Will UK entry Electro Velvet fare better than our last duo Jemini, who got nul points in 2003? How will special guest Australia get on? Follow all the action from Austria
10.59pm BST
GREECE now. Did this woman sing at Eurovision too? In 2005? Oh, I don’t care. Italy and Sweden are still way out in front. The UK has one point. Let’s call it a pity point.
10.58pm BST
Now for FINLAND. Fun fact, I sometimes teach liveblogging, and I use this woman’s 2013 Eurovision performance as an example of stuff that’s really hard to liveblog. Actually, that wasn’t a fun fact at all, was it? It was barely even a fact. I’m sorry.
10.56pm BST
Now for MALTA. They’ve given us one point and Latvia four points. Italy get 12, and go into the lead. Nigella had better be wearing that beard.
10.55pm BST
MONTENEGRO is first, land of several I Dream Of Jeannie tribute acts. Five points for Sweden, six points for Italy, no points for us and 12 points for Serbia. Nothing for Latvia, I see.
10.54pm BST
And apparently one of the UK’s jury is the guy who does the Strictly Come Dancing music. We’re screwed, aren’t we?
10.53pm BST
I’m just embedding this because I want to create a terrible feedback loop of images.
We're on @StuHeritage's Eurovision Guardian feed! Happier than that enthusiastic percussionist in the interval song. pic.twitter.com/WQyjM6AC8l
10.52pm BST
And now, some clips of people winning Eurovision. It is literally just a montage of people taking too long to walk to the stage, mumbling a couple of embarrassed platitudes and then slowly realising that they’re doomed to spend the rest of their lives as a pub quiz answer. That’s literally all it is.
10.50pm BST
And that’s that bit over. What’s next? A woman in the green room, reeling off the dullest facts about the Eurovision green room possible. Behind her, everyone is waving a flag, Their eyes are all a picture of agony, but they cannot stop waving. If they stop waving, the host comes and slaps them. Forever they must wave. Forever and ever.
10.48pm BST
And now, let’s meet the winner of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest. He’s only young, so we can’t be mean about him. Which is hard, to be honest. But on the plus side, at least he knows all the notes. We know he knows all the notes because he won’t stop singing them all at once forever.
10.46pm BST
Conchita is finished. “Why are you singing those songs?” the host asks her. Conchita says that she’s got an album out. This is just like the post-performance guest interview on X Factor. I’m waiting for Dermot O’Leary to run onstage, ask Conchita when she’s on tour next, then ignore her answer, then shove her offstage.
10.44pm BST
There was a third song called Literally Just Watching Some Children Muck About With Crayons, but that one never made it past the demo stage.
10.44pm BST
And now she’s singing another song called Firestorm. It’s one of two songs written about the treatment of the Eurovision acts in their pre-show VTs tonight. The other one is called Definite Imminent Drowning.
10.42pm BST
And HERE’S CONCHITA! She’s singing her new song, which is based on her acceptance speech from last year’s Eurovision. It’s a good thing that she won it and I didn’t, otherwise I’d be up there singing a song called Suck It Jerks.
10.40pm BST
The voting has now closed. You cannot vote now, but thanks for voting for Latvia anyway.
10.39pm BST
FINE, Graham Norton. Watch me never namecheck you when I’m liveblogging the fourth live X Factor final if that’s the way you’re going to behave.
10.38pm BST
Incidentally, spare a thought for these poor fools. Nobody deserves this. Nobody.
We have @StuHeritage's Guardian live tweets up on a bigger screen than @BBCEurovision. Oh, the world we live in. pic.twitter.com/GqFr6lA0dP
10.37pm BST
While this recap plays out, Graham Norton is literally listing every single person watching this broadcast one by one. Is he mentioning me, though? Is he bollocks. I don’t pay my license fee to be IGNORED, Graham.
10.34pm BST
Well, it’s finished. What’s next? Oh, another recap. How brilliant. I swear to god, I’m about three seconds away from Periscoping a video of myself shaving my own back.
10.33pm BST
Now there’s a middle-aged man leaping about in front of everyone, trying to rouse the audience into displaying something that even vaguely resembles enthusiasm. But he cannot, because they’ve been there for five hours and that whole thing was the aural equivalent of suffocating yourself with a hospital pillow.
