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.