I love the Eurovision Song Contest and have been watching it on and off for more years than I care to remember. I first became aware of its existence in 1976 when Brotherhood of Man secured a win for the UK. I don’t know whether I was actually allowed to stay up and watch it – in my head I did! – but I certainly remember everyone being very excited and singing ‘Save your kisses for me’ in the primary school playground on the following Monday morning. I do know for certain that I was watching when we had our next win in 1981 with Bucks Fizz and ‘Making Your Mind Up’ and have mostly continued to do so, despite our generally poor performance ever since (although apparently we have been the runner up more times than any other country!)

From those early days, I would always make my own score sheet, jotting down notes about each act, and marking them out of 10 – partly because it’s such a long evening that I would forget which ones I had liked by the time it got to the end, and partly because I am quite anal and like a list! From the mid 90’s through the duration of my marriage, I wasn’t allowed to watch as my ex thought that it was naff (a very small part of a much bigger picture!), but once I got my life back, I was able to return to the things that I enjoyed, and this included introducing Eurovision to my children. The number of us gathered around the television at home has fluctuated as they passed through university, although there has always been a group chat which still managed to draw in the less keen who hadn’t intended watching, but nowadays it’s a fixture on the calendar and seems to become a bit bigger each year. This time round I even bought bunting and cocktail stick flags!

My musical tastes are quite eclectic – I will pretty much listen to anything except heavy metal, hard rock or improvised jazz (I was even a member of the George Formby fan club when I was in my early 20s and learning to play the banjolele), although I have a tendency towards pop/dance, a remnant of my misspent youth. Unsurprisingly these tastes play out in my scoring of Eurovision songs, although I have to say that the winning song very rarely even makes it into my own top 5. I have mixed feelings about a novelty song. I loved Sweden’s, but wasn’t a fan of Australia’s, so didn’t mind that it didn’t qualify (and don’t even get me started on whether Australia should even be allowed to enter! I was all behind it when they took part in 2015 for the 60th anniversary but it should have been a one off!)

I always award extra points for a country whose song features some kind of local folk element, be it instruments or vocal arrangements (Latvia and Albania were both fine examples, along with Spain who provided me with both Spanish guitar and castanets) and I thought it was brilliant that so many countries sang in their own language this year. I might be English, but I don’t actually want to hear song after song all sung in English in a European competition, and it doesn’t bother me that I don’t understand the lyrics, because I’m listening to the music, the beat and the general feel – although I did like the fact that the Italian song had subtitles because the meaning was so lovely and would otherwise have been missed.

I had been listening to the songs on Spotify for a while beforehand as many of them are growers which you don’t really appreciate if your first listen is on the night, and I thought that the standard was very high this year, although I went into it knowing which ones I thought I liked best. As tempting as it was, I had deliberately not watched the semi finals because I wanted to judge them on the staging and their live performance for the first time in the final. Because of this, there was a little bit of movement in my rankings as some songs were better when seen on the stage and some were disappointing live. Albania was my stand out favourite this year, with Italy and Switzerland completing my top 3. Also highly ranking, but in no particular order, were Latvia, France, Spain, Iceland, Germany, Greece and Poland. Luxembourg and the Netherlands could have been up there – I loved the songs – but unfortunately I did think that they were both quite out of tune on the night and I felt I had to take that into account. Conversely, I wasn’t keen on our own entry, but the performance was flawless and it was hard that they received nul points in the public vote – but as a country who constantly complain about political voting, we are used to that by now! Once again, my own winner didn’t tally with the jury/public vote, but five of my top ten were in the actual top ten, which is probably better than normal.

But equally as important as the music (and some of the assembled company would say more so!) is the Eurovision food. We adopted the themed food route a few years ago, which initially revolved a lot around cheese but has now become a lot more ambitious – and competitive! My younger son produces a spreadsheet and we sign up for different countries, with the aim of producing something to represent each of the finalists – with the added challenge of it having to be vegan to accommodate said son and his fiancee (not a huge inconvenience when I am vegetarian and my daughter is pescatarian, but it does mean that we can’t just lazily rely on cheese any more.)