10.30pm BST
This is a true story: a couple of years ago I went to Vienna with my wife. We were walking back to our hotel and, because hardly anyone lives in Vienna, the streets were deserted. But, on the breeze, we heard music that sounded a lot like this from an open-air performance a few hundred yards away. Right then it felt truly magical, like the sort of thing that only happens once or twice in your life.
Right now, though, I’m sitting on my own in the dark, covered in bits of Haribo writing this for money and it’s RUBBISH. SHUT UP YOU BIG DRUM IDIOTS. SHUT UP.
10.27pm BST
You know what this sounds like, actually? It sounds like when you’re stuck in a cinema after the film’s finished because you dropped a glove that you can’t find, and this is the third piece of music that plays during the credits. You’re looking for a glove, all the cinema workers are giving you dirty looks because they want to start clearing up, and this music is playing.
10.25pm BST
So this, essentially is like The ghost of Steve Jobs cloned himself and decided to alert planet Earth to an impending disaster, a bit like Matthew McConaughey did in Interstellar, but with a really annoying freeform vibraphone solo instead of bits of dust. And somehow, this is much worse.
10.23pm BST
Now that the genuinely tedious recap is over, it’s time for the interval performance. Oh good christ it’s going to be a 20-minute drum solo. Someone kill me.
10.22pm BST
AUSTRALIA WRITES:
So Australia is not ashamed ... nor are we quite in the pub, Stu. That was just bravado on our parts. But we are in our pyjamas and thongs – that’s flip flops to you, UK – with a strong cup of tea (ahem, coffee) in our hands.
C'mon Aussie. #SBSEurovision pic via @BlinkTVco pic.twitter.com/9WWnvnmNoD
And our Guy did us proud, didn’t he? He promised to wear a hat. We got a hat. He said “no flying kangaroos”. And there were none. Sadly, Katy Perry’s sharks at Super Bowl didn’t give us much wriggle room when it came to Vienna.
But we still confess to a burst of Aussie pride during him do his thing (seriously, can we have Tonight Again) and reading the adoring Tweets.
Guy Sebastian killed it. Awesome. #AUS #Eurovision
Fun fact: apparently Guy got pumped up before his performance by watchng the fight scene from Rocky VI. And didn’t it just show in the nu-soul funk on stage?
Guy himself tweets there’s “such a positive vibe in the room”. Guy uses the word “vibe” a lot, but that still counts for something doesn’t it? Let’s just hope the votes do, too.
The phrase "music brings people together" doesn't get much more literal than this. Such a great positive vibe in the room. #ESC2015
10.18pm BST
Oh god. It took ages for me to think up that acronym, and we’re still only halfway through the recap. This is never going to end, is it? Never ever.
10.17pm BST
You may now vote for anyone you like. Anyone. Vote for anyone you like.
Look
About now it’s
Time that you
Vampires picked up the phone
I am adamant that this is what you should do
Actually.
10.14pm BST
Which means you’d better brace yourself for about 400 years of padding. And/or speed-couriering of bodyhair to Broadcasting House.
10.13pm BST
And that’s the end of Eurovision. BYE THEN.
10.12pm BST
I’ve just worked out what this performance reminds me of. It’s the bit in The Devil’s Advocate where Al Pacino turns into Satan.
10.11pm BST
Now, this lot would win Britain’s Got Talent. Suck it, Sweden.
10.11pm BST
Right, I’m not entirely sure what’s going on here. From what I can tell, Italy found the DNA of a vaguely anonymous boyband member trapped in amber and cloned it in a disastrous Jurassic Park-style mangling of God’s will to produce this band. No wonder they all look so bloody anguished.
10.10pm BST
THE LAST SONG! It’s Italy: Il Volo, Grande amore. No fire. What a massive bloody anticlimax.
10.09pm BST
Remember, it’s not too late to get in touch with Nigella Lawson and convince her to read out the UK scores in a Conchita beard. If she doesn’t have a beard, she just needs to say. I’m pretty sure I can shave off the vast majority of my body hair, stuff it into a jiffy bag and get it couriered over to her if she needs it.
