flag of Turkey blocking the shots (the main offender in our area) is disrespectful to all the efforts of the camera crew and the producers, but also to the artists.
Anyway, Iceland was stunning, and finished second – yay! Jade played an absolute blinder to finish in fifth place – were all blown away – and I hope a star is born…
France did well to finish in the top 10. Azerbaijan snagged a well deserved third place. Sakis faded really, but still a top 10 finish isn’t bad in such a competitive field. And poor Chiara – way off the pace in 21st place. Perhaps it just shows that third time isn’t exactly a charm.
And as for Alexander Rybak – the hot, hot, hot fave from Norway, it was a stunning victory by a huge margin. Let’s face it – this song was always going to win, and it did so with great style. I’m very pleased that we’re heading to Oslo next year for Norway’s third victory (following 1985 and 1995). I’d better get saving once again, as a pint will set you back seven quid, apparently!
Must just say that at the press conference after his victory Alexander was charming and seem quite rightly chuffed with himself – any why not, he’s just won the Eurovision Song Contest. No pretentious affectation for this young man.
I eventually got to bed at 5.15am, and had kinda forgotten that citytalk.fm were interviewing me at 10.50am! I was dead to the world when they called – just as well that I heard the telephone. We had a 15 minute interview and so that’s me up and about for the day.
As we’re not travelling back until tomorrow afternoon I think the plan is to do brunch, then have a mooch, get some fresh air, and take it easy – we whooped and clapped out little hearts out last night… and I enjoyed every minute of it from start to finish.
Apparently there were sightings of me again in the audience – I hope that Armani waistcoat was worth the money. And for long-time readers of this blog you will notice that the winning singer was wearing a waistcoat – so they are obviously back, back, back!
So I’m going to sign-off now. Thanks for once again for following my movements – and I really hope that I’ve added a little something extra to your Eurovision experience this year. I hope to see you in Oslo next year?!
Since I first wrote this post (on Sunday) I travelled back to Heathrow yesterday evening (Monday), and I’ll be driving back to Merseyside today. I had an interesting phone interview with BBC radio Lancashire before catching my flight – seems that the Contest has gone down well and there is national pride surrounding ‘our Jade’ – thank goodness for that. I wonder who will represent us next year? Far too early to be thinking about that!
So that’ll be Moscow then…
