T h e E u r o v i s i o n a r y

Last night we had a fab old time out at Euroclub, partying with delegates and artists until the early hours.  Highlight of the night was surely dancing in a drunken stupor to last year's UK and Dutch entries... This morning I was up early for a podcast on www.escinsight.com   We chatted about the events of yesterday, and gave our reasons for being here quite so early... (parties!). We arrived in the auditorium to be met with the uber-camp joys of Glen Vella from Malta belting his "One Life" out for all it was worth.  Thank goodness for the fabulous Senit from San Marino bringing a bit of class to the events afterwards...  Loved her big specs! The big shock today was the horrendous car crash of a rehearsal from Hungary...  Awful frock that looked like a short pair of blue drapes, knobbly knees that would have made Butlins proud, nasty LED lights all over the OTT backing dancers, and most worrying of all - poor vocals!  This is one of the hot faves, a...

Has anyone seen Branislav?...

24 hours after landing in glorious, sunny Dusseldorf, and we're already halfway through our first day of rehearsals. Yesterday we came out to the Esprit Arena to pick up of accreditations, and were completely blown away by how fab the facilities here are! (and no, I'm not talking about the toilets!).  The press centre is MASSIVE! And there are free apples - How healthy! Our hotel is rather lovely - just round the corner from a Thai Karaoke club which seems to be hosted by some rather dubious looking Ladyboys...  and then there is the drag club opposite, where the main headliner is a delightful "lady" by the name of Coco La Fontaine!  We peeped in the window and, bless her, she was like Danny La Rue's mother! This morning the rehearsals started in earnest...  First up we met the two hosts of the press conferences, Sonia and Branislav... Did I mention the lovely Branislav?   Let's just check that out again... Oh my!...  Zehr Shone! Stella from Nor...

OK then, so before the events in Dusseldorf begin to unfold I thought it might be nice to have a run through the 43 runners in this year's contest.  These are my thoughts on the songs prior to the start of rehearsals: Semi Final 1 Poland – This is a cool, funky start to the 2011 proceedings.  Magdalenda is great live, so I’m expecting good things from this contemporary sounding Polish entry. Norway – who cares if Stella has slight tuning problems – this is Afro-Schlager and it’s fabulously catchy!  I think this will sail into the final. Albania – Aurela is a statuesque lady who doesn’t look like she’s gonna tolerate any nonsense from anyone!  She’s also passionate in her vocal stylings...very passionate!  Nice in a bizarre ethnic kind of way. Armenia – Boom Boom indeed!  Where’s Basil Brush when you need him?...  being that its from Armenia expect bucket loads of votes from across Europe, but that doesn’t mean it’s good. Turkey – Oh my - How the ...

OK, second day of meeting the stjarnorna here in Stockholm!  Danny entertained us at lunchtime with his ode to his pregnant girlfriend, In The Club. He seemed happy to see us!  Nothing much happening then until teatime, when we went to see The Moniker, who does indeed look like Simon!  We spoke about the fact that he really wants to go to Germany, as he's half German (I told him I am too - spooky!). He's nervous about tonight as the international juries will do thier voting tonight for tomorrow's show... I told him that I thought he could win thier vote.  Interestingly, there were more people in the audience for him then there were for Eric Saade yesterday.  He signed his picture to me as "The David" - LOL, then apologised cos he's tired!  I laughed.  Nice chap. Very affable!  Be happy to see him represent Sweden in Eurovision, and the song is FAB! Still no sign of Ms Bengtzing doing a signing - but maybe tomorrow...

OK, so it's a nearly a year since I last updated the blog, but Eurovision season is well underway in 2011, and this weekend sees what is always my highlight of the build up to Eurovision, the Swedish Melodifestivalen. I arrived in a wet and windy Stockholm early this afternoon after travelling over "direkt" from Edinburgh with my firends Ross and Danny on Norwegian.  No time to even draw breath, as we dumped our bags and headed off to the shopping center at Globen, where a few of the artists were performing and signing thier latest CDs for the fans. So, first up was Mr Swingfly (seen here with one of his homies - or is that homos?).  A delightful chap who told me all about his West Indian/Panamanian ancestry, and about growing up in New York (where Melodifestivalen is obviously huge!).  Nice bloke! Then it was the singer of my fave song in this year's final, the completely gorgesque Sanna Neilsen.  God!  I love her so much!  She was absolutely deli...

...and she wore 'em just the other dah-ee! So Lena won it for Germany - and I don't think any of us saw it coming, despite the fact that she had been second favourite with the bookies since day one. Have to say that I wasn't a big fan of her "mockney" accent when the song was first selected, but over the past two weeks I have been bopping away to it big style at all of the parties. Being half German, I have LONG wanted to go to Germany for the contest, so once the voting was well under way last night (and all thoughts of Baku were happily cleared from my mind) I found myself being overwhelmed with joy that Germany was about to secure it's first win in 28 years. They have come a long way since Nicole and A Little Peace back in 1982. And wasn't it refreshing that a Big 4 country, with no real political or neighbourly voting allies, could storm to victory simply by sending a modern, catchy and worthy pop song?  There's a big lesson in there......