10.07pm BST
Well, this is lovely. I haven’t quite been able to catch all of the lyrics, but from what I’ve heard it’s almost definitely the loveliest song about botched vivisection that I’ve ever heard. Full marks, Albania.
10.06pm BST
Now for Albania: Elhaida Dani, I’m Alive. It’s the penultimate song! She’s playing with dangerous machinery in the VT. All I’m really taking from tonight is that I’m going to buy a crapload of travel insurance next time I go to Austria.
10.05pm BST
OK, there’s 143 million people in Russia. So a million voices represents an overwhelming minority of voices. This song would be better off being called 142 Million Apathetic Silences.
10.03pm BST
This song seems to be about a million voices all coming together to call for peace. Hang on, let me do some maths...
10.03pm BST
I think this dress might be our first legitimate fire hazard of the night. Thanks Polina Gagarina, and thanks to whoever wired your dress up like a Habitat showroom.
10.02pm BST
Russia: Polina Gagarina, A Million Voices now. She’s just looking at some crystals in the VT. Presumably they ran out of video just before some Austrians attacked her with a barrage of flaming arrows.
10.01pm BST
Incidentally, the hour of the wolf is 3pm-4pm. It used to be later than that, but Dracula wanted to swap his hour out because he had to go and pick his kids up from school.
9.59pm BST
Also, is this a song about how much Elnur wants to have sex with a wolf? Because he should know that that’s illegal in many parts of continental Europe. I know this from bitter experience.
9.59pm BST
First, it’s important to point out that those aren’t actually wolves that Elnur is dancing around with; they’re respectively Sia and Max Headroom.
9.58pm BST
Right, we’re almost done. Azerbaijan: Elnur Hüseynov, Hour of the Wolf now. He’s combining fire and boats. Genuinely, one of the remaining acts is going to get full-on stabbed in their VT.
9.56pm BST
Very strong Golden Age of TV theme this year, isn’t there? This woman is the third act to look a bit Games Of Thronesy, and there was that Heisenberg guy earlier. I hope this means that the next singer is done up like Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt or, I dunno, Alfie Moon.
9.55pm BST
Seriously, we should probably just let her win; partly because she’s definitely going to kick off in a big way if she doesn’t, but mainly because if someone wins now I get to go to bed.
9.54pm BST
Oh THANK GOD for Georgia. This is exactly what this song contest needs – a woman expressing her dual loves of Jessie J and The Crow in the most berserk way possible. This woman is TERRIFYING.
9.53pm BST
Now! Georgia: Nina Sublatti, Warrior. In the meantime, I just heard from Australia. They just woke up. They slept through the show. This is not the first time I’ve been jealous of an Australian.
9.52pm BST
They just rhymed ‘dissent’ with ‘punishment’. This song is so abjectly dull that the crowd just clapped a picture of a tree. A PICTURE OF A TREE. I’m starting to miss that nimrod who set his piano on fire.
9.51pm BST
Subtle allegories clearly aren’t Hungary’s thing, because this song is called Wars For Nothing and there’s a knot of barbed wire in the background and the whole thing’s so heavyhanded that it’s like listening to a musical adaptation of a Bansky picture.
Still, thanks for convincing me that war is bad, Boggie. I didn’t know that before.
9.50pm BST
Next: Hungary: Boggie, Wars for Nothing. She is LITERALLY STANDING IN A FIRE. Austria just wants to kill people, that seems to be the key take-home message from tonight.
9.49pm BST
Question: is this the dullest Eurovision Song Contest in living memory? I’m mainlining Haribo here, just to stay awake. Someone liven it up, for God’s sake. Or, at the very least, get Graham Norton to say my name on the telly. “Stuart Heritage, sitting at home by himself, in the dark”, he should say. And I would be happy.
9.47pm BST
This is more like it. This is classic Eurovision. I don’t know if you’re playing the drinking game at home but, if you are, this woman is shouting into a wind machine so hard that you should all get mildly wasted. Extra points for her fruitless attempts to X-Men the audience away from her with her hands, too.
