No sooner have we got over the excitement and shocks of semi-final 1 (seriously, how on earth did Azerbaijan qualify over Iceland – Samra, the Azerbaijani entry, has barely sung a right note yet – or not in the order the notes are supposed to come…), it’s almost time for semi-final 2! I am hosting a bit of a do at my flat tonight so as I did on Tuesday, and we’ll see how the joint Surbiton-Brighton-Canary Wharf jury perform. There are more of us voting tonight so will be interesting to see if we are as accurate in our results as we were on Tuesday! Semi-final 2 is a curious one actually – I think there are 6, maybe 7, certain qualifiers but the remaining three places could go to almost any of the remaining countries (except Switzerland…)
Based on the betting, what I’ve seen, heard and read of rehearsals, and what I’ve heard and read from the bloggers and journalists out there, my predictions for the qualifiers and non-qualifiers are as follows:
Qualifiers (going from most certain to qualify to least certain)
Non-qualifiers (going from least certain NOT to qualify, to most certain NOT to qualify):
- Norway
- Ireland
- FYR Macedonia
- Denmark
- Belarus
- Albania
- Slovenia
- Switzerland (sorry to my friend who likes this but it’s got the lowest chances of all to qualify, in the betting and in the views of bloggers and press)
I think it could be quite tight between Poland, Georgia and Norway – they could all easily go either way.
Who I would like to qualify (in rough order of what I like most):