So that’s it for another Eurovision year! It’s been a strange one, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Thanks so much for keeping me company this evening and adding your wit and wisdom in the comment box below.

I have no idea if I’ll be back for Strictly in the autumn, but fingers crossed we’ll find something to keep us busy and entertained on a Saturday night, and I very much hope to be back in Rotterdam this time next year. Please stay safe and look after yourselves and each other, Hx

Well this is entirely lovely. I’d have been happy with two hours of this superimposed over European landmarks.

I’m singing along. Is everyone singing along? Hands in the air please, I’ve been on this sofa for four hours and have no blood flow in my fingers.

To wrap up tonight’s show, this year’s contestants are going to sing a special version of Love Shine A Light, just to remind everyone in the UK that it’s been 23 years since we last won Eurovision. It’s the perfect message to share right now – ‘and we’re all gonna shine a light together, all shine a light to light the way.’ It’s easy to be cynical, but stuff like Eurovision feels like a beacon of solidarity and togetherness in a crazy world.

Hooray, Graham Norton is live on the show! He’s got a bit tearful, and I know how he feels. Tonight has been quite the rollercoaster.

‘God that was awkward.’ Graham’s back in the room.

Here’s a special message from Bjorn from Abba – we must be building up to grand finale if they’re wheeling out Eurovision legends of this magnitude. He has the most soothing voice and we need him reading the CBeebies bedtime story.

Ooh Denmark was nice this year too, a good singalong/foot tappy number. Sad that they only showed 20 seconds of that performance of Fai Rumore in Verona. Worth a full watch.

The good news is that quite a few artists have announced they’re coming back with a new song next year, which is just as it should be.

Time to meet the final eight 2020 contestants, including Malta, another of my favourites from this year. Love a happy clappy banger.

Aww, there’s a nice VT from some former Eurovision contestants. Bit dusty in here. Also loving Conchita celebrating not wearing underwear.

Since we’re on a roll with former Eurovision winners hawking their new singles, last year’s winner Duncan Lawrence is now singing his new single ‘Someone Else’. The opening lyric appears to be ‘Lately I found myself on the crowded side of the street, eating in busy restaurants every night of the week’. Either Duncan is trolling us, or The Netherlands has gone completely rogue.

This is a perfectly lovely song if bleak break-up ballads are your thing, but can we follow a general policy of ‘play the Eurovision hits’, just for one night? For everything else, there’s YouTube.

Nikkie Tutorials is back. I’m reliably informed she’s some kind of influencer/makeup artist. Sorry, I am very much not down with this kids in this respect.

It’s NETTA time. In case you’ve never visited Planet Eurovision until now, Netta won Eurovision for Israel in 2018 with ‘Toy’. However tonight she’s going to sing a song called ‘Cuckoo’, which feels slightly off-piste.

OK now I need more wine, we’ve gone from quiet family wake to full viking funeral.

Oh wait, I said earlier that Bulgaria was the one that people thought might win, but actually it was Romania. Sorry.

Hang on, someone has just told me it was Bulgaria. Ignore me.

Incidentally if you loved Iceland’s entry this year, my friend and fellow Eurovision fan Rob interviewed Dadi for his podcast and it’s really great.

Eight more contestants from this year coming up, including my absolute favourite song of the year. Anyone who has ever followed this liveblog in previous years will know that I can’t resist a generic dance bop, and Germany’s Ben Dolic absolutely nailed it this year with ‘Violent Thing’. It wouldn’t have won but it’s my favourite song of this year’s competition. Don’t @ me, I stopped caring hours ago.

Also anyone joining late and hoping this show is an uplifting couple of hours of escapist joyful eurononsense, run away now. I’m emotionally drained.

Ooh it’s Michael Schulte! He sang ‘You Let Me Walk Alone’ for Germany in 2018, which is the perfect social distancing anthem. He’s going to sing Nicole’s ‘A Little Peace’ (which won Eurovision in 1982) with Ilse from The Common Linnets, who came second in 2014. Just FYI I do not have an encyclopaedic Eurovision memory (although I know several people who do), but I DO have Google.

Iceland! What a great song, I’ll be doing this daft dance in my kitchen for the rest of time.

OK I’m struggling a bit with contestants making little heartfelt speeches, and then Graham taking the piss out of their decor. Stop it.