9.45pm BST
And now Spain: Edurne, Amanecer. She’s being attacked by dogs, I think.
9.45pm BST
The song ended with the singer going “Don’t leave the children behind”. And then they cut to a kid waving frantically. He’s totally been left behind.
9.44pm BST
“You will be the reason to start all over again” this song goes. FYI, if they do start this song all over again, I’m taking none of the blame. None of it.
9.43pm BST
This song’s a bit of a downer. A PREDICTION: in the aftershow party, this singer will gravitate towards the French woman, and everyone else will clear off.
9.42pm BST
I’m no expert, but I’d guess that Voltaj is Romanian for Heisenberg And His Dad Band, because that’s exactly what this is. It’s Coldplay, basically, except there’s a 55-year-old man in a baseball cap.
9.41pm BST
Song 20! Romania: Voltaj, De la capăt. They’re mucking about with horses. I bet, before the evening is done, we’ll see an act pogo through a minefield. That’s how dangerous these pursuits are.
9.39pm BST
This is such a good song, isn’t it? You should all vote for it. For no reason. Ahem.
9.38pm BST
Listen, don’t call a song Love Injected. You may as well just call it Giant Tatty Penis, because that’s what you’re all making us think of. That’s my only complaint about this song, though, because it is TREMENDOUS. It sounds like nothing else this evening. It’s a song I’d listen to outside the boundaries of a contractually obligated liveblog. I really, really want it to win.
9.37pm BST
OK! Now for Latvia: Aminata, Love Injected. Remember that bet I said I placed this year? Me too.
9.36pm BST
Ah, this isn’t actually too bad. There’s a heartbreak scene in an early-1990s rom-com that’s crying out to be soundtracked by this, for example. Oh, phew, it’s finished.
9.34pm BST
This is an especially dull ballad, performed by a woman in a wheelchair. Now, this probably speaks to how tacky Eurovision is, but I’m slightly worried that she’ll mark a keychange by rising from the wheelchair in a demonstration of the transformative power of music. I realise this is a horribly cynical thing to think. But if it happens, I’m abandoning the liveblog.
9.33pm BST
Now! Poland: Monika Kuszyńska, In the Name of Love. She’s making a cake. A lovely cake.
9.32pm BST
If you want to recreate this performance at hime, by the way, you’ll need access to the Made.com lighting warehouse and an in correct memory of the Catherine Zeta Jones robbery scene from that film she was in. I forget which one.
Look, it doesn’t matter, you’re not going to recreate this performance at home, are you? Because why would you? You might as well spend and evening driving staples into the soles of your feet.
9.30pm BST
Germany has really gone over and above this year, by which I mean it’s reanimated the corpse of Amy Winehouse and made her sing a song about the baddie from Lost. I mean, it’s called Black Smoke. What else could it be about?
9.29pm BST
Now! Germany: Ann Sophie, Black Smoke.
9.28pm BST
“Is black slimming?” asked Knez. “Sure” his advisors replied. “What about shiny leather lapels?” he asked. “Um, we’ll have to look that up” his advisors replied. “Actually, scrap that, I’m just drawing a moustache on with a Sharpie” he said. His advisors all resigned.
9.26pm BST
Still, it’s nice to see Montenegro giving work to Mickey Rourke. I’ve been worried about him too.
9.26pm BST
Well, so far this is just a load of Scottish Widows doing interpretive dance in the sea. If I stop paying attention to this performance, it’s because I’ve become overwhelmingly preoccupied with the prospect of them all getting electrocuted.
9.25pm BST
Now Montenegro: Knez, Adio. He’s fishing. There’s a lot of water in Austria, we get it. Stop showing off about all your water, Austria.
9.24pm BST
Hey Greece, Celine Dion called. She doesn’t want her song back, though. She’s just asking for a pizza. I think she misdialled. It sounds like she’s crying. I’m worried about Celine Dion.
9.23pm BST
“All I have is one last breath” she’s singing. God, imagine how hard she’s going to kick herself when she realises that she’s wasted it on this cack.
