Eurovision: The FINAL

Fast forward to Saturday night and 25 countires nervously clenched backstage while they waited for their turn in front of the estimated television audience of 2 billion.

Usually the show opens with a preformance of the previous year's winning song, but this year it was all change as Lena was competing again for Germany. So who better to perform the track than the 3 hosts of the evening ...

This has to be the best opening act of a Eurovision Song Contest EVER



2 bum numbing hours later, the 25 acts had sung and we got down to the voting. Germany were favourites to take the crown again but you can never underestimate the power of political and geographical block voting. When all 43 counties had delivered the votes, Azerbaijan were crowned as the winners.

Some other notable items:

• Italy, back for the first time in 6 years, finished second
• Ireland, who finished in 8th, had their best placing since Eamonn Toal's Millenium Of Love in 2000 (which finished 6th)
• Hosts and favourites Germany scraped 10th place
• The UK entrants Blue finished one place worse off in 11th
• Kati Wolf had been touted as a strong contender for the crown, but landed in 21st
• The wooden spoon went to Switzerland who managed to notch up 19 points and so avoid the dreaded "nul points" 

Click on the image below to see the scoreboard in full size

All scoreboards are taken from Wikipedia. For more a more in-depth look at the scores, click here.

And so that's it for another year. Next year, the competition rolls on to Baku in Azerbaijan (which, in case your windering, is just north of Iran).Preliminary dates have been set for the competition - 22 May and 24 May 2012 for the semi finals, with the final planned for the evening of 26 May 2012.

Come on Ireland, you can do it next year!