Time for another eight contestants – Spain, Ireland, Austria and Iceland were four of my favourites this year. Bulgaria was a bit bleak for my tastes but it was pegged as a possible winner.

Now it’s time to celebrate all 41 Eurovision countries with a montage of famous locations shot by night. The accompanying music is an orchestral version of ‘Love Shine A Light’ played by the Rotterdam Philarmonic Orchestra. Since most of us have haven’t left our home towns in months, this feels particularly ‘here’s what you could have won’ harsh.

Oh god that was gorgeous. So many beautiful places, can’t wait to visit more of them.

The next performance is from Marija Serifovic, who won Eurovision for Serbia in 2007 with ‘Molitva’. There’s a huge amount of love for Marija in the Eurovision fandom, and this is arguably one of the best vocal performances we’ve ever seen on the contest. Molitva means ‘prayer’, and this has the most glorious strings. Love this version on the streets of Belgrade, absolutely beautiful.

Very much enjoying seeing the houses and dogs of all this year’s entries. I’m sure I’m not the only one finding this all a bit of a downer, but in light of the current situation it was probably the right thing to do, even if it does feel a bit like a wake. It’s really hard to hit the right note at the moment, so I’m just going to appreciate the effort that has gone into this.

Time to meet eight more 2020 contestants, including some Skrillex-style madness from Latvia, with the incredibly topical title, ‘Still Breathing’. I’d love to think that they’d have followed this up with James Newman’s ‘My Last Breath’, but in reality Latvia was never making it out of the semis.

Next up it’s a performance from Antonio Diodato, who was going to represent Italy at this year’s Eurovision. For me Fai Rumore was the dark horse of the competition, but he’s decided to sing Volare instead. Oh.

Somebody called Nikkie Tutorials (possibly not her real name) is telling us what’s going on online. No mention of this liveblog, which is just rude.

Now it’s time to meet Viki Gabor, who won Junior Eurovision in 2019. She is in Poland with a shonky delay on the sound, as is traditional. Her tips for kids watching right now is to ‘make your dreams come true’, which is super unhelpful. Viki is wearing a padlock as a necklace, which is either random Polish fashion or a weird lockdown reference.

The Eurovision kids are going to sing ‘Hallelujah’ with Gali Atari, who won Eurovision in 1979 for Israel. It’s got a Pink Windmill vibe about it, which is an incredibly niche reference.

Time for another special guest, and it’s Måns Zelmerlow again! Apparently there is no limit on the number of times he can sing Heroes in one evening.

‘What this song needs is an acoustic breakdown, and lose the leather trousers’. Said no one ever.

Just so you’re clear on the format this evening, you’re going to see a clip and a Facebook motivational quote from every one of this year’s entries. By the end we will all be broken, empty husks.

What makes 2020 all the more sad is that there are some brilliant songs in this year’s lineup – fom this first batch of eight Russia, Azerbaijan, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden could all have ended up in the top 10.

Also the man from France is dreamy.

Time for us to meet some of this year’s contestants, and hear a bit of their songs. If you haven’t heard all these by now, Spotify has them all on a playlist.

Time for our first special guest! It’s Irish legend Johnny Logan, who has won the contest three times. Luckily one of those songs was called ‘What’s Another Year?’, which makes Johnny suddenly extremely topical. He’s going to sing it for us.

This is such a lovely song, and Johnny is accompanied by lots of fans singing from their living rooms, and our hosts for this evening. Oh crikey, I knew this show was going to be hard to liveblog but this is pretty brutal. Hugs to all Eurovision fans around the world.

Turns out this is not Hilversum’s first Eurovision rodeo – the city hosted the contest in 1958, when Volare from earlier came third.

This is all making me a bit emotional. I’ve gone early.

Our hosts for this evening are a very socially distanced Edsilia, Chantal and Jan, who were booked to present the grand final in Rotterdam this evening. Hopefully they’ll be back for another go in Rotterdam next year.

Well that was fun. Don’t go away, we’ve got another show along in a minute. Take a quick break to grab more snacks and booze, then come straight back for Europe Shine a Light. See you in a minute!

Time to announce the results! If any of you voted for Fairytale or Gina G, you’re barred from all future liveblogs. I love that Graham has a Tower Bridge backdown, like proper Eurovision voting.

And the winner is…ABBA. Of course it’s Abba, it’s always Abba.

