Be Excellent To Each Other

The Kids and the misses love this, so it will no doubt be on on Saturday, but with blue singing for the UK and no Wogan, I will be spending more time on the laptop whilst it's on, not really paying much attention.

Malc

Hrrm, I may be roped into watching it on Saturday, and this time without a laptop to offer up the previous six posts of commentary. I find it perverse that the most writing I've done this last week has been this evening on Eurovision semi-finals, considering it is against every hi-brow thing I stand for. Funny, that.

It's because you've been talking to girls.

It's because we've hit that time of night, we're teetering on the edge of the gayshift.


HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
\

Great live blog Pete.

Morning all, thnaks for the live blog pete..

watched the second half yesterday, shame i missed this to live comment on....

followed the eurovision from 86 (sandra kim) tot 98 (dana international) quite closely with my little brother... then televoting destroyed it bit for us, but still try to watch it, if it's not during my birthday party, which it often is (as my birthday is may 14th)...

did get a text from lithuania this morning from a friend of mine, at six am she wrote me" yeah, we reached the final".. hope she didn''t spend all night partying because of that .. i can't remember their sone, only the cleavage...

saw italy is participating again after years of absence..

some favourites

belgium 1987 "soldiers of love"


israel 1987, one of the first "comedy ones"


italy 1987 (the best year in my opinion),
just a lovely song


holland 1996 "eerste keer" typical dutch uptempo entry (she was a collegue of my father)


holland 1998, last good result, last year we song in own language

It's the second semi-final tonight folks, notable for the long-awaited return of the Jedwards. Come on the Jedwards! Let us also hope that the voters put more silly stuff through than they did on Tuesday.

Sadly though, I won't be able to watch it due to some piffling circumstance.

Mrs T asked the following question last night:

"Why don't we just get someone who can sing, to sing the song, and someone who can write, to write the song?"

I couldn't think of a good answer for her, she does have a point

Because no legitimate musician will touch eurovision with a bargepole, lest they be tagged with it forever.

Q.) What's blue and can't sing?

A.) Blue!

HAHAHAHALOLSROFLCOPOTER11one!1 DO YOU SEE?

What's red and can't sing?

Blue in a Kenwood Food Processor!

Plus, there's no chance of us winning anyway, because other cuntries hate us (and some of them would be invaded if they didn't vote for their neighbours) and the contest stopped being about the songs a long time ago.

Sorry did someone let in the Daily Mail or Terry Wogan?

This country hasn't got any votes as we continually send shite to the contest...and not even funny shite...just dour, boring shite. I predicted 'somewhere else' that they would be lucky to get 10th spot, on another listen 15th would be an achievement.

...have a terrible feeling that smug arse from Finland is going to storm it.

I can't believe the lesson from Lordi hasn't been learned. Be different, be memorable, be competent. Someone should just ask Judas Priest to do the UK entry. Easy. I bet Rob would go for it, too.

Genius, I'd love to see that.

dutch entry, bookmakers say 1 above bottom.. we'll see..

This sounds amazing. I can usually trust Georgia to produce something good. 2/3 entries from them I've liked so far. Keep it up Georgia!

and they are!

Was just about to turn off Eurovision when Twiins came on...

... might just watch a bit longer. With mute on.

Fuck off, Sara Cox!

This amuses me:

vs

I genuinely love Estonia's entry from 2003:



Also, Lynsey de Paul :

Haven't watched Eurovision in years, but I've just drawn the UK in the sweepstake at work. Do I have a chance?

I refer the right honourable member to the following post

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7126&p=551888#p551888

If I was a gambling man (actually, I am), I'd put my money on Sweden. They've got some pretty boy doing some established Boy band nonsense and will garner tons of votes from 14 year old girls.

Having said that, I'll probably still bet on Jedward and that ridiculous Moldovan entry for shits and giggles.

The goatee bloke is Stephan Raab, the world's most famous German. Yes", he does looks like he could be Simon Pegg's long lost twin...

Oh. My.

