Here are our musings, as recorded on the night of the contest:

Lithuania 0pts
Aiste Smilgeviciute - Strazdas
Drums are rather dull. Gentle; dull. Again. Nice hand dance. Good looking - Sporty Spice. After the third drum fill we get a sax solo. Irish voice thing going on.

Belgium 3pts
Vanessa Chinitor - Like The Wind
Exciting blowy instrument. English vocals. Woman not quite as good looking as the Lithuanian entry. Fairgrounds in a minor key. Windy chorus. Bit dull. Predictable key change followed by a less good key change. "Turn mountains into dust the wind it wins at last"

Spain 4pts
Lydia - No Quiero Escuchar
Madly coloured stripey dress.
80s pop-soul a la gentle Whitney / Fergal Sharkey.
Very distant electric guitar.
She's currently the second most attractive.
Two red prongs from her collar.
"I felt like dying when I saw her taking you in her arms"

Croatia 7pts
Doris Dragovic (pictured, right) - Maria Magdelena
Sung by Doris. Got a good beat.
Eastern European vocals. Looks quite witchy.
For those keeping a tally, she's probably running 4th in the looks stakes.
Big backing vocals. Frightening pop.
Strip... and spike in dress (what? - ed).
Quiet bit... key change.

United Kingdom 0pts
Precious - Say it again
A mixed boy/girl band.
Dull pop but remotely nice chord progressions near the end of the chorus.
Late 80s Whitney feel again. Mellow.
Key change after crap, short lived chant.
Really quite bad.

Slovenia 10pts
Darja Svajger (right) - Se Tisoc Let
Nasty yellow dress. Nice strings and piano plinks.
Ugly woman. Booms build up. Shirley Bassey now.
Key change for verse two.

Turkey 0pts
Tuba Önal & Grup Mystik - Don artik
Belly-dance sound.
Eastern European pop with drum machine style beat.
Dull. Chantish chorus thing. Crap.

Norway 0pts
Van Eijk - Living my life without you
Sung by a Columbian with dreds who looks like Peter Andre.
Utter shite that starts by ripping off "Killing Me Softly"
and later (more directly) from Peter Andre.
English vocals. Adam Ant style black-line cheek face-paints.

Denmark 2pts
Trine Jepsen & Michael Teschl - Denne Gang
Epileptic ah-ing woman and "Take That"-clone male vocalist/guitarist. Unobtrusive ballad in "As Long as You Love Me" mould. English vocals. Woman takes over for verse two. Key change as part of tune. Chrissie compares them to Kylie & Jason. The bloke makes a "Nargh" noise at one point.

France 0pts
Nayah - Je veux donner ma voix
Nasty noise. Hideous woman (no offence) with long bejewelled neck. Chrissie is concerned about the shape of this woman's eyes. Bad start pounds into an exciting 80s Eurovision chorus. Otherwise dull. Awkward, strained, terrible attempt at some sort of fill in key change affair. Nasty.

Netherlands 5pts
Marlayne - One Good Reason
The prettiest so far. Yet still quite ugly. English language. Chrissie is convinced something is wrong with the singer's left eye-lid. Aidan is convinced that Chrissie has an eye fixation. Strong, modernish, nice pop tune. Key change. Middle 8. Unobtrusive.

Poland 0pts
Mietek Szczesniak - Przytul mnie mocno
Thicck set bloke. "Without You" meets "Last Christmas" with any redeeming qualities forfeited somewhere along the lines. Backing musicians wear white strips of cloth over their right shoulders. Boring song with a twee ending.

The Ad Break has the hostesses singing the best song so far.

Iceland 0pts
Selma Bjornsdottir - All out of of Luck
Best looking singer so far.
English lyrics (and they're not good lyrics).
Chrissie believes it's the best opening line so far.
This is crap though. Modern pop. Nice chorus.
Two men in trench coats dance in a
stupidly animated manner by her side.
She is jewel encrusted.
"Don't work on a Sunday, don't sleep on Monday, ..."

Cyprus 8pts
Marlain  Angelidou (right) - Tha 'Nai Erotas
Tel says that she has a vaigue hint of Gerri Halliwell.
That may be so, but she's the best looking so far.
Plinky piano. Enter sequencer wibbles. Drum machine.
Up-beat. Cool. Sequencer sequencer sequencer.
Vaseline covered woman.
Very high vocal wibbles.
Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge music.
Scary chanting at the end.
Intriguingly, Lotus is mentioned in the lyrics...
"Touch the flower of the lotos=a fruit from Greek mythology"

Sweden 12pts
Charlotte Nilsson (right) - Tusen och en natt
Good start. Abba sound? Best looking so far?
Scart sing-along chorus. Nicked Wizard accompanyment.
I wish it could be Eurovision every day.
Not particularly Abba, except the perpling perpling perpling.
Very 70s though. Key change, obviously.
Plenty packed into 3'. Nice end.