9.22pm BST
Lady, either your diction is all over the place or this song is a meditation on how to treat sores with gongs. Either way, you look a bit like Shakira and you’ve proven your competency at shouting into windtunnels. So I guess there’s that.
9.21pm BST
The next one is Greece: Maria Elena Kyriakou, One Last Breath. In the VT, she watches some kids do some colouring in. Europe really isn’t happy with Greece, is it?
9.20pm BST
Ooh, a throwback to Sebastian Tellier’s 2008 performance. That was the last Eurovision song I truly enjoyed. Every one just then has just hastened my spiritual death. Even this next one. Especially the next one.
9.19pm BST
Back to the backstage area, which tonight has been themed on the intergalactic parliament from The Phantom Menace.
9.17pm BST
I just tried it. I can’t. Sorry for getting your hopes up, Europe.
9.17pm BST
Oh wow. The singer just flicked his hand and his piano caught fire. What a neat trick. I wonder if I can do the same thing with his vocal chords.
9.16pm BST
Bloody hell Austria, I know that the Eurovision Song Contest is expensive to host, but you don’t have to deliberately scupper your chances by basically entering Keane. At least the singer has a beard, which is vaguely Conchitaish. But that aside, this is like watching Kasabian’s dads have a knees-up in a Dignitas clinic. It’s like Radio 2 grew arms and legs and went on the rampage. No.
9.15pm BST
Now for the home country. It’s Austria: The Makemakes, I Am Yours. They’re doing a Tough Mudder in the VT. Weirdos.
9.13pm BST
This appears to be a song about what’d happen if we all died tomorrow. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d crawl to the nearest possible reflective surface and use my dying breath to loudly berate myself for liveblogging Eurovision for a living.
9.12pm BST
A brave move by Belgium here. Not because it’s entered an ostensibly quite minimal song, but because the backing singers are clad from head to toe in unblemished white. Seriously, one mistimed hotdog bite and the whole shebang would have been utterly derailed.
9.11pm BST
I think we’re almost halfway through now. Here’s Belgium: Loïc Nottet, Rhythm Inside. In other news, what do I have to do to get Graham Norton to read my name out on the telly?
9.09pm BST
Also, can someone inform the International Olly Murs Manufacturing Plant that the Australian strain has escaped and gained the ability to cross borders. Please stop him, for the sake of mankind.
9.08pm BST
Actually, you might win. Because this is pretty good, isn’t it? It’s a bit Tonight On ITV Be, but it doesn’t actively make me hate all music, which is about the best we can hope from these things.
9.08pm BST
Still, OK, Australia, we’ve let you become part of Europe for the night. Best case scenario, you’ll win. Worst case scenario, you’ll stay here long enough to grow a mullet and develop a thing for double denim.
9.07pm BST
Song 12! Australia: Guy Sebastian, Tonight Again! Please, feel free to make your dimwitted ‘Bur, Australia isn’t in Europe’ jokes now.
9.05pm BST
Oh, now I feel bad. This isn’t actually a bad song. I mean, I’d never buy it or listen to it or spend any amount of time thinking about it, but it’s not that bad.
9.05pm BST
A third thing you should have done? You should have avoided looking so much like the host of the Canadian food programme You Gotta Eat Here. Hope that all helps, John.
9.04pm BST
And I’ll tell you another thing you should have done. You should have reconsidered switching from black and white to colour midway through the song like that, because it comes off like you’ve remade The Wizard of Oz about the magical adventures of a boring singer with a rubbish song.
9.03pm BST
I’ll tell you one thing you should have done, John. You should have written a better song.
9.03pm BST
Now for Cyprus: John Karayiannis, One Thing I Should Have Done. He’s paddleboarding. Again, a pursuit rife with danger. I don’t think I can ever go to Austria again.
9.01pm BST
This is totally going to win. So thank god it’s on Eurovision and not Britain’s Got Talent, because it’d probably never get past the live semi-finals there.
9.00pm BST
Obviously Sweden is going to win tonight, because this song is so muscular and self-assured that it makes mincemeat of almost everything else. However, I have two qualms: first, the singer looks a bit like BBC Three’s Russell Howard. Second, by dancing around with a cartoon like that, he reminds me of Paula Abdul and MC Skat Kat’s Opposites Attract video, and anything that forces me to rely on lazy nostalgia as a commentary device certainly deserves to be penalised.
