Hee hee I watched it on the Austrian channel and the presenter there was so funny. You could really hear he probably hated his assignment so he was oozing sarcasm.

We sat there whooping everytime Finland moved ahead again!

You see, for all who don't know it, the ESC is really something of an exercise in nationalism... Notably, the eastern european countries all poured the top number of votes onto each other, so does Scandinavia and the Balkan countries.

The reason Finland won, IMHO - although the song is pretty good, they can in fact carry a tune (as opposed to at least two of the other acts) - is because of protest votes. The content of the song contest (founded in the 50's??) has moved far away from the interest of the young people who vote via text messages, so apart from voting for their neighbors, most voted for Finland.

"ESC gate-crashing" was invented in Germany.
A couple years back, Germany participated twice with acts that were popularized by a satirical TV show and sort of "crashed" the national pre-selection party. On the night of the contest, voting parties were hosted across the borders in Belgium and the Netherlands for Germans to cross over and vote for their act (can't vote for yourself)....