Eurovision 2005

One of those things in the calendar that isn't really about what it's about and watched largely by people with a history of watching it.

"Can anyone tell me which countries are next to Moldova?" Terry Wogan asked playfully. You would soon be able to make an educated guess from the voting patterns.

My Bulgarian friend Stefan described the spectacle as "a mirror of what the EU is becoming". It's all so New Europe - where sleaze is the new cool. Bulgaria got to vote if not contribute to the final cacophany.

Many of these countries didn't even exist when I was born. Several appeared to have deployed all the blondes they are likely to have had at their disposal that night.

Spain's cynical attempt to clone The Ketchup Song failed to put sangria in the blood of all those geopolitically-aware telephone voters.

The (deserved) Swedish Greek winner Helena Paparizou appears to have the body of a dusky Mediterranean beauty with the personality of a Scandinavian ice maiden. After she had, with unbecoming reluctance, brushed the dioxin-dented cheeks of Ukranian President Viktor Yushchenko with her glossy lips, coverage leaped across to BBC3. It must have been close to 4am by then in Kiev.

The Beeb's marquee was soon infiltrated by a pair of Norwegian glam-rockers Wig Wam who proceeded to lounge lecherously on the sofa groping at leggy, stretch-faced Javine and the resident presenter Jenny Eclair.

Javine, already famously luckless in telephone-plebiscites long before this assault on non-celebrity, had only managed third from bottom and avoided the ignominy of nul points thanks to some sympathy votes from the likes of former wards Malta and Cyprus. The British sense of fair play had been predictably unsettled again, though perhaps bewildered would be the right adjective in the broad context of new improved Eurovision.