Eurovision 2008

Well, we held our usual Eurovision Song Contest party last night. It was Mouse's turn to host it this year, which was nice because it meant we didn't have to tidy up.

The way we play is this:
We make scoresheets. Each country is rated between zero and ten on each of a range of categories. This year, it was: Cheesiness, Costume, Lyrics*, Music, Dance, Performance, and Homo-eroticism.

*The lyrics one was a bit iffy this year, as the subtitles were only working sporadically.

Each person gets a scoresheet, and totals up the points for all the countries once they have performed.
Whichever country you gave the most points to is the one you are officially supporting.

Almost unanimously, the top act was Latvia.
Oh, Latvia, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways...
Actually, no. I'll just show you guys what they did. Please note that this seems to be from the show choosing which Latvian act was to enter, and not from the Eurovision itself. They were even more wonderful in the actual show.


Lyrics.

So, yes. out of the seven people playing, four were backing Latvia. Matt was backing both Latvia and Finland, as they had the same scores for him. Sebastian (age 8) was backing Finland, but he had rather cheated on the 0-10 scoring system, and Stuart was backing Azerbaijan, which seemed to confuse him a bit.

I understand that - I have sometimes been looking at the totals, going "But... I really didn't like (for example) France! How did they get so high a score?"

So we had much fun heckling the voting. Azerbaijan were clearly winning (as in being way higher than either Latvia or Finland) at about nine votes into the 43, so we all started picking on Stuart a bit. "Oooh, ain't you fancy with your points?"

So Russia won the actual contest, and Azerbaijan beat Latvia by miles, and Finland by about twice as many miles.

Stuart got the fabulous prize (top one on that post) for being this year's winner. We even wrote his name on the underneath in biro. I know, I know... he was totally spoiled.

In the pirate theme, here are the two Book of Ratings ratings of Aspects of Pirates. They make me cry laughing.