Line of the night (above) came from the wooden Natasja Crone who delivered like she was falling asleep right before the cameras. Søren Pilmark and Natasja attempted to deliver their lines in rhyme - which must have seemed such a good idea on paper. (Anders Lundin, all is forgiven, come back!!) Whilst no one threatened to pop out of her top like Russia's Alsou in 2000, one of the back-up singers for Estonia's 2000 entry (Tanel Padar who was half of the winning entry in 2001) quite nearly snapped his face in half from smiling.

and the winner is...
Dame Judy Dench.
Much in the way that Judy Dench was robbed of Best Actress for Mrs Brown and the next year got the Oscar for Best-Supporting Actress when she delivered three lines in Shakespeare in Love, so too did Estonia get a sympathy gong in 2001 - when their 2000 entry (Eda-Ines Etti - Once In A Lifetime) was overlooked in favour of a less superior song. Tanel Padar actually sang back-up in 2000 for Eda-Ines.

Estonia nailed the ESC title with about three countries' votes still to come - mainly due to Greece and Denmark (their main rivals) having to vote last and 2nd last and thus depriving themselves of points. The song itself was nothing much, IMHO. A disaffected, post-modernist rumba with a mindless populism theme... but there's no accounting for taste.

Votes were split between this feel-good track, the Danish middle of the road ballad and the Swedish-based Antique's greco-nordic fusion pop-techno tune which was Greece's entry. Greece's entry seemed the popular choice among the western crowd - and almost all northern and eastern european states preferred Estonia's. But none of the tracks were outstanding.

nil pointe
No one suffered the ignomy of nil pointe this year, but a few got damned close.

Norway and Iceland fared poorly. Norway was pointless til the 11th nation voted (Portugal) who gave them a very generous 3 points: the final score for Norway.

Iceland got a token point from Norway and then sat on 1 point until Denmark voted in the last round, they finished on 3 points also.

A few nations only received votes twice, which is pretty damning. They were Ireland (5 points from the UK and 1 point from Portugal), Latvia (8 points each from Lithuania and Estonia, hmmm) and Portugal (6 from Spain and 12 from France, yeahsure!).

hits and misses
Fashion statements for the night were brilliant red from Malta and yellow rubber from Slovenia.

Fashion victim of the night was certainly Lindsay Draycass from England, who rocked up on the night in a shite, red track suit and looked like she'd come straight from a run-down shopping mall in Birmingham. The fact that the ugly stick visted the Draycass family long ago didn't help.

Surprise git of the year was Spain's David Civera who was mentioned by some as a chance due to his similarity in style to Ricky Martin or Enrique Inglesias. For similarity, read apeing. His Enrique imitation was ridiculous and went down like a lead Zepplin.