Hi

The question to ask about whether the UK can ever win Eurovision is as follows. Could a good UK song like Bleeding Love or Call The Shots have won Eurovision? Personally I think they may have been in the shake up but would have struggled to have won won it. It would take an absolute classic song for the UK to ever win Eurovision again. That is not the same ctiteria that it takes for other countries to win. How many of the Eurovision winners in the last ten years have been classics?

If Britain want a Eurovision winner Leona or James Blunt are the best choices I can think of, assuming that the likes of George Michael are ungettable, if the song is well picked and top songwriters get involved. James Blunt's Beautiful is one British song that would have stood a real chance.

I`d love to agree with you and have always supported this fun show, but in retrospect, this is now the Re- Unified Eastern Block Song Contest.
UK results are irellevent, they will not always be, I believe this a phase, however, the best song did win last night, it`s been on my mind all day and none of the others have.
But , yup, you`re right, why can we not have James Blunt?

I doubt if anyone asked James Blunt. I also doubt that he'd win in the current set up.

On BBC radio this morning Paul Gambaccini claimed the Eastern block vote for each other because of the style of music they are used to. Of course this is nonsense. Russia and Ukraine both had songs which were Western style Pop, as did Greece. Also, if you look at the music which sells most in Eastern Europe it's Western music by Western artists. Sure, Georgia and Russia are not the best of friends, same with Ukraine and Russia, bt they do rely on Russia to supply their gas and electric among other things. It's a weirdly balanced relationship, and the song contest is used as one method of pacification. This is also the view of a Russian friend.

So, could we win with a big star and an awesome song?
No. But I bet that song would still top the charts in most of the countries.

Dima Bilan's song was well sung and very Disney-like both in terms of the song and the how it was choreographed. There have been far worse winners of Eurovision and nobody can say that the British entry would have won without tactical voting. I am just concerned that it is not a level playing field and that our entry would have to be so much better than anything else to stand any real chance.

I think the UK should quite simply enter one of our top stars with a new song sung in Russian and show the respect that our language is given in songs and the disdain represented in voting against us as a result.

1 Armenia 103
2 Greece 103
3 Norway 94
4 Ukraine 92
5 Russia 88
6 Turkey 68
7 Iceland 62
8 Portugal 62
9 Serbia 60
10 Bosnia&Herzegovina 57
11 Latvia 54
12 Spain 53
13 Denmark 44
14 Israel 42
15 Sweden 38
16 Azerbaijan 35
17 Romania 33
18 France 25
19 Georgia 23
20 Albania 22
21 Finnland 22
22 Poland 14
23 Great Britain 14
24 Croatia 8
25 Germany 2

If UK enter a great song and fail, I will admit I was wrong and we are being discriminated against by the voters of Europe. Until that happens there is no point in even putting forward theories of block voting and the like, as we have got exactly what we deserved in the last few contests.

The last decent song we had was in 2002, an adequately sung adequate ballad by Jessica Garlick and she came third.