It occurs to me, nearly one week on, that I haven't written about this year's Eurovision Song Contest; held in Moscow.

Sadly, since it's been a few days I don't think I'll be able to comment on perhaps some of the more obscure acts of the contest. Saying that however, I don't recall it being an overly bizarre event.

Perhaps I have just established some kind of mental block, eliminating the poor and shameful acts from my consciousness but I do believe that the Eurovision Song Contest is becoming more serious. Nations are taking it more seriously - and so are we in the UK. Or at least we did this year.

I'm very pleased to be able to write that we did very well in this competition. Every time I have reviewed the event in the past, I have had to make reference to the poor performance of the UK entry. This time however; thanks to Jade's performance and Andrew Lloyd Webber on the piano; our nation ranked 5th out of 25 countries.

In order to eliminate some of the political voting that has marred the contest for so many years, this time jury voting was introduced which accounted for 50% of a countries score. The other 50% still being made up by the public telephone vote. On the face of it, one might consider that this is why we did well and indeed it did help. Looking at an unofficial source of results however, shows that with only the telephone vote, our song would still have scored 7th. Yes the jury vote has helped us, but not by such a significant margin as one might imagine.

To me though, this result really does prove that by putting in a lot of effort in using a talented singer, known song-writer and heavy European marketing; we can still do well.

Now the mission is to do the same again next year. On the back of a good result, can we entice performers that are well known in Europe to get involved? It is important to build on what went well this year, and improve our weaker points. Then maybe (but just maybe) we will be hosting the Eurovision Song Contest.

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The UK entry for this year's Eurovision song contest was decided just a short while ago, voted for by the British public on the BBC One show "Eurovision: Your Country Needs You".

For the last 5 weeks, potential performers have been auditioning for the chance to represent the nation in Moscow; tonight for the first time, the final three performed the song penned by the Diane Warren and Andrew Lloyd Webber - "My Time".

Out of all of the hopefuls, the winning singer - Jade Ewen - was the right choice, clearly having talent above that of the others. Which is not to say that all others were bad although some were. However, the song itself was maybe not the show-stopper that the hype had built up.

It's no real surprise that it's a theatrical song. It is a ballad, although that may be in our favour since our recent entries have been cheesy, poppy and upbeat. However, it is very repetitive. Whether that just means it'll stick in the minds of the voters in May or not remains to be seen but at the moment I am slightly sceptical but happy to be proved wrong.

When it comes to May, I'm not looking for the UK to win the competition; I think that it's just a little too much to ask considering our recent record. All I would like is to see us obtain a more respectable position. Perhaps if we can at least get halfway up the scoreboard then it's a positive sign that - just possibly - we could be making our way out of our Eurovision slump.

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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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This year's Eurovision Song Contest is a bit of a marathon (and all the better for it) with 2 semi finals, the first held last Tuesday, and the second held this evening to determine 20 songs (10 per semi) which will compete in the final on Saturday.

To get in the spirit of the occasion, I scored all songs even though the UK was not permitted to vote on Tuesday (something to do with not voting for your neighbour. Ireland was in it, so we couldn't vote).

I had a fairly simple scoring system, based on what was done in last years final. Each country was judged on the following categories:

• Song - how good is the tune

• Performance - how well could the performer actually sing

• Dance - dance routine and general stage presence including lighting and pyrotechnics

• Outfit - How well did the costume work with the performance

Each category could score between 1-4 points, with 4 being the best giving a maximum total of 16 points by the end of the main performances.

Then, to try and break any possible deadlock, the countries were scored again during the recap without reference to the previous scores. This time, there was only one category - overall impression - again scored out of 4. This was added to the total score giving a rating out of 20.

I then ordered my results. In a tie situation, the earlier performer took the higher position. The top ten songs became my choices to go through to the final.

