Eurovision 2012 - 22/24/26 May 2012

I saw the first semi-final on BBC3 last night.  I've put a full recap of all last night's songs on my blog.

My desired qualifiers: Greece , Latvia, Belgium, Finland, Israel, San Marino, Ireland , Iceland , Romania , Cyprus .
Actual qualifiers (in order of announcement): Romania , Moldova, Iceland , Hungary, Denmark, Albania, Cyprus , Greece , Russia, Ireland .
Bold entries represent the actual qualifiers that match my preferences.

Out: Austria, Belgium, Finland, Israel, Latvia, Montenegro, San Marino, Switzerland

I'm gutted Latvia and Finland failed to qualify, they were excellent ballads which deserved to qualify.  Also I'm disgusted Albania and Russia are through.  Rona Nishliu had a strong voice and smart outfit, but the song wasn't up to much.  As for the Russian grannies, I bet they qualified thanks to their costumes, the song itself "Party For Everybody" was terrible.  Latvia and Finland deserved the places Albania and Russia took.  Although I disliked the preview videos for Israel and San Marino, I found both much better sung live last night, and would much rather have seen them Saturday instead of Moldova and Hungary.  Thank goodness Greece and Ireland reached the final, they were two of the best songs of the night.  I'm overjoyed Montenegro and Austria failed to qualify, as both were really terrible, and I'm also glad Switzerland are out as their song wasn't up to much either.  So that means Greece and Cyprus are both in Saturday's final.  You know what that inevitably means, they'll give each other 12 points.

Tomorrow night there'll be 18 more to enjoy or loathe in the second semi-final on BBC3 at 8pm.

Hopefully Sweden get through tomorrow night, their entry this year is absolutely brilliant!!

Who will be the announcer of the UK votes this year?
It was Alex Jones last year.

It would be a nice surprise if Wogan did it one year.

The UK spokesperson is Scott Mills so he must be leaving on Friday.

I went on a TVC tour today and noticed outside Studio 4 that they had the Eurovision logo with the Light Your Fire theme on the screen. Would they have used the gallery there to mix the commentary on the feed as mentioned earlier? Also would that be where Scott will be filmed from on Saturday?

Why do the BBC choose really bizarre choices to announce the Eurovision televote for the UK? Or is it no one with any gravitas would want to do it?

Is Scott Mills a bizarre choice?

I can confirm that all the outside shots of the arena lighting up are live- a couple of blogs mentioned that during the rehearsals the shots were in but the lights weren't switched on- pretty impressive effect I think!

He works on radio, so presumably having a clear voice would be helpful.

Not to mention all the experience of Eurovision shows...

Bizarre?

I really thought Paddy O'Connell did a great job when he presented the semis a few years back. He would have been a great Terry replacement too. Not a big fan of Sara Cox as the presenter...never seems to be truly in the picture of what's going on.

Is it a requirement for the results to be read out in the voting country? Or in theory could they stick him in a room in Baku?