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Azerbaijan wins the Eurovision Song Contest
Next year's contest will be held in the winner's capital city of Baku
Azerbaijan has been crowned the winner of this year's Eurovision Song Contest in Germany, while the UK came 11th.
Eldar Gasimov and Nigar Jamal of Ell/Nikki were voted Europe's favourites, after scoring 221 points with their love song, Running Scared.
Newly reformed band Blue notched up 100 points, whilst Ireland's entry, X Factor twins Jedward, finished eighth.
Italy's Raphael Gualazzi took second place, followed by Eric Saade from Sweden.
'Happiest man'
It is the first time that Azerbaijan has won the contest in its 56-year history, having only joined Eurovision in 2008.
Although Jamal was born in Azerbaijan, she currently lives in north London with her husband and two daughters.
On receiving the trophy, Gasimov said he was the "the happiest man in the world".
It was another disappointing year for the UK, which has not won the competition since 1997, when Katrina and the Waves triumphed with Love Shine a Light.
However, Blue managed to notch up a respectable score compared with last year's entry, who came last with only 10 points.
At one stage Blue were top of the leaderboard
At one early stage during the voting process Bulgaria and Italy both awarded the UK high scores, making it briefly top of the results table.
Host Graham Norton joked: "Quick, someone take a picture."
Last year's winner Lena Mayer-Landrut, who represented Germany again, beat the UK by seven points to finish 10th.
Viewers at home in all 43 competing nations voted for their favourite song by phone or text message, which accounted for half of each country's vote.
The other 50% was determined by five-member expert juries in each participating country.
Two rounds of semi-finals held earlier in the week whittled the competitors down to 25 finalists.
The event, which was hosted by Anke Engelke, Judith Rakers and Stefan Raab, attracted 35,000 to the Fortuna Düsseldorf Arena.
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Comment number 234.
ztoical15th May 2011 - 15:35
I love Eurovision and watch every year and am happy for my tv licence money to go towards it....I don't watch Dr. Who or Football or Eastenders, there will always be stuff on tv you don't watch but someone else does so stop moaning about it. It's 3 odd hours one saturday a year not the end of the world, just enjoy the event and stop reading to much into everything.
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Comment number 222.
Small acts of defiance15th May 2011 - 14:07
It's just a bit of fun. Personally, I don't care who wins. People ought to lighten up instead of treating it like a modern media version of the Hundred Years War.
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Comment number 221.
JohnnyBoyinParis15th May 2011 - 13:49
Isn't it rather strange that most of these groups sing in English? Shouldn't there be a rule that you must sing in your mother tongue i.e. in the language (or one of the several languages) of the participating country? I thought that Europe meant cultural and linguistic diversity. All these songs sound like Mid-Atlantic goo, without any connection to the culture of the country concerned.
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Comment number 207.
deanarabin15th May 2011 - 12:48
No, I didn't watch it, because I don't like either that kind of music or that kind of show. But a lot of people do, and anything which brings so many countries together in an informal and (I suppose) mainly friendly way can't be bad. So long live the thing until too many people get fed up with it .
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Comment number 147.
Chris Heath15th May 2011 - 9:30
Eurovision is absolutely abysmal but it is something to be treasured. Fetish tv at it's worst. Today will be full of people asking "Did you see it?" and you'll be hard put to find somebody who says 'yes' even though they sat glued to every minute.
Of course, I didn't see it myself, never watched it... never have watched it either..... 11th place? Really? Better luck next year then ;-)
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