A kung fu fighter in a disco

Hello chums.

Some of you may remember my reminder about the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2005. On Saturday we had high hopes for Joni Fuller and her indier-than-thou How Does It Feel? after last year's excellent 2nd place from Cori Spedding. Surely political voting does not apply to the young, and we could regain some pop respect from our European peers?

Well in the end Cyprus had to pull out of the competition, citing 'internal reasons' (or whoops! already releasing the song), however they were still allowed to take part in the televoting! As you will no doubt be surprised, Cyprus gave Greece douze points - Serbia & Montenegro* and FYR Macedonia were slightly more subtle, only swapping dix points.

The eventual winner was Belarus, with a cracking pop number sung by 10 year old Kseniya Sitnik, who wore a lovely pink tutu and hair bunches. She was great! Some of the more startling costumes included Romania's Oompa Loompa themed dancers and Danish hip-hop sensation Nicolai, who after some fierce breakdancing had his jeans ripped off Bucks Fizz-stylee - only to reveal another pair of jeans! Smashing.

I was quite disappointed to learn that the drummer in Okey, the Latvian entry was not actually a girl, more of a Zak Hansen svengali figure who wrote all the songs. This lot weren't bad actually, they were miming the right chords on the guitars but said guitars weren't plugged in. Never mind luvs! They did Radio GaGa style handclaps and that's what mattered.

And what of poor old Joni Fuller? 14th place (above Sweden and Malta) was pretty much what she deserved, entering the ONLY ballad in the competition and singing it in the style of a strangled Lesley Garrett. I understand the poor kid had throat problems but that is NO EXCUSE for a violin solo. Both song and performance were poor. Luckily the entire show was broadcast on ITV2 and hence none of her schoolmates will have witnessed it and will not henceforth tease her mercilessly. Like Ming.

Bizarrely in the voting, each country was automatically allocated 12 points. I missed the explanation for this as I was in the kitchen opening another bottle of Speckled Heng but I imagine it was to soften the blow to poor Malta, who would have only got 6 points otherwise (compared to Belarus' 137, plus the 12 automatic ones). For a long time the UK had nil. Ha-ha. Also when it came to the UK's turn to vote, we managed to break the scoring computer and the flummoxed Belgian presenters had to ad-lib for a whole five minutes. Revenge!

A remarkable contest, I'm sure you'll agree. Roll on next year!

*Little Filip from Serbia & Montenegro's song was entitled 'First Love, then Football', and he walked on stage carrying a football under his arm. At the end of the song he symbolically kicked the football into the audience. Bless!