Eurovision Song Contest - Belgrade 2008

The thing which impresses me every year, and which we got a couple of chances to see tonight during the ad breaks, is the incredible speed of the set changes. I know everything's on wheels, but they still unplug and move it extremely quickly.

The graphics looks like an explosion of Paintshop Pro in Powerpoint.

Finalists:
GREECE - good performance, and nice song
ROMANIA - I also enjoyed this one
BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA - just mental
FINLAND - v similar to Lordi
RUSSIA - out of tune for most of it, and overall just bizarre
ISRAEL - quite liked this one
AZERBAIJAN - just bizarre, but quite quirky
ARMENIA - thought this performance was terrible
POLAND - I can't actually remember this one
NORWAY - liked the song, but poorly performed (the rhythms are a bit weird), and nice to see a Scandinavian country through!

Overall, an ok selection, but was half expecting Ireland, Andorra and Estonia to pull through rather than a few of those.

EDIT: Poland's come back to me. I quite liked it but she was face of Chuckie when she sang.

Disappointed Ireland didn't get through, I guess they didn't get the Terry Wogan joke.

Put the turkey in the oven....

Well, four out of the ten were what I'd class as old Eurovision countries. It's a definite improvement, bloc-voting wise.

However, WHY did the Estonians and Irish, both with jokey songs, get booed, yet the Bosnian loon who appeared out of a washing basket get a big hand?

Still some bias - everyone can take the pee - yet only the Eastern ones get away with it!

No, no...I'm fairly impressed with the split of results. GO SVERIGE on Thursday!

Oh sorry, I wasn't even aware that Cheesenfestivalen semi-final was on tonight... So Dustin didn't get through, whew, thank goodness for that!

Im disappointed you cant give us 12 points for absolute crap now

The Eurovision ideal is dead - pull the format for f**ks sakes! It is painful...like watching a sh*te Elvis impersonator trying to re-capture the "Kings" finest moments...it's never going to happen...the "King" is dead!

The great days of Abba, Cliff Richard and Dana, to name just afew of the classics, are in the past - and so should be this so-called competition!

"Eurovision Song Contest" my a*se!

Its the same argument every year after a semi-final...bloc voting this bloc voting that, tonight's result was reasonably fair except for one or two songs I thought definately only got through because of neighbourlyness. If countries like the UK and Ireland actually put some decent effort into finding a good song/performer, then we would see better results from this side of Europe. The eastern countries take eurovision much more seriously than we do so its no wonder they do consistently well every year. Bloc voting is certainly evident in the eurovision of today but it is not enough to win a contest. The semi-final voting is dominated by actual eurovision fans so you really need a good song to win them over. Ireland/Estonia hadn't a hope. Perhaps the Saturday voters would have voted differently because there would have been a much larger non-biased television audience. I am disappointed Ireland didn't make it through but I am not surprised. If Ireland or whoever were to send a song like Sweden's, they would qualify/win just as easily as an eastern country. The long and the short of it is: western countries need to stop sulking and start sending decent music if they want to achieve a good result.

France and Spain's song looked interesting from the previews....
My favourite performance in recent years though will be Lithuania's 2006 entry with the crazy Harry Hill lookalike.

So a country on the Caspian Sea is considered a European country these days?

We'll have Iraq and Iran in there next!!