I have in my hand a piece of paper from the Russian Consulate. Now very happy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
That piece of paper was my Russian Business Visa.<\/p>\n
![\"image\"](\"http:\/\/www.ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/image30.png\" "\\"image\\"")
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It joins a number of other \u2018pieces of paper,\u2019 including return tickets on British Midland from Edinburgh to Moscow; a reservation for a central Moscow hotel, a guide to the Moscow metro and specifically how to get to the Olimpiyski Stadium, and full press accreditation for a certain music event\u2026<\/p>\n
I\u2019m going to this year\u2019s Eurovision Song Contest!!!<\/strong><\/p>\n Naturally I\u2019ll be bring coverage from Russia to you all, and providing a brilliant look at Eurovision<\/a> from a slightly different angle to anything you\u2019ve seen been before. I fly on Saturday May 9th, so I\u2019ll be there for the final stage rehearsals on Sunday, and then the dress rehearsals and live shows that make up the two semi-finals and the Grand Final on Saturday May 16th.<\/p>\n Do be aware that I really am a dedicated Eurovision follower, so if you\u2019re expecting snarky and bitchy comments, you won\u2019t find them here. But you will find the wit you all know from my other event coverage, and I do subscribe to the Wogan rule of \u201cif it\u2019s a duck, call it a duck.\u201d<\/p>\n So what sort of coverage can<\/em> you expect? Well first up there\u2019ll be a bundle of coverage in a number of places, all of which I\u2019ll link to from here. Most of the in depth written posts will be on The Stage\u2019s website<\/a>, but I\u2019m also working on the following:<\/p>\n A set of videos to introduce the concept of the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC), how it works,a and what to watch for over Eurovision Week (9-16th May). These will be ideally suited to introduce your friends to the ESC and how it all works, or if you\u2019re one of my many readers from outside Europe who have no idea what this is all about. These should start running one a day from early next week.<\/p>\n A video news bulletin from the stadium , running from Monday 9th right through to the morning of the final on Saturday the 16th May. I\u2019ll announce my co-presenter at some point next week. If you are going to be at the Contest, drop me an email, am looking to have as many voices and faces as possible on this news show.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s probably the biggest challenge. The big news, at least in the UK, is that (a) Terry Wogan is no longer doing the commentary and (b) Graham Norton is taking over the role this year. This is going to be the first Eurovision since 1979 that has not been voiced by Wogan, so it\u2019s going to sound really strange to many of us<\/p>\n That change, of course, opens up an opportunity. What if you don\u2019t want to listen to Graham Norton? Or what if you\u2019re watching the live stream from Eurovision.tv<\/a> that has no commentary, because that\u2019s preferable,or you are in a country (such as the USA) which doesn\u2019t have the show broadcast? What do you do for a commentator then?<\/p>\n That\u2019s where I\u2019m stepping up. I\u2019ll have an audio commentary available to everyone watching Eurovision<\/strong> as an alternative to the mainstream. You too can enjoy the dulcet tones of a Scotsman, in Russia, chairing a Unless of course Graham Norton falls down some more stairs, in which case the BBC know where to find me (and yes, I do have an alibi).<\/p>\n In previous years, my Twitter Stream (www.twitter.com\/ewanspence<\/a>) has acted as a running commentary (in text) for many of you, and anyone who was there for last year\u2019s contest will know how much fun that can be. Those new to twitter may have seen my at work during the UK Selection contest, or the Junior Eurovision or Eurovision Dance contests.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll be posting all my Eurovision news through the Twitter stream as well so if you grab the RSS feed of this site (www.ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/feed<\/a>) and follow me on Twitter (@ewanspence<\/a>) then you won\u2019t miss a thing!<\/p>\n And being the internet, you don\u2019t need to tell anyone else you\u2019re secretly going to enjoy the Song Contest \u2013 it\u2019ll be between you and me\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This Tuesday, I left a rather cryptic message on Twitter: I have in my hand a piece of paper from the Russian Consulate. Now very happy. That piece of paper was my Russian Business Visa. It joins a number of other \u2018pieces of paper,\u2019 including return tickets on British Midland from Edinburgh to Moscow; a reservation for a central Moscow hotel, a guide to the Moscow metro and specifically how to get to the Olimpiyski Stadium, and full press accreditation for a certain music event\u2026 I\u2019m going to this year\u2019s Eurovision Song Contest!!! Naturally I\u2019ll be bring coverage from Russia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[595,22,392],"tags":[233,287,1063,371,393,442,389],"class_list":["post-2162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-595","category-conferences","category-eurovision-multimedia","tag-commentator","tag-eurovision","tag-eurovision-news","tag-eurovision-song-contest","tag-graham-norton","tag-moscow","tag-terry-wogan"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p58Gl0-yS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62328,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2162\/revisions\/62328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"image\"](\"http:\/\/www.ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-thumb6.png\" "\\"image\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nA Beginners Guide To Eurovision<\/h2>\n
Daily Eurovision News <\/h2>\n
The Alternative Commentary Track<\/h2>\n
very special episode<\/strike> hacked together online version of Eurovision, all for free.<\/p>\nTwitter Coverage<\/h2>\n
![\"image\"](\"http:\/\/www.ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/image32.png\" "\\"image\\"")
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