Shock and awe at Eurovision

Every May, when the Northern Hemisphere ticks off the Eurovision Song Contest from its calendar, the meaning of the word "shocking" takes a further devaluation. In more than 30 different languages.

- Jane Clifton

This year, even the furious anti-Israel protests mounted in Sweden's hosting city, Malmö, petered out to a huffy smoulder. Viewers were pounded with such a relentless onslaught of garishness as to cause outrage outage.

A typically depleting brain-teaser was the Finnish entry, which began with half-dressed men "hatching" from an egg-like structure.

For unexplained reasons, they were "born" with clothes on their top halves but not their nether regions. This may have been a coded tribute to Winnie-the-Pooh or Donald Duck. Nothing can be ruled out in this increasingly gnomic yet histrionic event.

Britain's Olly Alexander and his back-up squad performed while seemingly upside down in a grotesquely unhygienic ablutions block. This also remains unexplained. Despite the clever special effects, the poor chap, at a critical stage of voting, got the dreaded "null pointes".