h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The jury votes are now less consistent from the political perspective, which is interesting

320 points is a good score for Australia after 42 countries voted.

Ah, if Australia do win, then it will still be hosted in Europe, I see.

Ah, so the viewer votes are all added together, so we can't tell if countries vote in line with the juries...

waits...

I like the really sinister music now...

Graham Norton says the phone votes are different from the juries

Wow - that was a surprise ending...

Wannit?

Good mind.

Thanks everyone who could join in with the thread tonight and I hope to hear tomorrow from people who weren't able to be online in here to see how they enjoyed their Eurovision parties

Smoked salmon on rye bread; meatballs with mashed potato and pressed cucumber; rhubarb trifle. It was a good party.

As usual, we failed to pick the winner. But we found the new voting system tremendously exciting (in previous years we have recorded the show so we can start watching it late and fast forward through the voting) even though we thought the Ukraine song was fairly dire (not the worst though).

We loved the presenters and the interval song they did was the highlight of the evening. As is now customary, we gave the stage floor the highest score of all - it performed superbly.

I haven't read all the thread (I do usually but I'm pushed for time tonight) but if anybody was wondering why, during the voting, each country's rep was allowed to blether on at what seemed to be unnecessary length about how great the show was etc, this was to give Ken (on the radio) time to quickly recap the scores given, before the rep revealed who'd got the douze points.

The radio was also slightly ahead of the TV, so my whoop in the kitchen when the UK got 12 from Malta was a bit of a spoiler for those in the living room. I rather liked the UK entry and I thought it was a shame they didn't score more highly.

On Twitter only Mark Gatiss and the Wife in Space were tweeting eurovision in my feed so I was able to keep up quite easily between serving Swedish food and topping up drinks.

A super evening.

Mol

I'm sorry I never kept up. The grandkids wore me out and when iPlayer gave up, I had the excuse to fall asleep on the couch.

Heard the Ukranian song on the radio and without the context of Eurovision and the visuals I thought it was pretty dire. A very political result imo.

I'm not sure it was that political (probably a bit) personally - as soon as I heard the title '1944' and that it was from Ukraine I just thought 'ooh, that's going to be a tug at the heartstrings one' not much that was good happened in that part of the world in the mid 1940s.

It didn't do all that well from the juries but the popular voting was the usual partisan stuff from Russia and Ukraine so their governments might not get on but they still have that cultural connection that gets the ex-Soviet block all voting for one another.

Definitely no the best song. I thought Oz would win it thought I rather liked the rock number from Georgia - but then I'm a bit of a rocker
(the other 'rock' number - Azerbaijan? armenia?) was rubbish. Good band but lose the singer.

Eurovision Song Contest.

The only time the EU watches a TV show at the same time and the perfect opportunity to backstab any country that an individual country has a long standing beef with and the perfect opportunity to join forces with an enemy to backstab another country that has peeved both of you mightily..

At least WW3 is put off for another year.

Next year I hope the International Space Station wins.

<BB<

Meh, the 'Euro' part of it has long been a bit of a joke - countries like Israle, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia have been in it for a long time.
I see the presence of Australia and now Timbersnake as tacit (blatant) admission of this. I look forward to Argentina or Angola winning it in the near future

Traveller in Time counting countries
"Will be a show with five days of six hours somewhere in the future.
Still it is more clear to follow then World Championship soccer. "

No problem swl - I suspected something of the sort when you lost contact with the show

The winning song was very powerful, but I can imagine it doesn't come across so well without the visuals... It did seem like Australia would win, as that song did impress my mum who was listening rather than watching. It also does seem likely that the USA will enter next year

The new voting system was much much better than I've even seen in my opinion. There were significant faults with the jury system of old and probably more with the popular phone-in vote.

A synthesis of both and you have no complaints from me for the first time ever - and it really did make it dramatic at the end. The voting system as is, is the real winner for me

I'm unhappy with the principle of the phone vote. I don't see the value of voting for your second favourite (clearly you'd want your own country to win, however dreadful the song is). Do you vote for the next best song, knowing that its popularity could make your own country come second? Do you vote for something unlikely to beat your own country (Germany, for example)?

In the end, it looks like the countries with high emigrant populations did well (Poland especially), as immigrants can vote for their mother country.

The only fair way is to scrap the phone vote and let Simon Cowell decide.