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Anyway, the bronze fork (which if I remember rightly is the third most good of all the forks), goes to Eduard from Moldova. He was Eduard Romanyuta, singing “I Want Your Love”, and the timetable told him to bring his raunch to the arena at 10:20 in the morning. I’ll vouch that it’s not easy to summon up your inner raunch that early, but he successfully looked like it really was his first ever visit to that kind of nightclub. You can ask for no more of the man.
Eduard was due to open the first semi-final on Tuesday, 19 May, as Moldova’s first entry on the running order. At this point, naturally, we had no idea whether the bronze fork would prove prophetic. Retrospectively: Moldova finished 11th in that semi-final with 41 points and did not qualify for the final.
The silver fork (for being the second most extraordinary thing of the day) is shared between Bojana and Boggie, for giving us just the faintest modicum of light and shade between two consecutive performances. Or, as I like to call it, Eurovision in a bucket.
The consecutive performances were Serbia’s Bojana Stamenov with “Beauty Never Lies”, followed by Hungary’s Boggie with “Wars For Nothing”: entries 9 and 10 in the first semi-final. Bojana’s song had originally been performed in Serbian before being translated into English for Eurovision, while Boggie’s was the peace-themed number. This is the sort of detail which may explain the light and shade, although I remain committed to the bucket.
As for the results, Bojana eventually finished ninth in the semi-final with 63 points and then tenth in the grand final with 53. Boggie came eighth in the semi-final with 67 points and finished twentieth in the final with 19. These are hindsight results, obviously; on this Friday, they were still merely people attempting to turn rehearsal-room impressions into awards involving cutlery.
And the golden fork, again, is shared between Polina and Voltaj. Emotional manipulation is never something to be proud of, but they do it with such subtle nuance that you won’t even notice what they’re up to, oh dear me no, I can virtually guarantee it. They’re very good though. Could well be 1-2 in this bit.
Polina Gagarina was representing Russia with “A Million Voices”, while Romanian band Voltaj were singing “De la capăt”, also presented in English as “All Over Again”. Voltaj’s song concerned children separated from parents working abroad, which gave all that emotional business a particularly solid frame. Both were in the first semi-final, although not consecutively: Polina was 12th, and Voltaj 15th, with Denmark and Albania in between.
Retrospectively: Russia won that semi-final with 182 points and Polina finished second in the grand final with 303 points. Voltaj came fifth in the semi-final with 89 points and fifteenth in the final with 35. So the golden fork was, if not scientifically awarded, at least not entirely detached from reality.
As for Bully’s special prize – well, the saga of my belt. There are multiple approaches to this. You can traverse Austria in search of access to a Show Desk that you’re not allowed into… or you could, you know, whizz them an e-mail… D’oh! Anyway, no, no, nobody has handed a belt in. And that took about two minutes this morning to find out. Hey ho!
Back to today, anyway…