Some surprising things:

Thing the First: Blue were actually pretty good, Given their reception in the stadium, I'd be very very very surprised if we get hit with another sub 10 points effort.

Thing the Second: Italians doing jazz are brilliant. I'm voting for Italy.

Thing the Third: Actually, Moldova were fucking awesome. I've just voted for them instead.

Thing the Fourth: Are the ladies in Azerbaijan all so pretty?

Moldova Douze Points!

Nothing beats a unicycling fairy playing trumpet.

Blue were dreadful. I hated them.

They're bound to do well, then.

MOLDOVA FTW!!!!

Germany were pretty good though. Still would her even with her new big hair.

Blimey, I forgot that Black Lace represented the UK in 1979:



7th. Which is still higher than Blue.

I quite like our 1983 entry in a Fame rip off kind of way:



Possibly features the only synchronised falling off of stools ever seen in Eurovision history.

I thought Blue were good. It was big and fun - started off a bit shakey, but once they got into it, it was fun! They wrote their own song, and I thought they did it well. The song cheered me up

We don't usually bother with even entering anything other than rubbish, but I thought they made an effort. Made 100 points + which though only mid table, is good considering everyone hates us.

I think we should be pruon of Blue.

Do not mock Sweet Dreams. They can do things with a stool Blue can only dream of.

Wasn't a bad bit of synth-pop, but more of an album track than a Eurovision entry. Bit too subtle for its own good as a song, really.

Moldova's act was the only memorable act for me, and that's more to do with the on-stage antics than the song. Bit of a meh Eurovision contest this year, IMO.

Very true, but the voting was as close and exciting as I can remember. France were the red-hot favourites going in and they finished in the bottom half. Jedward were second favourites and were threatening to win at the half way point before they dropped off a bit. Even the UK were top of the leaderboard after four countries gave their votes.

Personally, I thought the winners were as bland as possible. Ukraine should have won for that incredible Mystic Meg / sand artist genius thing they had.

The voting was designed that way though, rather than have a draw to determine the order countries give their votes, this year it was decided to have a dynamic voting system. Basically, the national juries all did their voting on the Friday dress rehersals and using that they worked out the most likely order to create an exciting voting sequence.

It seemed to work very well, but doubtless it was helped by the fact it was quite a close contest anyway.

Errr... wasn't it all done by phone voting this year?

According to the BBC website, 50% of the vote comes from a panel of judges.

No it's been 50% jury/televote since 2009 I think.

A week late but I thought I'd repost this. It's the audio from the production gallery of the 1977 Eurovision Contest hosted in the UK.

As you can hear the director is a calm and relaxed man who takes it all in his stride. Incedently although he sounds like a bastard the crews liked him and away from the pressure of the gallery he was said to be a lovely man. Indeed as soon as it's all over it's almost like someone flicks a switch and he's all nice.

I tried to do a poll earlier to see what would have been the Beex list of bestest Eurovision songs in Eurovision style voting but couldn't seem to get it to work. I doubt it would have interested more than 3 people anyway.

Well, well, it's that funny time of year when people turn on BBC1 to laugh at foreign people gyrating in bacofoil and then get Daily Mail angry when no-one votes for the UK for historical reasons. Inexplicably, the UK shall be represented by the legendary crooner, Englebert "I thought he died in the 90s" Humperdinck. There can be no doubt that his song will be a complete dirge, but fear not - silliness will no doubt be abound.

Ireland will again be providing fun in the form of the Jedwards, who entertained us with the following last year...



First Semi final will be on Tuesday, second Semi on Thursday and the main event will be on Saturday. Can't wait.

Yay Eurovision Semi Final 1 is on NOW.

Montenegro first up and I've found my fave, who can't help to love jazz funk bass and rapping from a greasy long haired fat middle aged bloke...I know I can't.

Latvia seemed to have sent the typing pool of a small distribution company.

Albania's a bit yelly. Also she has a ball of twine on her bonce.

Very shouty...I assumed it to be the cat stuck in her hair do trying to get out.

I shall also be changing my name to Rambo Amadeus in the morning.

Romania's Manjina is probably the most European things I've ever seen.