Right, the second one and the one I’m reliably informed is the stronger semi final.
Fingers crossed, I might get a chance to watch some of this one.
Once again, this begins at 8pm UK time/9pm in Europe, and if you can’t watch with Scott Mills and Sara Cox on BBC3 then there should be a live stream here. The BBC scorecards are here. Watch Jedward sail through, despite/because the UK can’t vote in this one. please feel free to give your opinons and marks out of ten!
Sorry everyone, the Bar encountered problems this evening so it’s a bit of a washout. It’s been fun on Twitter though, so why not come and join us!
Interestingly, I thought Jedward were quite good but were being suffocated by their backing singers which felt a bit too unneccessarily full on.
Europe, you failed me! Letting both Iceland and Ireland in but knocking out Albania and Cyprus?
They killed the best Netherlands entry in years to put in Jedward.
No.
The best Dutch entry in years isn’t really saying very much: it’s an even lower bar than the best BBC entry. If a song squeaked through, it’ll have been Sweden trying to perform a three minute song … in The Cube.
Here’s the draw in full, last night’s qualifiers marked with a *:
01 Finland – *Bosnia and Herzegovina – *Denmark – Lithuania – Hungary
06 *Ireland – *Sweden – *Estonia – Greece – Russia
11 France – Italy – Switzerland – UK – *Moldova
16 Germany – *Romania – *Austria – Azerbaijan – *Slovenia
21 Iceland – Spain – *Ukraine – Serbia – Georgia
Rotten draw for Ireland, I can see them scoring 10 from the UK and little more. Good draw for Romania, Azerbaijan have the worst neighbours they could pick out, and that’s a dead weird final three.
The direct qualifiers are all going to be in the shake-up, there are a lot of reasonable contenders but no obvious winner. Two projections I do care to make: the winning margin will be less than 30 points, and that Blue will finish top half but not top three. But what do I know?
Do the automatic qualifiers get a chance to perform at one of the semi finals for fairness, and if not – why not?
No they don’t, but the songs get briefly played in both semis.
Thought the first semi was stronger really, but overall it’s been a bit bland this year. Don’t get the logic too in not milking the televote in all countries for both semi finals.
Let’s take a look at what the bookies say:
Ladbrokes
France 6/4
Jedward 11/4
Azerbaijan 8/1
Blue 9/1
bar 16/1
William Hill
France 6/4
Jedward 7/2
Azerbaijan 8/1
Blue 10/1
bar 16/1
Paddy Power
France 6/4
Jedward 4/1
Azerbaijan 9/1
Blue 10/1
bar 16/1
Coral
France 13/8
Jedward 4/1
Azerbaijan 9/1
Blue 10/1
bar 18/1
Hmmm…
And if you want to know, Lena is 22/1 with Ladbrokes to do it again, and 20/1 with the others.
I think there might be value in Sweden, while both the UK and Germany benefit from being either side of a Moldovan entry that many people will hate. I don’t see the UK winning, but that draw sets up the possibility of a second top-five position in three years. With the one in between being bottom, and deservedly so.
Azerbaijan must be strongly fancied though, drawn 19th with a song that feels like it fits the winning-song template. For me, it starts as favourite.
I’m quite surprised France is favourite (with UK bookies at least, I suspect if varies across the continent) – I just can’t see it doing that well myself. Opera and Eurovision don’t really go hand in hand.
Even more surprised Jedward are second favourites.