Portugal 0pts
Rui Bandeira - Como Tudo Começou
Long haired man. A song. This is what songs are like.
80s thing going on, of course.
Chorus has a hammond hidden in the background.
And is that a wart or a nose ring? We can't decide.

Ireland 0pts
Bronagh Mullan  and Karen Mullan - When you need me
Scary, deep-voiced woman (not like Cher - different: scarier).
Dull song. They don't want the contest EVER AGAIN!!
There are two women. One does harmonies.
Minorised bit leads awkwardly to a dull middle 8 and key change...
A bag of fish arses.

Austria 6pts
Bobbie Singer - Reflections in Your Eyes
18yr old singer. Early 70s / late 60s even to image craft. English vocals. Lilting bridge. Female bassist. Good song on simple terms. Would normally sell. There seems to be a bit missing from the bridge. Whistly keyboard part. Attractive.

Israel 0pts
Eden - Yom Holedet
Boy band. Song called Happy B-Day. Temptations / 4 Tops style song, as Tel says. Eugh. Nasty. Only English is "Happy Birthday to You". Baad... Eurovision for you.

Malta 0pts
Times Three - Believe In..Peace
Three girls (bit of a break from tradition). English vocals. Beat. I don't know what to say. Two people stand in the background. Yapping noises in the chorus. Howling now. "Time will pass and die / Unlike me I'm here to try / And make you smile / And realise / I'm not shy"

Germany 0pts
Sürpriz - Reise nach Jerusalem - Kudues'e Seyahat
The rather odious title is Journey to Jerusalem. Creeps. Sung in English and Hebrew. Erm... ay ay ay. Slimiest song in the competition. We walk hand in hand... mid section. Keyboard player seems to have drawn his beard on in felt tip.

Bosnia Hertzegovina 0pts
Hari Mata Hari - Starac i more
Attractive violinist. Attractive backing in general, except perhaps for the fat woman. An old fisherman sings the lead vocals. Eastern european twangs. He chants in a gruff voice. Sings the chorus in French (got to be worth a few more votes) alongside a black woman. Strangely fun. Stops suddenly before the second cycle. Now for a pseudo-rap. Chrissie's going off the song now. The women wear polystyrene packaging.

Estonia 1pt
Evelin Samuel - Diamond of Night
Harp and electric violin. Attractive woman sings. I think it's building up. Gentle. And consequently quite dull.

CONTROVERSIES

The language rule was dropped this year, along with orchestras. It was also announced this year that from 2000, the big four contributors to the EBU (France, Germany, Spain and the UK) would get automatic passage into the contest. Prior to the contest Bosnia and Herzegovina's original selection, Hari Mata Hari, were disqualified after their entry was discovered to have been released in Finland some years previously. Likewise Germany's original entrant, Corinna May, was disqualified after her song was found to have been released by a different act in 1997. Norway protested against Croatia's use of synthesized vocals. As a consequence their score was reduced for their religation tally, but was maintained for the annual leaderboard.

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 (1st)	SWE	Charlotte Nilsson "Take Me to Your Heaven"
10pts (11th)	SLO	Darja Švajger "For A Thousand Years"
8pts (22nd)	CYP	Marlain "Tha 'Ne Erotas" (Θα 'ναι έρωτας)
7pts (4th)	CRO	Doris Dragović "Marija Magdalena"
6pts (10th)	AUT	Bobbie Singer "Reflection"
5pts (=8th)	NED	Marlayne "One Good Reason"
4pts (23rd)	ESP	Lydia "No quiero escuchar"
3pts (=12th)	BEL	Vanessa Chinitor "Like The Wind"
2pts (=8th)	DEN	Trine Jepsen & Michael Teschl "This Time I Mean It"
1pt (6th)	EST	Evelin Samuel & Camille "Diamond of Night"

Europe had Iceland second, Germany third, Israel fifth, Bosnia & Herzegovina seventh, the UK joint-twelfth, Norway 14th, Malta 15th, Turkey 16th, Ireland 17th, Poland 18th, France 19th, Lithuania 20th and Portugal 21st.

Let's now take a snapshot of how the various nations did over the course of the 1990s. For the sake of comparison, the top ten places in the final official standings for each contest are assigned 12-10-8 style points. In the case of a tie for place, the nation that received the highest individual score from a single jury takes the place, and if no resolution is forthcoming from this method then the benefit goes to that nation which our own jury scored the higher. Any ties in the final tally are broken by average performance, and where that is the same they are broken by highest annual placing.

Alongside the '90s snapshot, we'll also take a look at the running total since 1957. Change since the '80s tally is given in brackets.