The build up is sometimes more than the equal parts of the night itself, and the dramas and tantrums of the preceding few days left me drained (and clearly very susceptible to alcohol!)
The first semi final on Tuesday kind of went to form in my eyes, the only shock non-qualifier being Kuunkuiskajat for Finland who put in an amazingly upbeat performance that knocks the socks off their NF winning one. I was sorry to see them go. There was a bit of bleating about Malta not making it, but there couldn't really be any argument about those who did go through (although the boo's in the auditorium for Russia's qualification were loud, in my mind they were not warranted. So there.)
Semi-final 2 was a different beast altogether. There were at least 12 songs that deserved a place in the final, so the mathematics was always going to win out in the end. And it did. Goodbye and thank you to Lithuania, Croatia, and, the one that had the crowd gasping, and a small blonde Swedish girl crying, was the goodbye to Anna Bergendahl - absolute favourite amongst the Digital Spy forum members, and dead cert for the final in most peoples views. Saturday would be the first final in 33 years where Sweden had not participated, it was that unthinkable. But the truth was that Anna had ranked 9th in the televote and only 11th with the jury, and Cyprus's 10th/9th split won the last coveted place.
Coem the night itself, Oslo did us proud. I really enjoyed the staging, the postcards and mostly the interval act. Organising the flash mob dance was inspired (except the UK did itself no favours whatsoever, with poor organisation and precious little to show for it). The spectacle of the dance and the clips of the countries that had made an effort with it were amazing. Spoilt slightly by the over zealous security guards in the hall - but given that there had been a pitch invasion during the Spanish entry (why?) it was hardly surprising!
Not only were the UK shown up during the interval for a lack of planning, organisation and attitude, this spilled over to the UK entry who came a deserved last. Nothing against Josh Dubovie, he was a nice kid with a nice voice - but ... you can't polish a turd, and bottom of the table was deserved.
And in the same vein, a win for Germany was also deserved. I never thought I'd see the day (since the advent of semi finals and the "big four") that one of the automatically qualified countries would win out, and it made me feel just a bit proud that the music is still important...
Thanks Lena, you did a marvellous job - and thanks must also go to Ovi and Paula from Romania, as I ended the night £150 better off :)
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