8.59pm BST
Now: Sweden: Måns Zelmerlöw, Heroes. Spoiler alert, it’s probably going to win. In the VT, he wears a spacesuit because, as we all know, oxygen is a scarce resource in Austria.
8.58pm BST
Now for a quick break, where the judges go and hang out with the audience. Nothing of note happens. You’re welcome.
8.56pm BST
This song is called A Monster Like Me. These singers are definitely monsters. The sort of monsters who over-emote and are massively into musical theatre. The worst kind of monsters, basically. Worse than Draculas.
8.55pm BST
This song is about a terrible thing that the singer did as a child. I know a teacher who once caught a toddler pushing Lego up his bum. I wonder if that’s what this guy did. That’s pretty terrible, after all.
8.54pm BST
Next: Norway: Mørland & Debrah Scarlett, A Monster Like Me. They’re being cheered for rowing a boat. I can row a boat. Nobody ever cheered me for it. This, frankly, is an outrage.
8.53pm BST
I just checked Twitter, and everyone’s going mad for this song. The motto seems to be that the best way to get what you want is to yell at people. Thanks Serbia!
8.52pm BST
Actually, WHAT THE HELL? Let me retract that. She isn’t just shouting. She’s making a noise like she’s being flung around the engine room of a capsizing liner in a tropical storm. What a weird noise. Serbia, what exactly have you unleashed here?
8.51pm BST
Serbia has submitted a song about the universal truth found in beauty, which makes me slightly worried that it’s actually a Nivea commercial in disguise, but whatever. Anyway, if you’re keeping count, there’s a woman shouting into a wind machine.
8.49pm BST
Now it’s Serbia: Bojana Stamenov, Beauty Never Lies.
8.49pm BST
‘Put your hands in the air if you’re feeling the love’ the guy said. I didn’t put my hand in the air, because I’m busy liveblogging. Also I AM ABSOLUTELY NOT FEELING THE LOVE.
8.48pm BST
They just kissed. Someone inform the International Same Difference Manufacturing Plant that the Lithuanian strain has escaped and started to breed. Please stop them, for the sake of mankind.
8.47pm BST
This is already off-putting. It’s like watching a Monsoon catalogue go busking with the Zara clearance rail. The lyrics seem to be nothing but “I’m feeling love round and round in my heart”, which is something I can relate to, but only if you change the word ‘love’ to the word ‘cholesterol’.
8.46pm BST
Next: Lithuania: Monika Linkytė & Vaidas Baumila, This Time. They’re bungee jumping. These Austrians are a properly devious bunch, aren’t they?
8.45pm BST
Good lord, I think I might actually be watching some sort of globally-broadcast wiccan spell. No. No. No. No. No. NO. No.
8.43pm BST
No. I do not like this. This is barely even a song. It’s like the opening number of a shortlived West End musical called Gust! or Dazzle! or Plep! or Blort! It’s like a load of grim reapers decided to make a Polyphonic Spree tribute band. No. No.
8.42pm BST
Now: Armenia: Genealogy, Face the Shadow. In the VT, they’re all eating candyfloss. Again, a deliberate attempt to force them into a self-hobbling sugar crash. Nice try, Austria, but I’m wise to you.
8.41pm BST
This is still a bad song, and far too long, but on the plus side you have to give these performers full marks for not accidentally going into autopilot and factoring ‘They’re waffley versatile’ into the lyrics.
8.39pm BST
You know how sometimes The Asylum makes knock-off versions of current films in the hope that they can trick idiots into buying them? This is like The Asylum’s version of The Great Gatsby. The Adequate Gitsby, if you will.
8.38pm BST
There is a chance that I may have been a little bit too mean about this song, which I said I hated when I first heard it. I still hate it but, now that I’ve heard the dirge that passes for most of the other songs this year, it doesn’t seem quite as bad as I thought. Plus it totally sounds like the Birdseye Potato Waffles advert, which never hurts.
