A Semi-Final of Surprises

Last nights semi-final certainly outperformed my expectations. In a night where people didn't seem to radically differ on opinions of a few songs, I thought this would make for some pleasant but not exciting television. However as usual I was proven wrong. 

Certainly this semi-final delivered a variety of results, some expect and some surprising ones. However it was by no means a repeat of last years Semi-Final 1 shock results.

The usual suspects qualified. Denmark, Ukraine and Russia all flew through more than likely I suspect they scored the top three places in this semi-final.

Moldova and Ireland were also widely expected to qualify and they did. I would also say that Ryan Dolan's performance for Ireland last night was excellent and he did us all proud.

The first real surprise was when Lithuania qualified, written off by everyone I was actually very impressed by the performance in the semi-final though I didn't think that the song was strong enough to allow them to qualify. Belarus, who prompt the quote of the night from my brother ("Why is Amanda Holden coming out of the Kinder egg?") were likely qualifiers in a night that had many northern European and Soviet countries voting in that semi-final. 

Estonia also really impressed me on the night. I though Birgit really raised her game on the night and was way head of her national final performance. Finally, who could forget Belgium and the Netherlands? Both of them must be very proud. I thought both countries gave excellent performances, though I do wonder waas Belgium's score impacted on by the fact he was allowed to perform twice?

Finally who could not notice that none of the Balkan's qualified? Next year I suspect it will be wall to wall Balkan ballad coming out of the south east of Europe but until then they can all hope that Macedonia qualifies so they can throw votes at them.