Consong 09: Peter Walsh reports for Boom Bang a Blog

The event, when held in hotels, has been held in such places as Harrogate, Coventry, Bingley and Dublin amongst others. 'Large living rooms' have been used in Leeds, Edinburgh and Warrington last year, while the honour of hosting Consong09 went to Belfast.

Twenty-four people were in attendance in Belfast with the event also broadcast via SKYPE to Manchester to allow a few others to watch.

Each person in attendance was a jury and the Manchester contingent counted as one jury also. Twenty-four songs took part.

Prior to the Consong09 screening, traditionally starting at 9pm, we had a show looking back at this year's National finals, a look back at the fashions and performances of the '60s and '70s and we also watched the opening show that took place at the launch of the Euroclub in Moscow this year.

Catering was also provided by the talented Mark Smyth so everyone was fed and watered and ready for the big event by 9pm. Everyone had their individual voting sheets, and marked all the songs as they were shown. The song which represents each country is kept a closely guarded secret, known only to four people, until they are unveiled on Consong night, which adds to the excitement of the evening.

Once the songs were presented, we watched an interval act along with the 'outtakes' from the postcard filming which were just hilarious. At this stage, everyone was asked to choose their Top 11 songs. Before the show had started, everyone had to choose a Northern Ireland town/area (pictured) and now everyone found out which country this represented and, therefore, which jury they were going to be. In typical Eurovision style, you were unable to vote for your own song, so if your jury was in your Top 11, it had to be discounted and then you could translate your ranking into the traditional Eurovision Jury score.

To ensure no cheating took place (which has been known to happen in the past!), each voting sheet had a detachable part which had to be handed to the scrutineer to ensure that the votes they called out did not change!

Then, everyone came up to give their votes standing beside presenter David Elder, and this was captured on video to prove you were there!

The votes were shown on Robin's fabulous scoreboard on his large widescreen TV. Among the songs taking part this year were, Sakis Rouvas singing 'Right on Time' for Greece, De Toppers for Netherlands with 'Everybody Should be a Star' and Feminem for Croatia with 'Trebam Te'.

Sweden's postcard announced that the honour of representing them in Consong had been given to Caroline Av Ugglas. However, the care home would not release her so Alcazar and 'Stay the Night' stepped in.

Hera Bjork represented Denmark with 'Someday' and this was expected to do an 'Alexander Rybak' and win by a landslide. Halfway through the voting, it looked like this was going to happen as Denmark was in the lead by over 40 points, but then the voting took a turn and the gap between Hera and Alexander Stenerud singing 'Find my Girl' for Norway began to narrow.

With one jury left to vote, Denmark led Norway by only two points! Malta was the last jury to vote and gave Norway four points putting them in the lead. Was Hera destined to finish second again?? Then seven points were awarded to Denmark and there was much celebration in the hall!

The show finished with a reprise of the winning song and then the room was filled with more Eurovision music as everyone continued to enjoy themselves into the small hours of the morning. A souvenir CD of this years entries was given to everyone who attended
and the official DVD of the event will be released, hopefully in December.

Consong 09 winner: Someday performed by Hera Bjork for Denmark

Overall, Consong09 was a fantastic success. Everyone seemed to enjoy it and it was great to have an unexpectedly close contest.

The Consong Reference Group has already decided that Consong10 will be held on Saturday October 30th in Edinburgh so put the date in your calendar!