Aliens win Eurovison

[Guest]

[Morningangel-Iola]

Are the real Finnish entries tied up somewhere? Those were aliens for sure, where's Dr who when you need him? And they won!!!!

For those of you who don't know what I am on about;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4998186.stm

I think they may be Klingon

[Roz]

I was sorting base sets this evening (after a hard day's BBQing and badminton-ing ) and had this on in the background. I found the whole thing OUTRAGEOUSLY hilarious (well, that's Wogan isn't it?). Was there a half decent song in the lot of them? Wasn't it odd (NOT) that Cyprus gave the maximum number of points to Greece ?

And I really need to check my map... if I was a kid watching this I'd be asking my parents some very odd questions. I know for the past 400 years Turkey has been dying to be in Europe, but now ISRAEL??

ISRAEL'S IN EUROPE?



Blimmin' hilarious.

[Morningangel-Iola]

I did think Germany and Russia (I think) was quite good, but some are just plan weird like the blokes in white with there robot (Scary after the earlier dr who )

I'm ok my geography is useless anyway

[Tower]

It was a funny evening with a lovely German commentator with much subtle irony.    And i was able to guess almost every 12 point vote.    But why do they sing before, they can start with voting and leave out the singing with the same result.
Okay, Finland may be an exception, funny that this song has won although it was a little contest parody in my opinion.  
Well, and i liked the German country song. The german drummer isn't a musician, he is a comedian.    But we got 12 points from Morningangel-Iola, thanks for that. 

[Tower]

And for everyone who wants to know who won: This one here: 

[Morningangel-Iola]

Your commentator sounds a lot like ours, makes it much more fun Yeah the country song made a nice difference. Can we help it if the rest of Europe is mad and prefers heavy metal aliens?

[Roz]

And did you cringe all the way through the French song... the whole thing was out of tune *cringe*

But it's all good fun

To be fair Istanbul is in Europe, but take a look at a map, the rest of Turkey's across the Bosporous

http://www.infoplease.com/atlas/country/turkey.html

Amusingly Israel is South of mainland Turkey

http://www.infoplease.com/atlas/middleeast.html

(look for Tel Aviv/Jerusalem as the country itself is rather small these days)

Hey, you can never accuse us of not being inclusive eh?

[grecopa]

They really do look like klingons!  Is this some kind of American Idol/Pop Idol thing?  Who got to vote and how did they get to be the bands allowed to play?  Where can we hear some songs? 

[Sharon]

Kelly the Eurovision has been going for donkeys years and was supposed to bring together Europe in singing harmony .  There are some amazing songs that have survived the test of time - Abba (Waterloo) got their break at Eurovision.  Initially the bands are selected by their own country - we have a show called Song for Europe.

It has got plain silly now with the amount of countries that are allowed to enter.  So much so that they now have to do it in two ' shifts '.  All of the competitors that come in the bottom 20 (I think it is 20) have to be in a preliminary contest with X amount going through to the main show, but all countries get to vote.  The only exceptions are Britain, France and one other, I am not sure if it is Germany or Spain.  This is because those countries fund the Eurovision Song Contest and so get an automatic entry.

I normally sit back and laugh about it but this year I just found it annoying.  Terry Wogan (the host in the UK) usually guesses who will vote for who but this year, as Thomas said, you could have skipped the songs.  All the Baltic states voted for each other etc.

There are loads of Cd's on Ebay and Play with Eurovision songs.  I would go the Ebay way, much cheaper.  And don't necessarily go for the winners only cd's, the runners up are usually better.  As a Eurovision nut I have lots of other handy hints so if you need any more info you know where I am 

[Roz]

Yes and I do give you a disclaimer about the quality of music before we start. I don't think the UK entry would have been popular here for 15 years.

Something else that confuses me is that Celine Dion got her big break at Eurovision in 1988 - singing for Switzerland... WTF Mate

Kelly American Idol's based on the British programme "Pop Idol" and it's not really like that at all. This dates much further back - as Sharon says, Abba got their first break here, it first started in 1956 apparently. It's just a get together for no good reason (well it's not the music ) and all the different countries commentators report back with heavy doses of irony and wit. A lot of European countries do take it seriously... not all of them... what on earth was Lithuania's song all about ??

Sheer genius... I did cry tears of laughter in parts.

[HPfamily]

  Thanks for the new gif Thomas!! 

[grecopa]

Thanks for the expination of Eurovison.  I had no idea about all that.    I love Abba btw, always have!
Our American idol finals are on Tuesday and Wednesday.  I'm not really sure who I want to win, I'm just not into it this year.

[Sharon]

Good news for you Kelly - I think  .  America is going to do their own version of Eurovision.  It will be an inter-state song competition but run along the same lines as Eurovision.  In fact one of the hosts for this years Euro was American.  Apparently they wanted to find out what it was all about (I must say I did wonder myself why they didn't have two Greek hosts).

[grecopa]

That sounds cool!    I'm getting really tired of American Idol.  I would love to see something new!

[Roz]

LOL

Sharon - it never ceases to amaze me that a Swedish band chose to sing

"My, my, at Waterloo Napoleon did surrender"

and yet it won

I wish we could find the votes somewhere... who's guessing that the French gave it 'nil points'