THE EUROVISION SONG CONTEST (3)

There were three good things about last night's Eurovision Song Contest in Malmø. First, the number of truly awful songs was greatly reduced (though not eliminated entirely). Secondly, the Swedish organisers took a deliberately low-key approach, notably by having a single host (thereby getting rid of the terrible inter-host banter which usually mars these events). Thirdly, Denmark won, for the third time ever.

This year's dreadful items included Romania, whose male singer suddenly broke into a falsetto halfway through; Greece, who had a kilt-wearing folk group; and Finland, whose barbie doll singer took up the theme of gay marriage and snogged her female backing singer at the end. However, the name of the game is not what you like, but what you think other Europeans will like. Greece did surprisingly well; while Lithuania, who had a bland song that I thought might appeal to lots of people, did very badly.

Some things don't change. The U.K. came near the bottom, after picking as their representative Bonnie Tyler, yet another aged has-been, when most of the other performers were under 25. The number of national hosts speaking French continues to decline, thereby confirming English's almost universal dominance (I counted only France, Belgium and Switzerland, qui parlaient le francais). And they all said "thanks for a wonderful show", even if they didn't mean it.

Denmark's winning entry had a catchy tune, and was sung by 20-year old Emmelie de Forest, who performed in bare feet a la Sandie Shaw more than 40 years ago. Indeed, those times were much on display, since the Armenian rock number was written by Tony Iommi, the Black Sabbath guitarist responsible for the famous Paranoid guitar riff that was a staple of my teenage years. Some overexcited Danes are heralding Emmelie's victory as a cultural triumph. But that's going a bit too far; after all, the song, Only Teardrops, was written in English.

Walter Blotscher