So lets look at my scores for both semi finals:

TuesdayThursday

1. Montenegro:3,3,2,2,2 = 12

2. Israel:2,2,1,2,2 = 09

3. Estonia:3,3,2,2,3 = 13

4. Moldova:2,2,1,1,1 = 07

5. San Marino:2,3,2,1,1 = 09




6. Belgium:3,3,1,2,3 = 12

7. Azerbaijan:2,3,2,3,3 = 13

8. Slovenia:3,3,3,3,4 = 16

9. Norway:4,4,3,2,3 = 16

10. Poland:3,4,2,3,2 = 14




11. Ireland:4,2,4,4,2 = 16

12. Andorra:3,3,3,3,4 = 16

13. Boznia & Herzegovina:3,1,1,1,2 = 08

14. Armenia:3,2,3,3,2 = 13

15. Netherlands:4,3,3,3,3 = 16




16. Finland:4,4,3,3,4 = 18

17. Romania:3,2,1,2,1 = 09

18. Russia:3,2,3,1,2 = 11

19. Greece:3,3,4,3,3 = 16

1. Iceland:4,3,2,2,3 = 14

2. Sweden:4,4,3,2,3 = 16

3. Turkey:4,3,3,3,2 = 15

4. Ukraine:4,4,4,3,4 = 19

5. Lithuania2,2,1,2,1 = 08




6. Albania3,2,2,2,2 = 11

7. Switzerland3,2,3,2,3 = 13

8. Czech Republic3,2,3,3,2 = 13

9. Belarus2,1,3,3,2 = 11

10. Latvia:3,2,3,4,3 = 15




11. Croatia:3,4,2,3,3 = 15

12. Bulgaria3,3,4,3,3 = 16

13. Denmark4,4,3,3,4 = 18

14. Georgia4,4,3,3,3 = 17

15. Hungary3,3,2,2,2 = 12




16. Malta3,3,3,3,3 = 15

17. Cyprus2,2,3,3,1 = 11

18. FYR Macedonia2,2,3,2,2 = 11

19. Portugal2,2,2,3,2 = 11

These scores resulted in the following charts:


TuesdayThursday

1. Finland (18pts)

2. Slovenia (16pts)Norway (16pts)Ireland (16pts)Andorra (16pts)Netherlands (16pts)Greece (16pts)

3. Poland (14pts)

4. Estonia (13pts)Azerbaijan (13pts)

5. Montenegro (12pts)Belgium (12pts)

6. Russia (11pts)

7. Israel (9pts)San Marino (9pts)Romania (9pts)

8. Boznia & Herzegovina (8pts)

9. Moldova (7pts)

1. Ukraine (19pts)

2. Denmark (18pts)

3. Georgia (17pts)

4. Sweden (16pts)Bulgaria (16pts)

5. Turkey (15pts)Latvia (15pts)Croatia (15pts)Malta (15pts)

6. Iceland (14pts)

7. Switzerland (13pts)Czech Republic (13pts)

8. Hungary (12pts)

9. Albania (11pts)Belarus (11pts)Cyprus (11pts)FYR Macedonia (11pts)Portugal (11pts)

10. Lithuania (8pts)

In my opinion, tonights show featured a much better quality of song with much fewer daft songs of the sort that Ireland performed on Tuesday (which I must admit I did rather enjoy)

In the above charts, in my opinion the songs below those which are underlined should have been the ones to go out assuming I'm talking fair and letting the best go through. I did have the thought though that maybe I should have been favouring the worst in order to give our song the best chance on Saturday night.

In actual fact, the countries that are in bold are the ones that did go through to the final and will be competing on Saturday night. Actually my scoring tonight wasn't too bad - only two wrong.

And what of the UK's chances this year? Well I think our song stands up well with those that went through. I think it beats the socks off the songs put forward by the other four automatic qualifiers (France, Spain, Germany and Serbia). I don't know that it will stand out enough to win (we're performing second - the voters need to remember it), but hopefully it will do reasonably well.

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On Saturday, the BBC hosted it's annual programme dedicated to choosing the song that would represent us in the Eurovision Song Contest later this year.

The line up of artists, to be frank, was pitiful. All of them (with the exception of Michelle Gayle?) were runners-up to some TV talent competition including X-Factor and "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?". Unsuprisingly, the majority of these acts were awful.

The 6 acts in question were:

1. Loveshy (YouTube)

2. The Revelations (YouTube)

3. Rob McVeigh (YouTube)

4. Simona Armstrong (YouTube)

5. Andy Abraham (YouTube)

6. Michelle Gayle (YouTube)

Lovshy (has anybody heard of them before now???) simply could not sing. I don't know how they managed to wangle their way onto a BBC stage, but they may as well have been two people picked at random from the local karaoke bar. To give them airtime was simply an embarassment.

The revelations were marginally better, but still there were problems getting some of those notes in tune. They also sounded like they were shouting. The song was a throw back to the 60's style motown girl bands. Not impressed.

