EUROVISION: A MAAHVELLOUS PARTY

Well, that was a night to forget in a hurry. In case you have already, here is Eurovision 2005 moments, as seen by Sarah, Mr P, Baby Ceej and guests Lord and Lady Lonners.

Drums, drums everywhere! What do they mean? Will the natives never stop with their damn drumming? We poured ourselves another glass of champagne, ordered the pizza, and settled down to discuss the presenter's decision to raid Su Pollard's panto dressing room.

The Hungarian entrant seemed to be dancing with the Borg, so we hastily shielded Ceej's eyes and moved on to the UK. Javine had a sore throat, but the little trouper warbled on, supported very enthusiastically by Ceej, who led the living room in a patriotic arm-waving session - even though Lord Lonners called her song "Sunshine of Your Love with Bhangra".

We will refrain from nasty comments about Michelle McManus suddenly discovering her Maltese side, and merely repeat Mr P's assertion that power ballads do not make good Eurovision winners.

Lady Lonners and Sarah whooped with glee when they saw the Romanian entry. "Ruby Wax meets Pat Benatar!" "No, it's Kat Slater!". More champagne for the umpteenth mention of 'fire' that evening. Next! Oh. My. God. There's a Norwegian band onstage that cover just about every heavy metal cliche this side of 1982. Even down to the mandatory plumber in mascara and really really bad deep plum lippy! Lady Lonners and I agree he should have gone for a brighter red shade. Mr P and Lonners are groaning too loudly for us to hear anything.

Turkey: more bloody drums. This time they seem to be in a bistro with drums for tables. Hmmm...

Moldova. We scoff at Lady Lonners' saying that this lot have got their granny in to do the drumming and remind her that this is the country that Tony Hawks challenged at tennis...they wouldn't do anything as stupid as put their grannies into Chilli Peppers-lite rawk bands. Oh. My. God, what is that in the rocking chair? It looks like a giant bdhoran, with an old lady attached to it! As the singer exhorts us to "get rid of bloody meat", she jumps out of the chair and shuffles to the front - not to clip his ear for swearing at the nice people, but to bash her drum and sway gently. Well, we think this one should have won.

After that, everything rather paled into insignificance. The Albanians recruited Nigel Planer to sing something that went "di di di da da" or something. The Cypriot entry said that we'd be his because he's contagious. I don't think that's something he really wants to boast about. And there was lots of J-Lo style dancing with canes. The Spanish trio warbled about a magical owl. That's nice. There aren't enough owls in pop, we say. Then they spoiled it by having a burly bloke in an inquisitor T-shirt croak something about auto da fe. But by that time, Ceej was starting to flag and had to be put to bed.

Serbia Montenegro: "boy band with drums", according to Lord Lonners. Lady Lonners said that that the Danish singer taught autistic children, but that didn't excuse his woeful impersonation of Ronan Keating. Lord Lonners records in our notes that it "all went Reggae". Whatever that means.

All we have down for Israel is: "The drugs don't work". I think we'd hit the champagne again at that point.

Will Sweden never recover the dizzy heights of Abba - was the subject up for discussion as we breezed through Sweden ("Cliff Richard meets Ricky Martin...brrr!" it says here) and Macedonia ("La la la...more drums! Yuk!") to get to the home entry. Ukraine's band were a kind of Rage Against the Machine, only worse. They had to "tone down the politics" for the evening, which seemed to mean that most of the lyrics were excised, and all we got was "Revolution! Yay! We can do it! Yay!". Well, apparently it kept the freezing crowds of Kiev amused during the political upheaval earlier this year, but I think I probably would have gone home during the second chorus. People of Kiev, we salute you for your fortitude and frozen eardrums!

Germany had "nul point" written all over it, and Croatia used more kettle drums and had Neil Morrissey on vocals (cue chorus of "B-o-o-ob The Builder!").

There are not words enough to describe our deep, sincere, and total hatred of the Latvian entry. It was like a scout leader had pressed his pretty young friend into warbling a duet about a war not being over? "Which war?" we cried. "What are you on about, you blond lunatics? Where's the beer?" Then they started signing. I relived my teenage ten-minute bornagain phase with horrible clarity.

Ooooh...the Russian entry was directed at America, apparently, and seemed to be a tribute ot Michael Moore. We all went "ooooh..." then realised that not a single American would be watching anyway. Bosnia-Hercegovina and Switzerland seem to have merged into one note: "Lady Lonners didn't like this". I can't remember it. Again, our one-word review of the French entry was: "PANTS!", but we did discover that Lady Lonners named her hamster after Sacha Distel.

Funnily enough there are no notes about the Greek entry. I remember something about secret passion, and lover/undercover, and commenting on her make-up with Lady Lonners. Our tip for the top was, of course, completely ignored by the European voting public, who instead decided to make the English PAY (though this time around the French and the Germans got it in the neck too). Apart from the Irish, who did their level best to make us host the damn thing again...and failed! Bwahahahaha!!.

The dance extravaganza during the voting counting bit featured lots more kettle drums - there was a debate between the Lonnerses (both former West End stage hands) on the logistics of having so many drums onstage, and did they recycle the dancers...Mr P and I dozed off.

Then it was all over. The Greek singer sang her song again. We went, "oh THAT one", and switched over to watch German pornstars on Eurotrash. Great evening.