Time for more fans who’ve raided the dressing up box, I love that they’re doing Scooch. Would you like something to suck on for landing, sir?

I can’t believe I didn’t get involved in this. Would have totally done some Keiino joiking.

Time for a look at a few highlights from this year’s entries, although don’t expect the BBC to go big on this because that’s pretty much the point of the next show. If I wanted to watch two identical TV shows I’d watch any two episodes of Murder She Wrote.

I think what what we’ve learned from this segment is that we’ve all been in lockdown too long.

Because no TV show in 2020 is complete without some user-generated content, here’s a montage of Eurovision fans recreating classic moments from the contest. It seems to include Andy Abraham playing a Dyson and Sonia being Lulu.

OK I’m loving the Russian grannies, this is joyfully bonkers.

Time for Graham to have a chat with this year’s UK entry that never was, James Newman. I really liked the song, and it was definitely a step in the right direction for getting us back on the left hand side of that leaderboard. Hopefully he’ll be back next year.

Also there was a brilliant documentary about this year’s Eurovision made by BBC Newsbeat. It’s on iPlayer now and it’s really worth a watch.

Green Screen Graham! The voting is open, but you only have 12 minutes!

What’s your favourite from that lot? It’s a tough one, there are some great songs in there and plenty of other great ones that didn’t make the Top 19. I think Waterloo will probably win it (it usually wins best Eurovision song votes, because it’s the one everyone knows), although I’d probably give my douze points to Conchita.

And finally it’s Katrina & The Waves, singing ‘Love Shine A Light’. This was the last time the UK won the show, way back in 1997, and it’s a fitting end to tonight’s performances. We’re going to see more of this song on the second show later, I think.

Next up it’s Alexander Rybak, singing ‘Fairytale’. This won for Norway in 2009, and I’m pretty sure I’m still on a number of Norwegian most-wanted lists off the back of that liveblog.

Eleven years on I’ve mellowed considerably and can see why people liked it. Look, it’s the best I can do right now.

It’s time for Conchita Wurst singing ‘Rise Like A Phoenix’ which won Eurovision for Austria in 2014. It’s a brilliant, brilliant song, and the whole performance incredible. I saw Conchita live at the London Palladium a couple of years ago, she is an unstoppable goddess.

Only four left! Next up it’s Brotherhood of Man with ‘Save Your Kisses for Me’, which won for the UK in 1976. I was (only) three at the time, and hearing this song is one of my earliest childhood memories, although that could have been years later as it was in the charts for ever.

Everyone up off the sofa to do the dance. Yes, even you. Drench yourself in Old Spice and Tramp and waggle those elbows.

How do you follow that? Ah, with Netta’s ‘Toy’, apparently. This won in 2018 for Israel; I didn’t think it was as good as Fuego then, and I still don’t now. That said, it was a brilliant bit of staging from Netta and when you’ve had a bit too much to drink and have to pick from 25 songs that are a bit of blur, I can see why people might think ‘I’ll just vote for the one with the chicken noises.’

Next up it’s Domenico Modugno with ‘Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu’. This song is better known as ‘Volare’, and even though it only came third in 1958, it went on to be a massive global hit and is possibly one of the best known Italian songs of all time. It’s gorgeous.

Now THIS is a great song. Lena won Eurovision for Germany with ‘Satellite’ in 2010, and it’s three minutes of the kind of mockney cheerfulness we all need right now. This song walked so Kate Nash’s ‘Foundations’ could run.

It’s time for Gina G with ‘Ooh…Aah…Just A Little Bit’ from 1996, when it came 8^th. I mean, I can see why the panel picked this because it’s perky and upbeat and Gina wears a proper bum-skimmer of a dress, but watching it now the performance was actually kind of terrible. Come on, it’s true.

Next up it’s Loïc Nottet, with ‘Rhythm Inside’. I didn’t vote for this because I’d pretty much forgotten it existed, but I’m pleased this made the shortlist because it’s great. It came fourth in 2015, and the beady-eyed amongst you might recognise one of the backing singers as SuRie, who represented the UK in 2018. As Graham just mentioned, she wasn’t allowed to vote for this.

Time for Abba! Obviously Waterloo had to be included in this shortlist, marking first sighting of Abba for most of the world, and possibly the most famous Eurovision song of all time. It’s also the last time anyone won Eurovision using a really tortured war metaphor, which is probably a good thing. Anyway they rocked up in monster platform boots, sang about Napoleon and the rest was (19^th century military) history.