Rob McVeigh, although a loseing contestant in "Any Dream Will Do", he could actually hold a note - well most of them, and in comparison to the previous two was flipping marvelous. His song was a ballad though, and although that's not necessarily a problem, it was quite unmemorable.

I don't know what Simona Armstrong was wearing, but it wasn't pretty. Neither was her song. She described it as pop rock. I don't think it quite managed to rock bit. The song was boring and she was weird.

Andy Abrahams was my favourite. He wrote his own song, and held a good tune. His performance could have been stronger with more going on on-stage, but the song was more memorable most of the others. He got my vote - twice!

I expected to like Michelle Gayle, and to be fair when the song started, it seemed okay. When it got into the chorus though, that's when it went out of the window for me. She was being a bit too mad, and couldn't stay in front of the microphone meaning the sound was horrible. I know it could just be a technical problem but I'm not convinced.

I'm quite glad that for once the great British public sided with me and voted for the best performer by a long way - Andy Abrahams. He won the competition and will be performing at this years Eurovision. Whether it'll be enough to win, I don't know but we'll hopefully beat Ireland at least - who have a weird puppet chicken on stage!

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It's occured to me that since the Eurovision final on Saturday night, I haven't actually written about it. Of course that wouldn't really be a problem, except I've written about the semi final so it would be wrong to leave it at that.

So, just to sum up what happen in Helsinki, Finland, the United Kingdom was crap. No sitting on the fence here. Just plain crap, although it was marginally less crap than when we came last. This year we came second from last with a whoping 19 points - 6 less than last year!

There wasn't really anything wrong with the performance other than a microphone or two sounded a little quiet, and the singing could have been a little stronger. The problem was the dominant style of music this year was not the cheesy pop of old. And to make matters worse, the other country that did REALLY cheesy pop was the Ukraine who put on an excellent and visually memorable performance right before our song which I would imagine meant it got overlooked slightly.

Anyway, Charlie came over for an Indian meal whilst the show was on, and this year we scored each act using a scoresheet from the BBC website, with Charlie, Kate and myself each allocating a score of 1-4 for each of the categories: song, performance, dance routine and outfit. So once we'd allocated our points, each category would have a score out of 12 which I would then add up to give that country a score out of 48.

Using this system, we came up with the following for the top 10:

01= Sweden (36pts)
01= Germany (36pts)
02. Ukraine (35pts)
03. United Kingdom (32pts)
04= Belarus (31pts)
04= Finland (31pts)
04= Turkey (31pts)
05= Moldova (30pts)
05= Georgia (30pts)
05= Greece (30pts)
06. Russia (29pts)
07= FYR Macedonia (28pts)
07= Ireland (28pts)
08. Latvia (27pts)
09. France (26pts)
10. Hungary (23pts)

Quite a close run thing really. We decided to vote for Sweden once the songs had been recapped due to it being a better tune than Germany. Our top 10 however was completely different to what was announced by the end of the evening:

01. Serbia (268pts)
02. Ukraine (235pts)
03. Russia (207pts)
04. Turkey (163pts)
05. Bulgaria (157pts)
06. Belarus (145pts)
07. Greece (139pts)
08. Armenia (138pts)
09. Hungary (128pts)
10. Moldova (109pts)

Well we got Turkey right at number 4!

The results are certainly dominated by those countries which fall into the Eastern block. You have to ask the question now whether any of the western nations will come close to winning the contest again, let alone the UK.

Personally, I think it might be time to reform the way the contest is run to make it a little more fair and I have a rather simple solution. All songs are sung in the same language, which would be chosen by a draw each year but must be different to that of the previous 3 years so that no one language can dominate the contest. Each song is performed, but it is not announced which country that performance is for until after the vote has closed. Then each country announces the vote as is done now, but as a simple top 10. Non of this 7pts, 8pts, 10pts, 12pts rubbish which I've never really understood the purpose of.

This sort of system would make political voting more difficult and limit runaway lead scores whilst ensuring small countries can issue their scores on an equal footing with the larger countries.

Of course it would mean that the song for each country would have to be kept secret until the performance which would mean a change to the way the UK at least chooses it's song. A panel would need to be appointed to choose rather than a televised phone in poll, but that could well mean that a better quality of song goes through to the contest rather than the rubbish which we've had lately.

