2002 - Tallinn

Cross-dressing was a modest theme of the 2002 contest. The winners on the night, Latvia, gave us a Ricky Martin character in high heels, who slowly stripped off his white suit to reveal that he was in fact a woman in a salmon-pink dress. The Bucks Fizz strip cliché ends here.

Slovenia mainly cross-dressed from the other direction with a trio of spangled male air-hostesses (backed by three resplendently white-suited captains (one of them female)). It's quite a well-assembled little number (one might imagine Beth Gibbons covering the verse, while the chorus is stuffed full of raunchy '80s brass stabs like some fantasy Wham! single).

Cross-dressing with roast chickens, Sweden gave us a joyfully amateurish slab of banging joy from a sparkly bacofoil-clad female trio who know what it means to be rained on by men. Alas, the verse and the chorus seem never to have met until the night of the contest, perhaps selected by focus group (the most popular Verse was Verse B2, and the most popular Chorus was Chorus E7). But a few pooow!-ing noises and a good key-change do their best to cover up the dangerously inadequate weld.

Our favourite cross-dressers of the night were Greece, who came as robot delivery-men from the future enjoying a game of laser-quest. It looks, on the face of it, like more or less the worst thing in the universe: part Boyzone, part Burzum, part Kraftwerk, part Galactic Symposium: one wonders if the main singer was drafted in from the pub at the last minute; his embarrassed grins and winks not really fitting in with the robot-soldier imagery. The most astonishing thing of all is that this is a Greek entry (not Finland... Greece!). The more you watch, the more the Kraftwerk electro-pop image crumbles into a gang of blokes struggling to keep a straight face while stomping and miming with keytars and generally feeling a bit self-conscious about it. Amazing.


For each year's songs we apply our points in the 12-10-8 style of the modern contest, irrespective of how the voting functioned at the time. In brackets is the position the song came on the night:

HERE ARE THE VOTINGS
OF THE AVIEW JURY:
12pts
(17th)

GRE
Michalis Rakintzis
"S.A.G.A.P.O."

10pts
(=13th)

SLO
Sestre
"Samo ljubezen"

8pts
(8th)

SWE
Afro-dite
"Never Let It Go"
7pts
(7th)

ESP
Rosa
"Europe's Living A Celebration"
6pts
(=3rd)

GBR
Jessica Garlick
"Come Back"

5pts
(6th)


CYP
One
"Gimme"

4pts
(2nd)

MLT
Ira Losco
"7th Wonder"
3pts
(10th)

RUS
Prime Minister
"Northern Girl"
2pts
(1st)

LAT
Marie N
"I Wanna"
1pt
(=3rd)

EST
Sahlene
"Runaway"

Europe had France fifth, Romania ninth, Croatia eleventh, Israel twelfth, Belgium and Bosnia & Herzegovina joint-13th, Turkey 16th, Austria 18th, Macedonia 19th, Finland 20th, Germany 21st, Switzerland 22nd, Lithuania 23rd and Denmark 24th.

Michalis Rakintzis

Our winner: Greece's robot army wants you!


Sestre

Sestre: flying the flag for Slovenia.


Marie N

Europe's winner: Latvian lesbian Latin.


Afro-dite

Sweden's bacofoil beauties.


POLITICS
The  winners, Latvia, only qualified for the contest at the expense of Portugal who declined to enter due to internal problems at RTP.
Swedish and Belgian commentators told their audiences not to vote for Israel (this being the height of the 'Second Intifada' (Battle of Jenin / Bethlehem Church Siege)).
Several nations reintroduced jury scoring (usually in a 50/50 split with televoting) on the grounds that televoting appears to favour songs from later in the running order.