Report on the Eurovision 2009 Final

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This went up on The Stage’s website this afternoon, my thoughts on the results of the Eurovision Song Contest:

Not only did Rybak win, but he won in style. Scoring a massive 387 points, he smashed through the previous highest points scored record of 298 points, which belonged to Finnish Rockers Lordi in the 2006 competition. There will be a lot of Eurovision fans happy they don’t need to see Lordi mentioned as the highest scoring song ever now.

It’s not quite the greatest song ever, though. Adjusting scores to take account of total points available each year, it’s beaten into third place by both Katrina and The Waves and The Brotherhood of Man — he would have needed 388 points to overtake the former and 396 for the latter. But in terms of modern Eurovision, with the dual semi-final format and 40-plus countries voting in the final, Rybak is sitting on top of a pile of douze points.

I also particularly love the headline that they left intact… Norway Brought a Gun to a Knife Fight.