8.37pm BST
Now the moment you’ve all been waiting for: United Kingdom: Electro Velvet, Still in Love with You. In the VT, they get to play with drones. I assume this is to give them the illusion of control.
8.37pm BST
“Why didn’t you wake me up? I’m pretty sure I would have told you to stop”. Those are actual lyrics and excuse me I have to go and scrub my mind and brain with disinfectant-soaked wire wool.
8.36pm BST
This is a duet. There’s a woman who looks furious at her partner, possibly because it looks like he’s turned up for his date wearing a novelty One Direction wig.
8.35pm BST
As has become traditional in these liveblogs, I’m about to betray my natural bias for Estonia by saying that this is one of the best songs so far. It’s like the theme for a James Bond film and not a Duffy B-side like you think. Hooray for Estonia!
8.33pm BST
Who’s next? Estonia: Elina Born & Stig Rästa, Goodbye to Yesterday. In a word, skateboards.
8.33pm BST
“If that doesn’t put a smile on your face, you are dead inside” said Graham Norton, as the camera cut to someone looking like they were trying to work out an especially painful poo.
8.32pm BST
I wish he was the King of Shut Up.
8.32pm BST
Also, he just said “Do you like my dancing?” and then wiggled his pelvis at nothing, like he was humping a ghost. Never trust a ghost-humper, that’s my motto and it’s served me well so far.
8.32pm BST
Did he just call himself ‘The King of Fun?’ Because I’m not sure I can really get behind a man who thinks that novelty footwear is the epitome of good vibes.
8.30pm BST
Mate, what are you wearing on your feet? You’re not Iron Man, you know. You’re essentially a Poundland Michael Buble. This, for those of you not watching, is genuinely dreadful. It’s like watching the death-throes of a 1990s boyband.
8.29pm BST
Next: Israel: Nadav Guedj, Golden Boy. In the VT, Nadav opens a box and then graffitis a cable car with some sort of intimidating KKK Batman figure.
8.28pm BST
Lisa’s singing in front of an unbroken shot of rubble, which is probably the perfect visual metaphor for this song. I’m not one to talk, but I think that France might have got the Eurovision Song Contest mixed up with the Woman You’d Least Like To Be Trapped In A Lift With Contest. Which she’d win by a MILE, by the way.
8.27pm BST
Good old France. When the chips are down, you can always count on them to drag a sad lass onstage and make her act all glum. The title of this song translates to ‘Don’t Forget’, which seems like a stretch since this sounds like everyone’s third-favourite Ewan the Dream Sheep preset.
8.26pm BST
Next: France: Lisa Angell, N’oubliez pas. In her VT, she has her makeup done and then hangs out with some taxidermy. This is a deliberately creepy effort on Austria’s part to undermine the competition, I guarantee it.
8.24pm BST
Wind machine. Do drink up.
8.24pm BST
This is just a hunch, but I’d guess that Maraaya’s headphones are playing a loop of positive affirmations. ‘Just get through tonight, Maraaya’ they’re saying. ‘You’re better than this, and everyone know it’ they’re saying. ‘And don’t forget, you’ve got a lively bit of fish in the oven when you get home’ they’re saying.
8.23pm BST
Maraaya, pick a look. You can either be dressed as a bride or dressed as someone with an unhealthy obsession with Jennifer Lopez’s Play video. You can’t do both. Also, pick a backing performer. You can either have a violinist or a dancer. Having a dancer who mimes playing the violin is both greedy and weird.
8.21pm BST
Here we go. The first act is Slovenia: Maraaya, Here For You. I missed the introductory VT, but it looked like it involved spinning around. Hope that helps.
8.20pm BST
The middle host just announced that Eurovision is being broadcast live in China, and the two hosts either size of her just pulled the sort of triumphant faces that douchebags in deodorant adverts do whenever hot girls look at them. You know the face. It’s a kind of facial fist-pump. You know the face I’m talking about. I’m bored already. Can you tell?
8.18pm BST
Eurovision. Bringing people together via the power of that one editing trick from that one Facebook video that your dad keeps showing you.
