Eurovision 2011

Naturally enough there was some disappointment in the room tonight when it became clear Eric Saade from Sweden hadn’t won this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.

For a long time he was in the lead, and then all of a sudden it became clear Azerbaijan had the numbers.

Unlike my friends who had managed to avoid the media today and had no idea of the winner, I found out inadvertently earlier this morning via ABC-1. Tuning in to watch “Insiders” (as I normally do) I thought would be a “safe” media option as I couldn’t imagine the likes of Barrie and Lenore discussing Eurovision. Unfortunately the “news headlines” at the start of the show contained a news item about the winner.

Still it was enjoyable to watch even if the results were already known, and even if I knew that Eric had missed out.

I thought Eric’s performance was really terrific with lots of energy and enthusiasm. For me, however, there were far too few stand out songs. As my friends and I discussed Eurovision tonight, we generally agreed the standard of songs has increased somewhat over the last few years. We agreed there were very few of the “shockers” that sometimes gave Eurovision a bad name. But perhaps it also lacked a bit of the “spontaneity” and slight “clunkiness” that also made Eurovision such a great thing to watch.

The only really proper laugh out loud moment came when the Slovenian actor, tv-star etc, Klemen Slakonja delivered the votes from his country as “Paul The Octopus”.

As for the winner? OMG. How dull was that song? The only thing that made it slightly interesting was the age difference between the two performers, they way they appeared to fight over the trophy at the end and the Swedish connection. The song was written by Swedes, Sandra Bjurman and Stefan Örn and the whole back-up team, including make-up, choreography, hair etc were imported from Sverige. So maybe Sweden did win after all?