Eurovision 2012 - 22/24/26 May 2012

Really? I think they're pretty dire. The running gag that suggests none of them can speak French was pretty lame the first time - and just got lamer the more they repeated it.

Not a patch on the Sweden 2000 and Oslo 2010 teams, though possibly less annoying than Denmark 2001's rhyming, and Annely in 2002 in Estonia had a pretty grating high-pitched speaking voice ISTR... It could be that because the Norwegian and Swedish presenters were almost certainly naturally fluent in English they could relax a bit and enjoy the presentation aspect more. (For those who saw one of the Norwegian semi-final interval sequences - which BBC Three opted away from - there was a great 'cocktail reception' sketch where the three presenters basically conversed in almost every Eurovision language.)

Unlike others hear I wasn't a fan of Stefan last year. He's funny in German, but it didn't really translate into English. I thought Anke was great though (She handled the voting pretty much perfectly) - and Judith was OK too.

And then of course, Oslo's main interval act (the Flashmob) was the best in years.

The voting order has been determined by the results from last night's Jury Final. An algorithm has been created to try and make the voting as exciting as possible.

The order is as follows: (Spokesperson in brackets)

Albania - (Andri Xhahu)
Montenegro - (Marija Markovic)
Romania - (Paul Seling)
Austria - (Kati Bellowitsch)
Ukraine - (Aleksey Matius)
Belarus - (Dmitry Koldun)
Belgium - (Peter Van de Veire)
Azerbaijan - (Safura Alizadeh)
Malta - (Keith Demicoli)
San Marino - (Monica Fabbri)
France - (Amaury Vassili)
United Kingdom - (Scott Mills)
Turkey - (Ömer Önder)
Greece - Adriana Magania)
Bosnia & Herzegovina - (Elvir Lakovic Laka)
Moldova - (Olivia Fortuna)
Bulgaria - (Anna Angelova)
Switzerland - (Sara Hildebrand)
Slovenia - (Lorella Flego)
Cyprus - (Loucas Hamatsos)
Croatia - (Nevena Rendeli)
Slovakia - (Mária Pietrová)
FYR Macedonia - (Kristina Talevska)
Netherlands - (Vivienne van den Assem)
Portugal - (Joana Teles)
Iceland - (Matthias Matthiasson)
Sweden - (Sarah Dawn Finer)
Norway - (Nadia Hasnaoui)
Lithuania - (Ignas Krupavièius)
Estonia - (Getter Jaani)
Denmark - (Louise Wolff)
Ireland - (Grainne Seoige)
Latvia - (Valters Fridenbergs)
Spain - (Elena S Sánchez)
Finland - (Mr Lordi)
Georgia - (Sopho Toroshelidze)
Italy - (Ivan Bacchi)
Serbia - (Maja Nikoliæ)
Germany - (Anke Engelke)
Russia - (Oxana Fedorova)
Hungary - (Éva Novodomszky)
Israel - (Ofer Nachshon)

Great to see the EBU's Lynda Woodruff giving the votes for Sweden tonight.

Does anyone else think that they should appoint three main presenters rather than leaving it to individual countries year on year? They could easily find three big names from three of the larger countries. Although inevitably there would be change over time, that would provide some consistency year on year. With the whole continent of Europe to look at they would hopefully be able to find a good combination of presenters.

That would take away some of the charm and only individuality left though.

Exactly - it wouldn't be right to parachute big names in and deny local talent the chance on an international stage.

Not that we need to worry too much about it now but who do you think would be the UK candidates to present at the moment?

No - as bad as they are - I think it would send completely the wrong message to import presenters from overseas. Can you imagine the presenters hosting not being able to speak the language of the country they are presenting from?

Greece parachuted in Maria Menounos (an American-Greek presenter) for 2006 - and she was pretty A-MAY-ZING(ly awful).

Part of the fun of Eurovision is the presenter line-up giving a sort-of flavour of domestic talent.

SVT are trying out a new version of SVT Play with responsive design where the player changes size depending on the width of your browser window. It doesn't work for live broadcasts yet, but its a nice feature if you want to rewatch the show later on your computer.

http://beta.svtplay.se/eurovision-song-contest-2012

There's also an application that allows you to record SVT Play for personal use, if you want to save the programme for later.



"Skrattfesten fortsätter" as the SVT commentator said on Thursday.

Was actually rather hoping they'd've given Lynda a little slot...she was fantastic

Fireworks a plenty at the start ,,,,

Well the show has begun, or should I say the party has begun. Enjoy the evening.

ps Is there a Eurovision chatroom this year like we had 2 or 3 years ago?

12am in baku those fireworks would have woken up a few unintrested people lol