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This years Eurovision is now well under way, with the semi final having just taken place in Helsinki, Finland.

Due to 42 countries taking part in the Song Contest this year, tonight's semi final was a chance to eliminate 18 of them ready for the main event on Saturday. Just like the final, each country performed it's song and the opportunity was given to vote at the end of the performances.

As always, there was a strange mix of songs ranging from those that sounded pretty good, those which were downright awful and those that were just plain weird. The line up of countries was as follows:

1. Bulgaria

2. Israel

3. Cyprus

4. Belarus

5. Iceland

6. Georgia

7. Montenegro

8. Switzerland

9. Moldova

10. Netherlands

11. Albania

12. Denmark

13. Croatia

14. Poland

15. Serbia

16. Czech Republic

17. Portugal

18. FYR Macedonia

19. Norway

20. Malta

21. Andorra

22. Hungary

23. Estonia

24. Belgium

25. Slovenia

26. Turkey

27. Austria

28. Latvia

Only ten of these countries would make it through to the final, and throughout the performances I decided to list the countries in my prefered order. The top ten of which were:

1. Montenegro

2. Belgium (Great 70's disco style)

3. Netherlands (Sounded a lot like Anastacia)

4. Denmark (Draq queen - and that's not just the name of the song)

5. Norway

6. Switzerland (Something weird about vampires)

7. FYR Macedonia

8. Hungary

9. Andorra (European rip off of Busted or McFly)

10. Poland

As you can see, I've put some comments against some songs just to highlight the type of music being played. Unfortunately, out of my list only 2 made it through to Saturday's show - FYR Macedonia and Hungary.

Oddly, the favourites Switzerland, Denmark and The Netherlands all failed to get through. Those countries that did succeed are all Eastern European.

What does that mean for our entry then? If Eastern Europe is going to dominate, we'll probably end up right down the board again. My big concern is that there are a fair few good songs from the automatic qualifiers on Saturday, and we have a cheesy pop song, so we probably won't even get the Western vote.

It could be bad news for the UK in two days time!

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Another year, and another Eurovision. Finland won this years show held in Greece. Their song was very bizarre. So was the act. In fact I think my exact words were "The Klingons have invaded Poland!". The UK song was better than previous years. Performed by Daz Sampson, the song "Teenage Life" sounded like a pop rap song right out of the 90's.

Now I've looked at the results of the Eurovision Song Contents since 2003 when the UK got no points (they don't say it French anymore) and I have a theory. 2003 was the year that Blair took the UK into it's illegal war with Iraq. Europe didn't like it so we scored nothing in Eurovision. As the years have progressed, we have scored more than the previous year. Therefore Europe must be starting to forgive the UK. Based on that, I reckon we may have half a chance of winning in, say, 2025.

Now I have plenty more to say. The only thing is that right now I'm being nagged by the other half to taste some pasta dish to see if it's ready. I'll probably forget what I want to say now :-)

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Making Your Mind Up is on BBC One at the moment. It's the programme that will decide what song will represent the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest in May.

Unfortunately I missed the first song so I can't comment (yet) but as for the second song, sung by Kym Marsh (of Hear'Say fame), well it wasn't anything special. It's a bit of a ballad (but that is not necessarily a bad thing) but it wasn't anything special. It would probably make the UK Top 10 thanks to the 10 year olds buying it. I just don't think it would stand out in Eurovision.

The third song is starting now and immediately I don't like it. There's some kids singing for the first 30 seconds and then along comes the rapper (Daz Sampson). Is rap really something that will work in Eurovision? Okay it's pop-rap but still. It sounds like it's from 1995 and reminds me of "C U When U Get There" by Coolio.

On to song number four by the City Chix called All About You. It's started okay, but maybe not the strongest singers in the world. It's got a key change for the chorus - that's always a winner but It sounds like it should be a bit faster than it is. I don't think it's a good choice based mainly on the singers. They're not strong enough and are slightly off key on occasions.

Number five now, by Four Story with Hand On My Heart. In a word - crap, crap, crap. Yes I had to say it three times. I don't like this at all. It's a boyband song taken straight out of the late nineties or early noughties. I was hoping based on their little "about the group" clip before the song that it might be a nice upbeat pop song. This trash must not be voted to represent us. It's very boring, and has no flare.

