Simon Butcher

Oh dear, it's Eurovision time again. Having said that, though, the quality of the Eurovision Song Contest has risen greatly over the past few years given the state of the competition, with some countries quietly employing professionals to help write songs.

After last year's win to Finland, it's been hosted at Helsinki's Hartwall Areena, somewhere I've been hoping to visit for years for the Assembly demo competition.

I managed to watch the show using the excellent Octoshape P2P streaming plug-in which provided stable video of excellent quality. Finland's YLE with the EBU gave us some awful cut-sequences, Krisse the terrible tart (a not-so-funny Finnish comedian), and even Santa — without which the show wouldn't be tasteless enough to be Eurovision!