Are people strapped into a chair and forced to watch it then? I always thought that Eurovision viewing (and commenting) was voluntary.

Have not some countries stop entering though?

The Eurovision was a little bit crazy with some good songs this year. Great entertainment.

Dont worry - I have my grumpy head on this morning.

UK TV Ratings ‏@TVRatingsUK 1m
The #Eurovision peak audience came at 11pm, when 10.60m (55.8% of the TV audience) were watching.

Fantastic for Eurovision. A stonking performance there. Be interesting to see how low ITV went!

BGT did pretty well too considering it had quite a lot working against it last night. It was its earliest ever slot with the hour long length not really working for 7pm and Eurovision denting its same day timeshift (I suspect the 7 day timeshift will be a bit larger than normal) but the average was still solid and it hit a great peak. Glad the touching ending got a massive audience.

No one is suggesting political voting doesn't exist, but it never ever affects the overall result.

How do you explain that Austria and Netherlands - who have an even worse track record than us in the last decade - came Top 2? Seriously, how do you Samuel?

The simple fact is a song that connects in terms of performance and music, as well as a nice position, will do well. Some slip by the wayside, as in any competition ever, but by and large popular ones take home the points whether you like them or not.

Molly deserved better but failed due to:

-Being on last which is not ideal
-Many, many better performances than hers. Hers was restrained and possibly nervous.
-The song did not translate as well in the arena as others
-By the end people had already made up their minds who they wanted to win, I certainly had.

We had a great performance in 2009 - and came 5th for our efforts. Every other year we've been utterly dreadful or dull and forgettable. The UK needs to stop acting so entitled, if we make the effort we'll do well, end of story. And no, Samuel, it is not "deflating" for hardcore Eurovision fans to see the UK do so badly - it is deflating that we send utter crap and so most of us EXPECT to do badly as a result and don't jump on the totally ill informed biased voting bandwagon. Last night Molly deserved more because the UK actually bothered to turn up this year, but not on any grand scale, so people need to stop acting so entitled and realize we need to make more effort next time.

Edit: Regards to ratings, brilliant! People love the show regardless of the result

"@TVRatingsUK: Against Eurovision, ITV's audience fell to just 0.88m/3.9% for Prey at 9pm and 0.52m/2.5% for The Americans at 10pm."

Both about the same as last week, in fact I think The Americans went up!

Brill rating for Eurovision. My social media feeds were absolutely rammed with it, so I thought that might be an indicator of a big audience

Yes, e.g. Italy for several spells, and they cited lack of interest at home for some of them. They came back, most recently from 2011 onwards.

I take your point that with these ratings, the day when the UK fails to send an entry is as far off as ever.

Looks like it was the right result to keep BGT out of the way, to avoid it being dented like it was when it clashes with Eurovision.

It's worth noting that ITV and C4 are also EBU members, so in the highly unlikely event of the BBC ditching Eurovision, it would simply move over to one of those other broadcasters.

Countries that only have 1 broadcaster as an EBU member can withdraw from the contest because there are no other broadcasters to take over. That's why there was no Italian entrant for so long.

Haha. I am genuinely very surprised. It's got to be the rather large helping hand from ITV, hasn't it ?

But yeah, I'll hold my hands up. Got that one very wrong!

Surely it's obvious why Eurovision was up - the UK was on last, therefore longer to wait for those interested especially as on paper we had more of a chance this year. That and crap weather of course but the high share is more to do with the first point.

next year it's guaranteed to be lower already unless we send an obvious winner

Great ratings for Eurovision, although it was bound to be over 8million with the lack of any competition. In fact I think ITV shut down after 8pm. ITV couldn't really have made it any easier for the BBC, and some moan when the BBC roll over for ITV's big shows. Well ITV have just smashed that record for easiest programmes to go up against.

Others were arguing that the late UK performance would count against the show's ratings, as people could tune out and back in again later (the fact that we were to perform last was mentioned by Graham several times).

The exceptionally weak ITV opposition was a major factor, I feel. Speaking of which, anything for Amazing Greys?

Next year we won't even try, will we? It'll be another Scooch or something.

Great figure for Euriovision.

This may be answered elsewhere but why is Israel allowed to enter when Israel is not in Europe ? At least Turkey is half in Europe.

BBC Moscow correspondent on Breakfast was suggesting Russia may pull out next year as the various remarks about gay freedoms did not go down well in the Kremlin (although they did go out on Russian TV).

Funnily enough the rating was up on last year - just as well itv held up the white flag eh?
Did you predict that the uk televote would award 12 points to the cleavage show that was Poland.
Seriously - if that's how the uk vote, how can you criticise the way the rest of europe votes

Any country that has a broadcaster which is a member of the European Broadcasting Union can enter.

It will go either way - this reminds me of 1996, where we hadn't won for years and years and Gina G was the big hope, had a brilliant song but then came 7th or so because the juries didn't like it. Then in 1997, obviously determined, they went a step further and found a complete package winner and we stole the show.

Our chances this year were a bit overstated compared to 96 but I do feel this could be the moment, like 97, where someone says "right we ARE going to do it this time" and finds a true winner. Germany did so 4 years back.

Or yes we'll revert to being lazy and clueless and send Christine Bleakely reading an autocue!

UK should be really pleased with their score, personally I put it bottom two with Germany. The girl had a REALLY weak voice and the production on the song was so amateur compared to other countries.

I'd imagine the Kremlin is in a bit of a quandary this morning.
What is more embarrassing for them - the booing of Russia on a Europe wide tv programme - or the fact that their own public voted a drag act in as 3rd place (the Russian jury had it 19th)