The First Semi-Final

....was held in Dusseldorf last night. I watched it on the Eurovision.tv website. The stream suffered a bit on my big TV but was perfectly watchable.

The semi-finals are fun to watch as the likes of San Marino won't ever make the final so this the only place to see them. However, there's a lot of dross on offer as well. Obviously, auto-tune hasn't made its way very far east across Europe.

Croatia didn't go through, which was a shame as they has a couple of classic-old school costume changes. Turkey had a contortionist in an ball cage for some reason. As for Portugal, I really don't have the words.

From the ones that successfully went through to the Saturday final, I liked Serbia and Sooz's favourite was Russia. Look at the clips and you can guess why. I have to say that Azerbaijan had a pretty catchy mid-tempo duet. They may do well on the big day.

I trawled through the depths of my cable TV guide and found a Portugese channel which looks to be showing the final live. I signed up for the station on a 3-month trial. We'll see if it works; if not, I have my trusty, if slightly pixellated, internet for our evening's Eurovision party.