This article forms part of the OnEurope archive and was originally published on oneurope.co.uk. It has been permanently migrated to oneurope.net, the official home of OnEurope.
Gosh, that Monty got there before me to sum up last night far better than I ever could, even on a fresh day! I’m slightly jaded, so I’ll not add much to that report except to tell you that the poor Portuguese delegation were found starving at about 2am after waiting for their salads for about two hours. They’d missed lunch and dinner because of the traffic and even sent out for chips, but none were forthcoming. Their poor faces were wasting away to nothing — but Filipa was still smiling through it all.
Filipa Sousa was Portugal’s 2012 entrant with Vida Minha, though at this point in the Baku contest period there was no knowing that Portugal would later fail to qualify from the second semi-final.
The Hungarian boys remembered me from the London party. They were almost certainly Compact Disco, Hungary’s four-piece 2012 representatives, who were there with Sound of Our Hearts. One of the band members — the third best-looking one — told me I could hump his keyboard any day. Ooer missus…
Given that Gábor Pál was the group’s keyboard player, this was either a very specific offer or an astonishingly well-targeted bit of Eurovision flirting.
Dmitry from Litesound chatted to me for ages. He was a bit tiddly on white wine, but he seemed moderately excited that we’d chosen them for Second Cherry a few years back, and he proffered the information that they were quite big in Scotland?? That remains Dmitry’s claim, rather than something I can independently verify.
Dmitry was Dmitry Karyakin, co-founder of the Belarusian band, who were representing Belarus with We Are the Heroes. In hindsight, Litesound finished 16th in the second semi-final and didn’t make the final — but that lay ahead when this was written on 20 May 2012. At the time, they were simply another slightly tipsy Eurovision conversation and a pleasingly unexpected Second Cherry reunion.
