Sunday, 24 May 2015

Grattis Sverige!

Well, I was wrong - and I couldn't be more delighted!

Måns Zelmerlöw has won Eurovision 2015 for Sweden with his song Heroes. In fact, the bookies were absolutely spot on with their top five prediction: Russia came second, then Italy, Belgium and Australia finished a not-too-shabby fifth place.

 
For the last couple of years, the producers have tweaked the order that countries read out their votes (based on the results of the jury vote) to create the most tension - making it seem like one country's in the lead before the eventual winner surges to the top of the leaderboard.

And that's certainly what happened - for the longest time, it seemed as though Russia would walk away with the contest, with Polina picking up points from right across Europe - East and West. Italy also stayed up there in contention as well, making it the most close-run count for many years.


But then about two thirds of the way through, Måns drifted to the top - and stayed there. He was eventually crowned the winner even before all countries had delivered their points, and gave a lovely shout-out to Eurovision's massive gay fanbase in his victory speech: "I just want to say that we are all heroes, not matter who we love, who we are or what we believe in."

After the contest, the EBU released the full voting results - and they do make for interesting reading.


Unsurprisingly, Sweden got points from every single country, including 12 points from Australia and 10 other countries.

Russia got points across the board, but didn't get any at all from San Marino and - more controversially - neighbour Lithuania. To my chagrin, Australia gave them 10 points, however that was mostly because our jury ranked them first (the televote only placed them 7th), meaning the combined score put them second after Sweden in our overall score.

In great news for Australia, we got points from every country except Azerbaijan, the Czech Republic, Macedonia, Georgia, Montenegro and Portugal. And in most of those countries, we actually finished 11th, just missing out on points. We also got the coveted douze points from Sweden and Austria, which was a great moment to watch.

Perhaps most shockingly, the UK didn't finish dead last - they got 5 points (from Ireland, Malta and San Marino - but not us) and finished 24th. 

That dubious honour went to Germany and hosts Austria, who both scored the dread nul points and shared bottom place on the scoreboard. I think that was incredibly harsh - their songs were not that bad, and pretty much everyone agreed the UK's entry was a complete dog's breakfast.

So we're headed to Sweden next year - and I'm pretty excited, because I've got the bug now and am going to make sure I'm in Stockholm next May to watch it live another time!