So there’s a huge gamble going on about Ireland and Jedward at the moment, and it would appear to our untrained eye that it’s NOT a gamble being led by people who intend to win money.
What what what? But that’s just crazy talk! What would possibly make us think that?
Well, you see, as I write (22:50 CET on Wednesday 11 May) William Hill (not our bookmaker of first resort, but a fine and upstanding one nevertheless) appears to be offering odds of 5.0 (4/1 if you’re British) for Ireland to win the semi-final, and 4.5 (7/2 if you’re British) to win the final.
No, hang on, let me read that again. That can’t be right.
reads that again
OK, that does seem to be the case: the betting public of the world has convinced Mr W. Hill Esq. that Ireland are more likely to win the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday night—the one which they haven’t qualified for yet—than they are to win the Eurovision Song Contest Second Semi-Final on Thursday night.
And this is no minor technicality. Ireland’s entry is “Lipstick”, performed by John and Edward Grimes—Jedward—after winning RTÉ’s Eurosong 2011 national final with 98 points. On Thursday they are performing last, 19th out of 19 entries, immediately before the voting. The grand final, meanwhile, already contains automatic finalists including the UK’s Blue with “I Can” and France’s Amaury Vassili with “Sognu”; Ireland does not.
So, to recap: the market appears to think that Jedward are more likely to win the whole thing on Saturday than to win their own semi-final tomorrow. With the two remaining draw slots still available and a Blue and an Amaury Vassili in the final, the people of OnEurope say NON!!!!
Update, with the benefit of hindsight: this was not quite the rat we suspected. The prices quoted above remain a contemporaneous observation from this article, rather than something for which a surviving William Hill page has been found. But Jedward’s overall prospects really did shorten sharply: RTÉ reported the following day that “Lipstick” had moved from as long as 25/1 a week earlier to 9/2, while Eurovoix had Ireland at 14/1 on 8 May. That looks less like a prediction that Ireland had already won the contest than a rapidly moving market reacting to Jedward’s visibility, fan support and expectations for their late semi-final performance.
Ireland did qualify from the second semi-final—in eighth place with 68 points—and eventually finished eighth in the Düsseldorf final with 119 points. They drew position 6 in the final, where Azerbaijan’s Ell & Nikki won with “Running Scared”; France finished 15th and the United Kingdom 11th.
