Hi °C | Lo °C Hopes are rising for Jade Ewen as she puts the final preparations to her bid to revive the UK’s fortunes in the Eurovision Song Contest.
Ewen will perform It’s My Time, by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Diane Warren, in the vast Olympiyski Stadium in Moscow. She is hoping to fare better than last year’s UK hopeful Andy Abraham, who finished joint last, raising questions about whether there was any point in the UK bothering to enter the competition if political voting took precedence.
Graham Norton will take on the commentating duties for the first time.
His predecessor Sir Terry Wogan, who has been associated with the competition from the early 1970s, said after Abraham’s disappointment that it was “no longer a music contest” and prospects for Western European participants were “poor”.
“It did get to Terry in the end, but he’d been doing it for 35 years, so it probably won’t annoy me quite as much,” Norton told the BBC.
“It’s frustrating because it does take the fun out of it. The voting sequence should be very exciting, but if you know who everyone is going to vote for then it’s less exciting.”
He said he would not be doing an impression of Sir Terry and would only poke fun if it was worth it.
Speaking during preparations in Moscow, Ewen said it was “encouraging” to know the public were behind her.
