大象传媒

Coverage of the fifty-first annual Eurovision Song Contest broadcast from Olympic Indoor Hall in Athens, Greece.

The unexpected winner was Finland's hard rock act Lordi who sung "Hard Rock Hallelujah" dressed in monster costumes.

It was the first song of this genre to win the contest which is normally associated with pop music. Nevertheless they took the title with what was then a record 292 points, although it was beaten by Alexander Rybak's landside 387 point victory in 2009.

It was Finland's first victory in the competition and long overdue after competing for an impressive forty five years since their debut in 1961.

Ireland set the record for being the 1000th song to be performed in the contest when their act Brian Kennedy sung "Every Song Is A Cry For Love" in the semi final. The voting system was streamlined for this contest lasting just ten minutes compared to some of the painfully long winded announcements in previous years.

Points one to seven simply popped up on screen with spokespeople only revealing the top three scores. Nevertheless it was not hitch free with some technical and presenter errors delaying the process and some fans criticised the process for its lack of suspense.

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