Today, 17th May, is Norway's National Day. Could it possibly have started any better for Norway? It was about fifteen minutes into the National Day, Norwegian time, when they won Eurovision for the third time last night/this morning. Congratulations to Norway and congratulations to Alexander Rybak who celebrated his 23rd birthday this week. Not only did he perform 'Fairytale', but he wrote it too. With his record score and record winning margin, with points from every single one of the other 41 countries, it was a phenomenal victory, although he didn't quite beat the 'percentage of available points' record which the UK still holds through Brotherhood Of Man in 1976, so he's not quite the biggest winner ever.

Congratulations too to Jade Ewen and the BBC team. Achieving the UK's first ever fifth place was just fantastic (and I don't just mean because it filled in a gap in our record of the last 52 years!) It made for such an enjoyable evening for us, as points rolled in for the UK from a fantastic 31 of the 41 countries. All that touring by Jade paid off, as did her flawless performance. (Although someone told me that Jade was hit in the face by one of her violinists during the song. Did you see that?)

Jade has entered the official singles chart at #50 (up from #103 last week, which must have been cherry-picking from the Eurovision album, as Jade's single package wasn't released until this week). The CD is out tomorrow, but #50 is already nearly twenty places higher than Andy Abraham managed last year with his Eurovision single. Jade is now also in the iTunes top twenty at last, after a steady climb all week.

I had a fantastic Eurovision night, with the party at the Wellington, then seeing Jessica Garlick and Scooch perform at the Nightingale and chatting with all of them, before I made it home for 5:30am, but the late night and the alcohol have enabled the cold which had been stalking me for the last few days to well and truly take hold today. It has bunged up my nose and ears and nearly knocked me out, so I'm having an early night as I can hardly breathe.

More facts, figures, observations and photos later this week.

In the meantime, Alexander Rybak has jumped from #204 on the UK iTunes chart yesterday to #4 today. Sixteen of the 25 Eurovision finalists figure in the UK iTunes chart today, as listed below. Funny how we gave Turkey our 12 points and yet they're so low down the iTunes chart, isn't it?

Norway #4
UK #15 and #254
Iceland #33
Germany #75
Estonia #86
Sweden #88
Azerbaijan #91
Turkey #94
Finland #107
Portugal #121
Ukraine #124
Armenia #125
Denmark #147
Greece #168
Moldova #207
Russia #216

Labels: Eurovision 2009, Norway

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