Here we are again with another show, and back to the usual format of us talking for far too long about games news and our own gaming.

Van Hemlock Podcast (Ep 52): Not Seeing The Fornost for the Trees

A bit of an overrun there, at 1h 30m, but we were enjoying ourselves which is the main thing!

Toward the end, talk inevitably turns to the Eurovision Song Contest 2009, which by now has already happened. I found myself in the always awkward situation of having to explain what the entire spectacle was about to Americans last night, never an easy task, and often hampered by me not really knowing myself.

This year was a lavish affair costing around €30 Million hosted by a Russia keen to demonstrate to the rest of the world just what they could do with their global recession, and I'm not sure I've ever seen so many LCD TVs in one place before.

Europe, by Eurovision Definitions, (which includes Israel for some geographically improbable reason) is now so big that they can't do it all in one go anymore and they have to have semi-finals, which I missed. I thoroughly disapprove of this system, as although before it split like this, the all-in-one show would often take six or more hours to plod through, the current semi-finals system means that some of Europe's finest Really Awful and/or Comedy Acts don't make it to the big Saturday show, leaving just a lot of fair-to-middling Serious Acts that generally aren't That Bad.

To write a successful Eurovision Song, you can try one of several approaches:

• The Bouncy Jaunty Wailing Ethnic Offering: As seen with Moldova, Azerbaijan and Turkey this year, all back-beat, wailing and dinky native bouzouki work. You can either stay Traditional with this, or Disco it all up; either will work.
  
• The Huge Celene Dion Power Ballad: Examples include France, Malta, and to my personal shame and regret, England. Need to aim for the Big American, Chick Flick End Credits Feel with these, although some brave souls try this in their native languages. (Our own entry was a breathtakingly arrogant song about how our singer was clearly going to win or some such, and wasn't helped by the muppet on the piano to the side of the stage.)
  
• The Anodyne Disco Clubmix: Germany (Feat. Dita Von Teese for some reason...Protip: Don't field a singer with a lisp!), Greece, Ukraine, all huge thumping drumbeats and Kylie-esque synthwork - the sort of thing you need to be off your face on Bacardi Breezers to really understand.
  

Some interesting and quirky one-shots though, including a innocently light and carefree number from Portugal that I quite liked and put me in mind of every mobile phone commercial ever. There was a retina-searing operatic visual firestorm by Sweden that left a me-shaped silhouette burnt into the wall behind the sofa....so much white you could hear the photons roar past... I think she got the wrong memo and thought she was opening the Olympic Games or something.

My favorite was an excellently clean and crisp Euyrthmics-a-long by Estonia which didn't do nearly as well as it deserved, and the eventual winner Norway with a grudgingly decent bouncy fiddle-based ditty which was very reminiscent of Ireland's heyday, before they started fielding stuff like this to prevent having to keep bankrupting themselves with hosting fees from winning so often. (Do seek out the Eurovision Father Ted Episode - it's less ridiculous that you might think)

The ridiculous political voting that eventually drove Terry Wogan from the show in disgust last year (A vote for Russia is a vote for not having your gas pipelines turned off) seemed to be much improved, largely by the expedient of only letting The Great Unwashed have half of the vote, and letting 'Musical Experts' in each country assign the other half, making the whole thing a little less bizarre than previously. I miss the sneering, personally, but this is probably a better way, and I'm all for not letting the grubby public vote at all, for a complete fair contest!

Speaking of Terry, his replacement, camp comedy chat-show host Graham Norton was actually quite good at filling the gap (oo-er, nooooaw!) and laid on the level of sarcastic and mocking commentary that we in the UK have come to demand with our Eurovision coverage. In other European countries, their commentators are possibly not making fun of everyone to mount the stage, but I was in stitches a lot of the way through, which is basically the only way to cope with the epic evening's warble-along. I LOL'D at The Malteser Joke and am probably going to hell.

Oslo next... I can't wait.