This year we had a draw for four compulsory countries each. I was allocated the UK (bit boring!), Armenia, Albania and Serbia, and then also took on Luxembourg, Germany, Malta, Czechia and Switzerland. With my eye on the UPFs (I have been continuing to cut ultra processed food out of my diet, although I was aware that I would have to relax and eat some over the course of the evening), I wanted to make everything from scratch, but knew that I couldn’t possibly leave it all until after both semi finals, so had to take the risk that, UK and Germany aside, they would all qualify by cooking ahead and freezing. This did mean that one of the most complicated dishes – gibanica, a Serbian ‘cheese’ pie, which saw me tackling filo pastry for the first time – didn’t get used, although Czechia were eliminated before I had chance to bake bublanina,, a cherry bubble cake – so that was one less thing to do!

It’s fascinating to research recipes from other European countries and get an insight into their cuisine, because despite us (almost) all being from the same continent, the dishes vary so much, and although it’s different in big cities, beyond the ubiquitous Italian chains, or the odd Eastern European shop, there is very little opportunity to experience food from other European countries when you live in the provinces, although there is no shortage of Indian and south east Asian restaurants.

After lots of googling and ploughing through a multitude of websites, my final offerings were scones (UK – a bit of a cop out, but I do bake exceedingly good scones!), hovivi jash (aka shepherd’s dinner – an olive, walnut and pomegranate salad from Armenia), jani me fasule (a white bean soup from Albania), kniddelen (boiled dough dumpling with a ‘cream’ and mushroom sauce from Luxembourg), black forest cupcakes (Germany – there was going to be too much other food to bake a full on gateau) and froga tat tarja (a Maltese spaghetti omlette, veganised through the use of whisked aquafaba, chick pea flour and nutritional yeast). Last but not least, for Switzerland I baked Basler Lackerli, a spiced fruit and nut cake/biscuit that is actually a speciality of the host city of Basel. (Lackerli translates as ‘delicious’ and they really are.)

From Icelandic kartoflusalat (potato salad), Norwegian kjottkaker med brun saus (meatballs with mashed potato and gravy) and Swedish Abba kalles (vegan cod roe paste on rye bread), through Polish pierogi (potato dumplings), Dutch hagelslag (chocolate sprinkles on bread) and Portuguese arroz doce (rice pudding) to Lithuanina krupnikas (homemade infused vodka), and Aperol Spritz, we spanned Europe and beyond.

(Just a very small selection of the food offerings)

Everyone really pulled it out of the bag and we were all very excited to try each others dishes – and indeed find out what the dishes actually were, as we had listed them in their original language on the spreadsheet, which in many cases didn’t give much away. It would be impossible to pick a winner in the food stakes, although the infused vodka would be high, but there’s no doubt that the prize for the cutest contribution went to Finland’s Moomin tea and biscuits.

I have mentioned before that I don’t like normal leaf tea, but these rooibos tea bags in dessert flavours (banana and vanilla, chocolate cake, strawberry milkshake and cheesecake) were really nice and would be great to always have in the cupboard for a treat. I mean, who wouldn’t be instantly cheered up by tearing open a tea bag sachet with a Moomin on it? I know these ones came via Amazon, but I’ll have to check out the Moomin shop in Covent Garden the next time I make it to London as I am hoping that they might stock them.

It had been decided that we should eat the food corresponding to each country as they performed because it would be ‘a lot more fun’, and even though I sometimes struggle with fun if it involves doing anything outside of my usual routine, I reluctantly agreed to go along with it. Thus, sweet and savoury were mixed up in gay abandon, and the food and drink kept on coming for about two hours! We all started off in good form and the first fifteen or so dishes were received enthusiastically. Even with very small portions however, we became increasingly jaded as we headed towards the end and unfortunately the time and effort that went into providing these later dishes was not as fully appreciated as the earlier ones. By the time we reached the final act and my Albanian soup, none of us could face eating anything else, especially as it immediately followed San Marino’s Torta Tre Monti (wafers with hazlenut cream), which were delicious but very rich and had left us completely stuffed. Although the soup was good (I’d had it for dinner on the day I made it) it wasn’t really a grand finale dish either, but we felt obliged to force down a spoonful, just to say that we had completed the challenge!

I am glad that I came out of my comfort zone and went along with the plan because it did actually turn out to be fun. I felt that I missed out a bit on some of the performances because I was so busy taking a new spoonful of one dish, or finishing off a spoonful of something else from an earlier act in order to catch up, or looking to see what was coming up and whether it needed to be reheated, whilst also trying to remember to write down my scores and complete my bingo card, but it was all such a whirlwind that it did make what is normally a very long evening go very quickly. The whirlwind combined with a late night wasn’t great for my CFS and it did mean that I suffered the next day, but would I do it again next year? Yes I would – and I can’t wait to research and try our more new dishes for Eurovision 2026.