Eurovision last night - results and my verdict

 

Switzerland won. I've no complaints. This weird body-balancing act would have been my third choice. Good to have a third-time winner (last time 1988) from a non-obvious country without political issues muddying the waters. 

Singer 'Nemo' is, it's said, the first 'non-binary' winner to take the title. (I had to look up that term for its meaning. I just can't keep up with the lingo!) 

Second came my own vote, Croatia, an act and song as daft as any, but I liked it on first hearing.........

In third place, a song (part-ballad, half rap) which didn't appeal to me at all, Ukraine, two females of, well, disparate size, shall we say......

At number 4 came France with one of two solo male 'power' ballads' with no frills, no backing distractions - just the song simply and here powerfully delivered, and which I thought passable (just) - though with the singer in a perplexing semi-diaphanous outfit, and wearing underneath it what seemed to be just a nappy/diaper........

and

And in 5th place, the contentious Israeli entry (but of course!). We were told there was some boos from the 70,000 audience but I didn't hear any. I thought the song indifferent. Incidentally, it seems that the British public voted to give its maximum points for this entry. Why? Out of 'sympathy' for having to face demonstrations?........

Poorish showing (yet again!) for the U.K., coming 18th out of 25, which is actually much better than most of our recent entries........

I still think our act, visually, was the best out of the lot, though the song itself was no great shakes. In the final viewers' vote (now taken from the more than 100 countries globally who take the transmission live!) we were the only participant to receive zero points from the public, our final not-last placing being due entirely to the individual participating countries' appointed juries, which have equal weight with the public vote. (Work that one out!) 

And then there was Spain, with its gloriously outrageous act, which ended up, most sadly of all, in 22nd place. Oh well. C'est la vie!.........

............and, btw, you can't see it here, but those boots the guys are wearing are high-heel stilettos. How they managed to stay upright with all their twisting, writhing and stuff beats me! 

The presenters, Petra Mede (Swede) and Malin Akerma (Swedish-American) did an efficient job. There was, this time, just one occurrence of the dreaded yell of "Are you READY?????"......

Just one further maddening thought on the voting. Like last year, just as the presenters were saying to us that we could vote as many times as we wanted (which I assume meant voting for as many countries, other than one's own), commentator Graham Naughton chimes in on the voting procedure saying that we couldn't vote for the U.K. but must vote for the countrY (resolutely in the singular!) we wanted to win. No mention of voting more than once! This is exactly what had happened a year ago. Why can't they sort the darned thing out, for heaven's sake? And to further cloud the voting issue, after casting my vote, about 15 mins later I wondered what would happen if I tried to vote for Croatia again - so I did, and the same recording of Norton's voice comes on "Thank you. You have voted for Croatia". So was my vote for the same country counted twice? - or is there some mechanism for filtering out multi-votes for the same country? And if I'd tried to vote for our own U.K., would that have gone through? What a shambles! Get it sorted, people!!!!

Oh, yes - and Austria's Conchita Wurst turned up in the interval to briefly join as part of a trio to sing 'Waterloo', a 50th anniversary tribute to, of course, ABBA who won in Brighton (just 12 miles from me sitting here) in 1974........

So, another year gone. All in all, despite the protests against the Netanyahu government as well as the elimination of the Dutch act - of which we still don't know the details - it was a pretty good contest this year, and I'm reasonably satisfied with the result, which itself is a rare thing.

So next year where? Zurich? But somewhere fresh and Alpine for sure in any case. See ya there! 

Eurovision tonight - gayest ever by far, but controversies.

 

In Malmo, Sweden (last year's winner) - Israel's participation, exacerbated by its winning a place in tonight's final has, as at now, clouded the event which promises (-ed?) such up-front 'gayish' fun like never before. However, though Russia has not been allowed in for the last two competitions following its invasion of Ukraine, one can hardly maintain that the Israel's government's recent acts have been any less egregious than that of President Putrid. Very large demonstrations in Malmo itself as well as around Europe and, indeed, the world, protesting against Israel's involvement in this show. Current betting odds puts Israel second-favourite to win, though I'd give the song a score of only 2/5). 

So, I'm conflicted - should I do an individual personal boycott and not watch the show? Shhhhhhh!.....but no! Sorry. Can't help it!

Added to which, now this morning there's a question over the Dutch act, which was/is (rightly, in my view) one of the most touted to win - a crazy earworm of a song with even crazier act. The singer has variously been reported as having had a physical confrontation with a photographer, with police involved - or having too aggressively addressed Israel's female singer on her country's participation. They might be linked. But this Dutch entry was excluded from yesterday's final dress rehearsal, a video of the song being relayed instead. At this time of writing we don't know what's going to happen. (Latest bulletin: Netherlands has now been disqualified from tonight's final - first time this has happened for any country in Eurovision's 68-year history. We still don't know the details of what had happened to bring this about but if it had be so, there it is. I can reveal now that the song/act would have been my number two choice of them all).

I've now three times heard all 26 songs in tonight's final and am pretty sure who'll get my vote. Excluded by having received inadequate votes in the heats were two openly gay participants, Denmark and Belgium among the eleven 'losers', but there's plenty more well worth watching out for among those left in the final. I just must point out Spain above all the others (8th in running order) where, if you're looking at the female singer performing, halfway through I guarantee that your attention will definitely turn to her two male backing dancers, both bearded. Talk about flaunting it in-yer-face - and I just love, love, LOVE it! Song's not at all bad too!

Apart from the preponderance of men in backing roles (dancing, some singing) for many of the acts - with clear gay 'signals' in some - several of the acts have eye-popping special effects, some trick camera-work but also some startlingly acrobatic in actual performance. Right up there and possibly best of all in that respect is the U.K. entry by one Olly Alexander who wanted to make his rendition "as gay as possible". Well. he's almost achieved it though I'd rate his song as only middling, maybe just slightly above.

So, with only 12 hours to go and, though I always watch the show, I've not for a long time felt such keen anticipation for the result. Go, go........but who?  Ah, that would be telling! Which I'll do tomorrow. 😃