Eurovision

Hadise shakes it all about for Turkey

It's some days since Eurovision but we feel we can't let the event pass without some comment. We can't say we enjoyed it so much this year and there were a number of reasons for this. Firstly, everyone seemed to be taking it very seriously this year (even the UK) and there weren't quite as many really off the wall acts as usual (although the poor Albanian singer who had to cope with the blue sparkly man had her work cut out for her).

17 year old Balkan teenager molested on stage by overdressed alien

Even Dita couldn't help the song

The Germans tried to enliven their performance with a rather underused Dita von Teese writhing around in the background. Generally, however, there was a sad lack of underdressed dollies this year.

Svetlana Loboda gets manhandled by Trojans

Ukraine defied the new Credit Crunch sense of doom with a typically underdressed lady and some bizarre chaps dressed up as Las Vegas style Ancient Greeks. Svetlana Loboda, the lady in question has been in several girl bands in her home country as well as posing, thankfully, for Maxim's Ukrainian edition (!)

Svetlana: Thank heavens for Ukraine

Hadise gives it some belly

We also enjoyed the Belgian-born belly dancing Turkish entrant, Hadise, and indeed she finished in fourth place.

Lord Lloyd-Webber contemplates adding another piece of art to his extensive collection

The UK's entry, the lovely Jade Ewen, looked and sounded a little strained. She is quite a good singer but there were some bigger and better voices on show this year. Fifth is not bad I suppose and the Norwegian entry was the biggest runaway winner (it was very catchy) ever but I would have thought the UK team should feel a little disappointed. Interestingly if you look at the professional juries votes only and discount the telephone voting, then they had her third. Part of the issue is that Andrew Lloyd-Webber just isn't a pop song writer.

On TV Graham Norton showed that he will have to go some way to match Terry Wogan. Norton seemed overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the event although he warmed up a bit in the second half.

Another downer on the evening was the sheer size of the Russian venue; it was just too big to generate any real buzz. Hopefully Oslo will offer a more human scale venue next year. The half time show which consisted of girls in vests and frilly knickers writhing around in giant see-through paddling pools suspended from the ceiling should have been Triple P heaven but again, just didn't work. They were dwarfed by the venue and the photography failed to capture the sheer bizarreness of it.

So very professional but rather soulless production by the Russians, OK but not brilliant songs and paucity of underdressed girlies mean a 6/10 from Triple P. At least the new voting system prevented some of the regional tactical voting.