Eurovision 2019

They have no piano for the winner's performance this time. They probably wouldn't have time to do that now.

Which is different to the original way of doing the split system, where they just read out the points from smallest to largest, rather than from the last place country to first from the jury vote.

Wonder if it got stashed in the prop store in the wrong order so they couldn't get it out in time. It looked like they were trying to fill until they realised it wasn't going to happen.

I have no view on the politics. It just made awkward TV which is great TV.

Four Hours - Twelve Minutes (got to be a record) remember it's 2.12 am in Tel Aviv.

Good to see the closing Eurovision ident in the full frame rate, rather than the filmic effect at the beginning.

As we are a presentation forum after all think it has been superb tonight - the visuals have been superb along with the sound design, especially the Big Brotheresque bed during the voting. Talking of which think Assi Azar been on a par with Petra Mede with his hosting tonight.

Good to see we still got our traditional unintentional spelling mistake in the credits

The technical issues aside, going round the countries for the jury votes seemed slicker than usual, and the hosts didn't seem to have a weak member with a loose grasp of English. The look of the arena itself was probably the most impressive thing of all, it looked much bigger than it was.

Hardly a "tolerant democracy" with Netanyahu in power, an expansionist policy (new settlements, East Jerusalem, Golan, etc.), indefinite military occupation, an unwillingness to compromise, and consistently deplorable treatment of the Palestinian people. European-style liberal democracies don't behave this way.

I thought Rylan was particularly professional.

It was a really well polished show. Amazing staging. Even the flag ceremony done well. Probably some of the best quality of music ever. Amazing staging. The biggest living pop star of the last 50 years. Lots of tension.