I mean that affectionately, by the way, rather than in a sneering way. Luckily, this year's crop of hopefuls was as weird and wonderful as ever: The Ukrainian entry featured a guy in a hamster wheel, manically running around while his female colleague belted out the song - perhaps we could connect his wheel to the mains and sell off the electricity generated. Or, box him up and pass him off as a desk toy for giants.
Belarus, meanwhile, opted for a cheesy man with hedgehog hair and a painted-on moustache, who, along with his equally un-cool backing singers sang about being someone's "cheesecake". Yes really.
Iceland was very catchy and full of energetic, colourfully dressed men, while Norway had opted for a lovely, but very serious bloke who makes window frames and doors? This was his first experience of singing professionally, and though he had a great voice, his attempt at looking sincere involved squinting. "He looks tired", our 6 year old observed.
Poland's entry made me regret the fact that the children were still up: The group was dressed in traditional folk costumes, but soon, one of the milkmaids took off her second top, thereby exposing her churn(s). She then proceeded to slowly pump a stick up and down into the bucket, while looking lustily into the camera. Her colleague was doing something similar. So, I guess this is what porny Eurovision looks like. This was obviously an insulting attempt to distract from the fact that the singer sounded like a tortured cat. Luckily, it did not work. While I would say that it is the singing rather than the spectacle of Eurovision that should count at voting time, I do understand that acts want to create a good show. But this is no place to parade bazumbas - of any nationality.
Austria's Conchita Wurst created her own controversy, as she turned out to be not a giant sausage, but rather a bearded man in a dress. In Belarus (the country who voted for the cheesecake song) many disgruntled citizens signed a petition asking for Conchita's performance to be edited out, saying that Eurovision would become a hotbed of sodomy. In Austria itself, a Facebook page, asking for Conchita to be removed, had 38000 likes. Although I did not particularly like the song, Conchita had a fantastic voice and the fact that she won the Eurovision last night is testament to the heart-warming truth that most people, at least most Eurovision viewers, are fairly sane people.
Speaking of controversies, the Russian twins had a fairly unremarkable song, but stood out because the audience kept booing them, whenever they got high points. As our British commentator Graham Norton pointed out, the poor girls are only 17 and can really not be blamed for any of Russia's political actions. As a Dane, I was embarrassed and could only hope that most of the booing audience were not Danish.
Being Danish did give me an insight into why the Danish hosts decided to surprise Graham Norton in the box, and why the host jokingly remarked that Norton had made fun of his weird Chinese jokes. You see, the Danes take Eurovision very seriously and really enjoy the spectacle each year. Certainly while I lived in Denmark, the Danish commentator was always respectful of the acts. It came as a big shock to the Danes, therefore, when they hosted the Eurovision in 2001 and British commentator Terry Wogan did his usual routine of making fun of the acts and the hosts. While I do agree that Terry and Graham's comments are funny, I also wonder why the Brits, Terry especially, seem so scathing. Nobody is forcing the Brits to take part, watch it or fly abroad to comment on it. If you can't stand the cheese, get out of the kitsch(en).
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