Happy Eurovision!

Just caught end of voting. Looks like a sweet guy who has won. What's the song like? Isn't Graham Norton adorable? Like a particularly sarky best pal. And hey, isn't this English all the commentary is in? Juncker loving that. Just saying.

ooo listening to the song. Seems like half a song, or the intro bars to something from 1940s. Oh, well. 

After he performed it at the end with his sister it was very sweet and the song as a nice nostalgic classic Hollywood feel about it

Anyone who missed Lucie's performance tonight can catch it here. Just stunning. Makes you proud to be British.

Delighted that Portugal won. Slightly surprised at how well Sweden, Australia and Moldova did, but a very creditable position for UK - we may have a chip on our shoulders that nobody likes us, nobody votes for us, etc but then again Germany must be thoroughly cheesed off having been in the bottom two for three years running.
Looking forward to a trip to Lisbon next spring!

Parabéns Portugal!!! Loved the song and his performance since I first saw it. It's better as a duet actually.

Lucie's vocal was good. I didn't like her performance, she looked borderline stern/aggressive while singing it sadly.

Haven't really payed much attention, however on the way home from 42nd Street, I stopped off to get a healthy kebab, anyway they had it on and very uneventful, until Greece awarded Cyprus 12 points, then f me, I thought it was going to kick off, I have never heard such a volley of obscenities in such a short time, they were going mad.

Haha, Turkey, Greece and Cyprus. Those three are all the best of friends aren't they?

Yeah - it was announced on Tuesday the state was shutting the broadcaster down with immediate effect. A small team were kept on to ensure Eurovision could be shown. I believe Eurovision was the final thing broadcast on their channel last night.

The broadcaster which is due to take over can not currently qualify for Eurovision, as they are not able to be a member of the EBU, seeing as they have no news department. Hopefully we'll see Isreal back in soon enough, but I wouldn't put money on it.

Eh, as a German I can tell you that this was entirely predictable. Eurovision songs are chosen either by the tonedeaf German public during a national pre-selection show or by a "commitee" consisting of ancient men who were last in touch with modern pop tastes in about 1972. 

We were this sh*tty for a long time, then Stefan Raab (a popular TV host at the time) decided to take matters into his hands. He competed for Germany himself, then built up some hype which resulted in Lena winning the whole thing a few years ago. Raab decided that his job was done by sending Lena again the year after in Düsseldorf, then stepped back - and Eurovision sank back into the sh*tty depths in which it had languished before. 

I was still stuck on a boat (read: German cruise ship) on Saturday evening and they screened the ESC on a big screen in the ship's theatre - to an audience of about 50 mostly young people. All the oldies who usually clogged the theatre all evening were sodding off to bed already, which just shows how much people here care. 

Anyway, personally I'm glad that the Portuguese bloke won as it was a nicely unpretentious unpolished and simply beautiful song, so different from all those hyper-styled skinny overly-perfect Barbie dolls. Apparently Moldova did well, because "Epic Sax guy" is some sort of internet meme. I'm probably too old to know what the kids were on about. Speaking of kids, there were many of them in this year's contest...  guess Australia did well on the teen girl vote, as did Bulgaria.