Thanks to James I have now remembered what the main thing I wanted to blog about was. How could I forget? It was of course the Eurovision Song Contest! Held in Istanbul, which of course gets the They Might Be Giants song in my head.

One thing I have to ask. Was the qualifying shown in all European countries? We didn't see the qualifying here. Okay, so we live in the UK and they don't show us the qualifying, yet James, in Australia, which, even with my poor geography skills, I'm pretty sure isn't in Europe, gets to see the qualifying, that makes no sense. Unless we just missed it, which is possible, but terribly sad, because we didn't get to see the Estonian entry, I wanted to see the sackcloth girls and insane drummer. Although perhaps the Ukranian entry made up for it.

I loved the Ukranian entry, for entertainment value they were certainly the best, so I was rooting for them, I was also cheering for Turkey who oddly were a Turkish ska band, very good, can't see that James mentioned them in his review. Anyway, musically Turkey were my favourites, but for entertainment I was going for the Ukraine. So I was pleasantly surprised as the voting went on to see them both doing very well. And was thrilled (yes, I started a sentence with and, see if I care) that the Ukrainian band actually won! Well done Europe you voted well, which meant I got to see the amazing Xena-like wild dancing people twice in the evening and we'll get to see them next year. Fantastic.

I did think that the UK song deserved more points than it got, okay I didn't particularly like it, but it was musically very good. I was surprised Ireland did so badly too.

Terry Wogan was not on top form though, didn't seem to be putting so much effort into his criticism. I know they tell him off, but really people watch Eurovision for his comments, he should stick to his guns and make amusing comments. He was still rude, but not as funny and didn't say as much. He didn't like the Turkish entry either, which makes me question his taste.

I often wonder if other European countries take it all more seriously than we do. We seem to think of it as a big joke, criticising all the political voting, which always seems a bit of a farce. Though Terry Wogan blows it up into a bigger thing than it is I think, he was complaning that it's getting worse, but I don't think it's any worse than it ever was and at the end of the day I don't think that political voting affects the top 5 that much. I mean it makes a difference in the ranking sure, but not a huge one, there's not enough countries all affiliated with the same one enough to push one into the lead. To get into the top 5 it's got to be a popular song because more than just a couple of countries have to be giving it a lot of points. The political voting only affects the order a little bit, perhaps giving one country a slight advantage over another. There are only a few countries that always give their neighbour 12. I had another theory about that though, if you think about it, neighbouring countries might be more likely to have similar musical tastes, particularly if they speak the same language and the song is in that language, in which case you might expect them to like their song more. Although this reasoning falls down on the simple fact that when it comes to it you often don't like your own country's entry as much as some of the other ones. I know I wouldn't have placed the UK entry in the top slot.

Right, so that was what you were waiting for, not sure you should be particularly pleased that I remembered.