Hyvää päivää from Helsinki! - Part 4

Ok, so it was the Mayor's offical welcome party last night in Finlandia Hall.  A very swanky and posh do indeed.  Everyone who is anyone was there, and of course your intrepid reporter felt it was only right to pop along and join in the festivities.

We were greeted at the door by young ladies with trays filled filled with glasses of cranberry and vodka.  Now, I'm not a vodka drinker - it normally gives me a dreadful hangover, but this was just so fruity and delicious, that I thought for Simon's sake I should do the healthy thing and make sure I got my 5 protions of fruit for the day. 

Over the next 3 hours I had 15, so I'm good now for the next two days...

Myself and one of the Schlagerboys made sure we met everyone important, and that they all had an opportunity to have thier pictures taken with us.

How fab that I finally got a picture with DQ from Denmark.  S/he's my fave entry this year, and was looking mega in white feathers.  Little Marija from Serbia is a honey (and yes, she was still wearing her sensible shoes).  It would seem that Scooch have ditched thier blonde bloke and brought me in as his replacement!

And what about the very fabulous indeed Mr Turkey and Mr Germany!   They were practically knocking people over to get to me for a photo opportunity!

The Schlagerboy has his picture taken doing some kind of "rock God" pose with the little boys from Andorra (more so that we could laugh than anything else!).

Had a long blether with David from Scooch (yes, he's the camp one!).  I told him that the UK charts needed more fab pop like them, and that they had to remain back together and have more singles and albums.  We've had more than enough of this R'nB and hip hop rubbish, thank you very much.  He's going to see what he can do for us, which I thought was very nice...

We rolled into Euroclub around half midnight, but to be honest I was so completely shattered that I left after about 30 minutes.

No rehearsals tomorrow tho, and it's the Big 4 party tonight (UK, France, Spain & Germany), followed by the Slavic Party (Russia, Belarus and Ukraine), so a very late night indeed beckons.... hoorah!

Now, the whole media hype around Ukranian drag queen Verka Serduchka is massive.  The stage show was FAB!!!  This is looking VERY much like the winner now, with Russia and Sweden as the other two really strong contenders.  Many folk seem to have gone off the Swiss Vampires.

Another sneaky wee bet for you...   France are looking and sounding fantastic in the Gaultier Pink outfits.  I popped an each way on them yesterday and got them at 66/1.  They could be the surprise hit of the night...