The final song is by Antony Costa called It's A Beautiful Thing. This bloke used to be in Blue so he's got some experience of a successful group which will probably go in his favour. It starts of well, nice and upbeat. The chorus is nice and uplifting with lots of colour of stage. The only thing that may let him down is he doesn't seem overly animated. A lot of the time he's at centre stage, although he does move around on occasions. Out of what I've heard, that one is the best.

So I've placed my vote for song number 6. Hopefully it'll do well. Listening to the clips before voting, song 1 seemed okay, so this is my order of preference:

1. Antony Costa (song 6)

2. Goran Kay (song 1)

3. Daz Sampson (song 3)

4. City Chix (song 4)

5. Kym Marsh (song 2)

6. Four Story (song 5) [CRAP CRAP CRAP]

I'll update this entry when the winner is announced.

Update: 04/03/06, 20:17
So the results are being announced in true Eurovision style, splitting the UK into regions. It looks like Antony Costa is going to get second place to Daz Sampson. They've just got to announce the mobile votes which could change everything however...

Update: 04/03/06, 20:35
Well it's all over. Here's the final order:

1. Daz Sampson

2. Antony Costa

3. City Chix

4. Kym Marsh

5. Four Story

6. Goran Kay

I'm not to sure we can we with the rap song from Daz Sampson. I don't really like it, but it could appeal just because it's a bit mad and will stand out. Eurovision does tend to be a bit mad, so who knows. Maybe we'll get into the top 10. I don't think we'll win though.

Roll on 20 May for the Eurovision Song Contest.

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It was Eurovision night again last night. This year the contest was held in Kiev - the capital city of last years winners Ukraine. As usual most of the acts seemed a little crazy, with plenty of mad outfits and bizarre music, and of course the political voting at the end.
This year the UK came third from last with 18 points. Quite poor considering the song (Javine - Light My Fire) wasn't too bad.
It was a fun event though, something I watch every year, and Charlie came over for a beer too, but no Chinese this year.

It was Kate's birthday last Thursday, so I've had a long weekend taking both Thursday and Friday off from work. We went to London for the day and visited the London Dungeons. They were good but they were not scary, unless you're a 10 year old maybe. After that we spent the rest of the day mainly sightseeing, taking a visit to St Paul's Cathedral, the Cutty Sark at Maritime Greenwich, walking under the Thames and back just because we could, taking a boat to Embankment and taking a good look at the Palace of Westminster whilst peering in to all the cars coming in and out of the grounds to see if we could spot any famous politicians (we didn't).

We were going to go for dinner that evening when back in Chelmsford but considering we didn't get back until 9pm and the restaurant closed at 10pm, we postponed that until Friday when we went to Tucano's at about 7pm. It's a Brazilian style restaurant where you pay a set price of around £15 and you can eat all you can. There is a salad bar which you can visit as many times as you wish, and the waiters bring over meats on large skewers which you can either take or pass on. There are about 13 different meats and they will keep coming up until you tell them to stop. It's certainly not a restaurant you would visit if you're a vegetarian. I'm not though and neither is Kate so we both liked it. Although I do have one criticism about it - the music was too loud and bassy. It made the waiters quite difficult to understand some times.

I spent a lot of cash at E-Buyer and Quiet PC yesterday getting the following:

• Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-8IPE1000g S478 I865PE ATX Sound GIG LAN USB 2.0 FSB800 SATA100 Retail Box

• Processor: Intel Celeron® D320 2.4GHz Skt478 FSB533 256KB Cache Retail Boxed CPU

• RAM: Crucial CT6464Z40B 512mb DDR 400MHz PC3200 CL=3 Memory Module

• DVD: LG 16x52 DVD-Rom Drive - OEM Biege

• Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar SE 250GB UIDE 100 7200rpm 8mb Cache- OEM

• CPU Cooler: Zalman CNPS6500B-ALCU Pentium 4 S478 Flower Cooler

The motherboard, processor, cooler, RAM and DVD will all go into my new machine which will be fitted with the 60GB hard drive, 128Mb graphics card and the 3 sound cards from my current 1GHz Duron, which will receive an old 32Mb graphics card and the new 250Gb hard drive. The old machine will then be put to use as a server, holding all files and operating the web server, therefore replacing the AMD 400MHz PC which is currently fulfilling that role.
These parts should be with me by Tuesday so I will have lots of fun putting the computer together.

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Tags: eurovision, computers, it's my life