Sweden Wins Eurovision

It’s the sixth time Sweden has won the competition and it’s now only one victory behind Ireland, which is the record holder with seven wins. The result also means the annual extravaganza will be held in Sweden next year – just three years after it last hosted the show. Sweden’s first victory came in 1974 when ABBA won with “Waterloo.”

Gagarina led the field for quite some time as the results came in, although she may have raised a few eyebrows back home when the cameras caught her in a clinch with last year’s winner, bearded Austrian drag queen Conchita Wurst.

Wurst’s win wasn’t well-received in The Kremlin, where many Russian officials saw her as an example of Europe’s moral decay. “They didn’t like our girls because they had braids, not beards,” said Russian MP Oleg Nilov. Another nationalist MP, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, told his country’s TV viewers: “This is the end of Europe. It’s rotted away. There are no more men and women. There is just It.”

Valery Rashkin, another right wing politician, submitted an official request to the government to pull the country out of the contest and create an alternative competition called “The Voice of Eurasia.”

This year’s competition was devoid of such controversy. The favourite won it, the second favourite came second and the UK predictably came much nearer last than first, finishing 24th out of 27. TV coverage of the event attracted about 200 million viewers as it was the first time it was screened in China.