Next up it’s Mahmood from Italy singing ‘Soldi’. This was only last year, and another song that eventually came second (there’s a few of them in this list).

It’s a great example of how Eurovision music isn’t all la-la-la cheesy nonsense – Soldi was sung in Italian but had a bit of Arabic and some trap music influences that made it feel really cool and contemporary. I really love it.

Song nine! Have a drink and raise a glass to Terry.

No list of brilliant Eurovision songs would be complete without Verka Serduchka singing ‘Dancing Lasha Tumbai’. This came second for Ukraine in 2007 and inspired a million tinfoil Eurovision party costumes. It’s camp and bonkers and joyful and I love it. If you’re not bopping along to this you’re dead inside.

‘They’re not the Eiffel Tower, let it go’ Love Graham having a snipe at Baku.

Time for Loreen, who won Eurovision for Sweden with ‘Euphoria’ in 2012. For reasons I can’t remember I liveblogged that year from Stuart Heritage’s house in Forest Hill, but I do recall us both having a dance around the room to this, making jokes about Claudia Winkleman and being pretty sure that it was going to win. It did, and it remains the quickest way to fill a dancefloor at a Eurovision party. Throw your hands in the air. UP UP UP UP UP UUUUUP.

Time to go way back to 1965 for France Gall, who won with ‘Poupée de Cire, Poupée de Son’ for Luxembourg. France was only 17 when she won this, I think it translates along the lines of ‘I’m a wax doll, I’m a singing doll’, which feels a bit like a teenage cry for help from a girl with really pushy parents. Anyway it’s a massive tune and absolutely deserves to be in this lineup.

Oh YES, it’s Eleni Foureira singing ‘Fuego’, which was the scene of an absolute ROBBERY for Cyprus in 2018. The world needs more sparkly catsuits and hairography, and this was a classic of the genre, but sadly it came second. I’d love a Cyprus Eurovision one day; along with Malta, it scores top on the scatter graph of hot weather vs. cheap beer.

Next up it’s Bucks Fizz, who won for the UK in 1981 with ‘Making Your Mind Up’. I was 8 at the time and LOVED this song, although watching it now it’s not entirely clear why. The vocal performance and staging was really quite patchy, although the skirt-ripping thing was cool. By 1981 standards, anyway - now it would get you a ‘FIND THESE PERVERTS’ post on Facebook.

It’s time for Dami Im to sing ‘Sound of Silence’, which won the jury vote for Australia in 2016, but then came fourth in the public vote and ended up second overall. Dami lost to Ukraine, who didn’t win either vote; look, it was a really stressful and complicated voting year.

Now is the opportunity to correct this injustice – feel free to award Dami bonus points for excellent plinth work, an enormous meringue of a dress and finding 42 different ways to pronounce the word ‘silence.’

Next up it’s Dana International, singing ‘Diva’. This was the winner for Israel in 1998, which was the last time Eurovision was hosted in the UK, and a gamechanging year for Eurovision in lots of ways. It was absolutely on my shortlist, I love it. Viva la Diva 4eva.

First up it’s Måns Zelmerlöw singing ‘Heroes’. This won for Sweden in 2015, although if I’d had a couple of drinks (which I have) I MIGHT argue that the song was fairly average and 2015’s Eurovision was won by an animated stick man and a pair of leather trousers.

Goodness, they’re not messing about - this is Eurovision on speed. Time to start the shortlist of songs!

Time to meet the jury panel! Oh how lovely, there’s my stupid waving face. But hey, it’s not every day I get to be the meat in a Mark De-Lisser/Mel Giedroyc sandwich.

So the main focus of this show is to vote for the best Eurovision song of all time, from a shortlist of 19 pulled together by a panel of Eurovision experts. I use this term in the loosest possible sense because I’m one of them.

But on the upside, we get to revisit 19 brilliant performances with their original host nation postcards, and take a little trip down Eurovision memory lane. At the end the voting will open, and there will be some fun 2020 filler while they count the votes. It’s all over in 90 minutes, which is my kind of Eurovision.

Is everyone ready? I’m ready *flexes fingers*

Are we all enjoying Eurovision Pointless? I’m rooting for Dana and SuRie. Although let’s face it, John and Jade make a very beautiful couple.