Eurovision 2005 Semi-finals

From Ukraine 19th May 2005.

This should be interesting... the 50th Euro-pap song contest takes place on Saturday and Winamop, as you may remember from last year, takes a great interest in this fine institution.

Tonight (Thursday) we saw a field of 25 hopefuls (or hopelesses really) whittled down to 10.

The shock headlines are:

Ireland didn't get through!

Croatia did! (Theirs was rubbish and so was FYR Macedonia's).

So what went wrong? We don't really know. I think the fact that most people were bored witless by a series of lack-lustre songs just before the voting may have played a part.
Denmark's, for instance, featured a schoolteacher in a pink shirt and orange shoes with some sub "boy-band" cobblers... and they got through!

So what of the ones that didn't, the ones you won't see on Saturday, what were they like?

It was definitely the night of the big drums, only a few songs didn't feature bare-chested blokes banging on oil-drums, kettle-drums or just plain old drum drums.

Belaurus didn't make it, probably not drummy enough. They did feature a singer with a fabulous dress made of old Chinese Restaurant curtains though. This was ripped off to reveal a gold cat-suit in the closing moments... impressive. However, the fact that this wasn't the Eurovision dress contest probably counted against it as the song was third-rate disco.
Still, Israel got through with a similarly ostentatious dress and no better song, so where's the logic there?

Belgium's moustachio'd spiv didn't make it despite a creditable performance and neither did Estonia's "Spice Girls" with gramophones.. (thank goodness).

Finland shed some light on the reason why their suicide rate is amongst the highest in the world with their depressing song "Why?" ('nuff said).

Andorra made a brief appearance with one of the most boring songs of the evening and left by the tradesman's exit.

Bulgaria fielded a tedious semi-funky effort that failed to impress whilst Ireland went for the Harry Potter vote with some schoolchildren and a bit of Riverdance tap-dancing. Unfortunately they'd been upstaged by Hungary on the Riverdance front so that didn't work.

We thought Slovenia's slow-builder stood a good chance, just shows how wrong we are!

Finally there was Poland with a lead singer behaving like Casanova, dancers with swirly skirts and an accordion. Absolute rubbish. We were amazed it didn't make it!

We can't wait for Saturday night!

Goodnight.

Update Saturday. The night of the contest proper...

We came third-from-bottom.

Oh dear.