Thank goodness for that. The UK's Eurovision song is a ballad, called 'My Time'. I'm thinking Martine McCutcheon singing, "this is my moment". The contestants are rehearsing it now in the BBC studio, in preparation for tomorrow's final. There's a key change and no sign of any fire/higher/desire rhyme, as Diane Warren isn't familiar with Eurovision custom.

Good. It should be a straight fight between Mark and Jade, even with Jade coming third or fourth last week. Hopefully, a ballad will expose the twins as being not very good, but with the public voting them into the top two last week, I remain concerned.

In other Eurovision news, the Russians revealed the logo today. That's it on the left. I think it's pretty. They also revealed that there will be no slogan this year, blowing the chance to reference the heart in the repeating logo by having 'From Russia with love'. I guess it's been done...

The draw also took place today to decide who is in which semi-final, and when the Big 4 and the hosts vote. This is not the running order, which will be drawn in March. This year, we get to vote in the first semi-final, which presents a challenge to the BBC. They'll have to make sure people know there's something happening as early as Tuesday night, so that enough people watch and vote. For the first time, three of the Big 4 will vote in the same semi-final. Last year, they were split 2+2, with hosts Serbia joining one of the pairs. This year, hosts Russia vote with France and no other Big 4 country.

Don't ask me how Greece and Cyprus have ended up in the same semi-final. I thought the whole point of the seeded draw was to keep apart countries who are statistically more likely to vote for each other. Obviously it can't do it all the time, with only two shows, but I would have thought that Greece and Cyprus were the first ones put into separate pots. UK viewers will be unable to vote for Ireland, like last year.

Tuesday's semi-final:

Bosnia-Herzegovina
Sweden
Israel
Belgium
Andorra
Czech Republic
Montenegro
Iceland
Georgia
Bulgaria
Portugal
Switzerland
FYR Macedonia
Finland
Belarus
Armenia
Turkey
Romania
Malta

Also voting:
Germany
Spain
UK

Thursday's semi-final:

Slovenia
Denmark
Azerbaijan
The Netherlands
Latvia
Hungary
Serbia
Norway
Ukraine
Greece
Lithuania
Poland
Croatia
Estonia
Moldova
Cyprus
Ireland
Slovakia
Albania

Also voting:
Russia
France

Labels: draw, Eurovision 2009, YourCountryNeedsYou

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