Well it wasn't really a surprise that the United Kingdom didn't win this years contest (again), but it was disappointing that we came joint last along with Poland and Germany. It feels that we increasingly have little chance of winning other contest, let alone feature in the top 10.

I'd like to restate my idea of re-vamping the contest to make it fairer. It's no secret that there is political voting going on in the competition, which makes it a bit daft to call it a song contest.

The idea, which I raised back in 2007, was to keep all songs secret until the night of the performance. The songs should all be sung in the same language which can change randomly each year, or be chosen by a draw. When the songs are performed, no clue is given to which country the song is representing meaning the song, performers or stage set cannot give this information away. Scoring is by way of a top 10. When the voting is over, only then can the countries be revealed.

Another issue that Charlie and I discussed, was that maybe the UK has become complacent due to the fact that it is guaranteed a place in the final each year since we contribute to the funding on the contest. Maybe it's time we stopped this funding. We would therefore need to qualify each year, including competing in the semi-finals. If we were knocked out in the semi-finals a few times, we might start considering putting more effort into our entries.

Now, I don't want anyone to think that I thought our entry this year was bad. There were plenty of poor songs in the show, and according to the scores that Charlie, Kate and myself came up with, we weren't one of them. However, I think consideration needs to be given to the fact that our performer (Andy Abrahams) is an unknown, not just in Europe but in the UK as well. Compare that to Russia's performer Dima Bilan who, according to BBC News is a well known performer not only in Russia but outside of it's borders. Apparently he has also won an MTV Award.

Maybe we need to put forward a performer who is known in at least a few European countries. The trouble is, would we be able to find such an artist in the UK where the opinion is often that once a Eurovision performer, that's it for the career?

I don't want to sound like a sore loser, but something needs to be done to make this contest fairer and to allow the scoreboard to truly reflect the best song in Europe.

All that said though, I do still love Eurovision!

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