After roughly five hours’ sleep, and with the immediate frustration beginning to subside, I can see last night’s Eurovision Song Contest a little more clearly. Mr N. Deller and I managed to walk out during the voting without realising what was happening, which, looking back, was probably a huge mistake. The habitual offenders in the so-called “friendly” voting were all clumped together at the front of the draw, so the pattern was more noticeable than usual.
The right song won
Firstly, the right song won. Ruslana is the best performer I have seen at a Eurovision Song Contest.
People will say that she only won because of the show, and trot out the usual criticism, but Eurovision is a television show. These days, performers have to make people across Europe pick up the phone and vote. If somebody simply came out and sang on stage, would you really be likely to vote for him? Look at Croatia, the UK and Ireland.
Was the voting really more “neighbourly”?
The neighbourly-voting argument needs a little more thought. What people have not factored into it is that the countries with the good songs this year actually were Turkey, Cyprus, Greece, Ukraine and Serbia. Their neighbours were bound to vote for them partly because they were neighbours, but also because they had the best songs.
Yes, there was the odd strange result, such as the UK’s habitual seven points for Ireland. But once you factor in both the quality of the songs and their geographical location, Nick and I agree that there was no more neighbourly voting than usual. The one thing I would say is that Russia qualifying automatically leaves a sour taste in both our mouths.
The results and our predictions
I was well pleased with Ruslana, happy with Ireland—mwahahahahahahahaha!—and disappointed with Jonsi. I gather he did not come across well on stage, which may explain the result.
As a team, we called 90% of it correctly. In particular:
- Ruslana was fantastic and would win.
- Greece would not win.
- Nick predicted five of the top seven.
- Belgium would go nowhere, as would Austria.
- Cyprus would do well, as would Sweden.
- The Netherlands would not be remembered.
Overall, that was not a bad week’s work—even if some people will still say that we got it wrong and that we cannot tell the truth about this contest.
