DJ Bobo tops Manchester event

by Richard West-Soley 101 views

DJ Bobo emerged victorious – for the second time in the UK – in Manchester last night after eighty fans gathered to hold a mock semifinal vote at a themed Eurovision Song Contest preview party.

To ensure the theme ran throughout the evening, fans were presented with Eurovision goodie bags on arrival, including lyrics booklets, whistles, hooter and clackers, artist biographies and of course, in a fitting tribute to UK entry scooch, "something to suck on" while waiting for the fun to begin. Instead of the usual piña coladas and mai tais, cocktails served at the bar included imaginative concoctions such as Windswept Carolas, Wild Dancers and Bobo's Vampires.

The semifinal preview DVD was projected onto the big screen for the show itself, and the biggest cheers were reserved for Bulgaria, Switzerland, Serbia, Norway, Malta, Hungary and Belgium. Some sixty votes were counted in all, and the final scores ranked the hopefuls as follows:

1 Switzerland
2 Denmark
3 Belarus
4 Norway
5 Turkey
6 Malta
7 Slovenia
8 Hungary
9 Belgium
10 Georgia
11 Serbia
12 Austria
13 Bulgaria
14 Andorra
15 Moldova
16 Portugal
17 Netherlands
18 Israel
19 Cyprus
20 Latvia
21 Poland
22 FYROM
23 Estonia
24 Czech
25 Iceland
26 Albania
27 Croatia
28 Montenegro

The Swiss win was perhaps expected after another recent OGAE UK vote placed DJ Bobo's Vampires Are Alive firmly at the top of the pile. Surprisingly, though, international OGAE favourites Serbia, Cyprus and Bulgaria all failed to make the Manchester semi top ten, despite winning through the OGAE UK vote.

A three-hour disco followed the event, which is hoped to become a regular occurrence in the North-West of England.

Richard West-Soley

Senior Editor

Richard's ESC history began way back in 1992, when he discovered the contest could fuel his passion for music and languages. Since then, it's been there at every corner for him in some way or another. He joined the esctoday.com team back in 2006, and quickly developed a love for writing about the contest. In his other life, he heads the development team at the learning resources company Linguascope, and writes about all aspects of language learning on the site Polyglossic.com.