Eurovision 2007

I watched the Eurovision last night with my beer and my unhealthy snack food, it was great. The production just seems to get better and better each year - it must cost millions for the host country to stage. I enjoyed the songs and performances and my own scoring (I'm a sad, sad man - taking this far too seriously) produced the following top five:

1. Russia
2. Finland
3. Moldova
4. Hungary
5. Greece

I woud also have given points to Georgia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Lithuania and Spain. My scoring is based on the official scoresheet and is a combined total score - song, performance, dance routine and outfit are also scored (just to add to the confusion). I tried to score fairly strictly concerning dance routine and outfit so that they didn't have a great impact on the total score, so I concentrated my attention on the song and performance.

Here are the actual results for the Eurovision Song Contest 2007, but if you want a quick look at the top five here they are:

1. Serbia (268 points)
2. Ukraine (235)
3. Russia (207)
4. Turkey (163)
5. Bulgaria (157)

The winner was a complete surprise and Turkey's final position was good too. The UK came second last, drawing with France, and poor Ireland came bottom (they also got the lowest score on my scoresheet).

The voting usually follows a very predictable pattern with Western Europe and Eastern Europe countries voting within their own borders but sometimes the odd surprise vote comes along. Terry Wogan, the UK commentator, made some comments about the Eastern European countries "block voting" but, to be frank, I thought the songs from Western European countries were poor: with only Finland, Spain and Greece entering songs that were contenders.

Ah well, all the excitement is over for another year...