8.17pm BST
Good news, everyone. There’s already another film. This one’s about the glorious power of social media. To reinforce this, I just checked Twitter and it’s just a load of people going ‘JESUS THIS IS BORING I AM DRUNK LOL PLS RT’.
8.16pm BST
It’s too tiny. Imagine if there’d been a stage that size a few years ago. It would have never contained the unstoppable charisma of Andy Abraham.
8.15pm BST
Man alive, that stage looks tiny.
8.14pm BST
Right, that’s it. Goodnight everyone!
8.14pm BST
I was wrong. This isn’t like the Olympic opening ceremony. It’s like the first part of Take Me Out. A version of Take Me Out where nobody ever finds happiness and spends all of their dates despairingly look out into the middle-distance, admittedly, but Take Me Out nonetheless.
8.12pm BST
Oh no. No no. You don’t need to do an Olympics-style opening ceremony where all the acts get hauled on one-by one. Life is precious, guys, and time is short. Every time we’re watching a Norwegian singer stroll through an auditorium is time we don’t get to spend with our children.
8.10pm BST
And now, a guy in a hat who I already hate. He’s like a one-man super-budget LMFAO tribute act. But one that you dreamed about after eating too much soft cheese on a rollercoaster. Tl;dr not a fan.
8.09pm BST
And the Vienna Boys’ Choir. Or at least the members of the Vienna Boys’ Choir who can open their mouths the widest, because I feel like I’ve just undergone a brief dentistry course.
8.08pm BST
And now last year’s winner Conchita Wurst is performing a song. But only a bit of it, because here comes tonight’s hosts. They’re three women and, from what I can tell, they all possess a basic level of functional competency when it comes to miming.
8.06pm BST
OK, the show’s on the road. There’s a woman with a violin and a golfball on a bit of string. It’s this dizzying level of production values that makes the Eurovision Song Contest such a global draw time and time again.
8.05pm BST
This is absolutely the longest opening montage VT I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Which is exciting, really, because if Eurovision needs anything it’s unnecessary padding.
8.03pm BST
Tonight’s themes, apparently, are ‘bridges’ and ‘circles’. This follows last year, of course, which had the themes ‘carpeting’ and ‘open sores’.
8.01pm BST
Ooh, I’ve been to this part of Vienna. Vienna is nice. Actually, why aren’t I in Vienna now? This is a ridiculous oversight.
8.00pm BST
Ooh, Eurovision starts with a swanky BBC Music ident now. I mean, technically speaking, ‘Music’ probably should have been in inverted commas, but whatever.
7.59pm BST
And now, ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest. Good luck everyone. Dig deep.
7.50pm BST
Also on BBC One, a National Lottery musical act that appears to be an abandoned Olly Murs prototype. I have a feeling that this is a deliberate ploy on the part of the BBC to make the rest of the evening seem more palatable in comparison.
7.49pm BST
Meanwhile on BBC One: Nick Knowles is presenting a celebrity gameshow while wearing a suit that makes him look as if he’s riddled with glittery psoriasis. Guys, I think tonight might have already peaked.
7.45pm BST
Oh, christ, I forgot to do a drinking game this year. How about this - drink whenever:
*A woman screams into a wind machine
7.38pm BST
Also, just to keep things interesting tonight – and to make sure that I don’t drift off during the voting section like I normally do – I’ve decided to place an actual monetary bet on one of the acts tonight. I won’t tell you who, or how much I’ve bet, but I will say that I stand to win £800 from it. So if my ship comes in, I’m basically just going to just abandon this liveblog and immediately go on a first-class round-the-world cruise. They cost £800, right?
7.29pm BST
Before things get going, you know what you should do? You should take this Eurovision quiz I co-wrote, and then hang your head in shame because you got none of them right because I’m so much better at Eurovision than you. That’s what you should do.
7.25pm BST
Hello, bon soir, accoglienza, vorsicht and lo siento – it’s The Guardian’s annual Eurovision liveblog!
For many of you, your entire year has steadily been building up to this moment; after all, Eurovision is the one night of the year when too many countries get to spend too much time performing too many songs, before the same amount of time is given over to the intricacies of a bone-dry continent-wide numerical scoring system. Basically, it’s Christmas.
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