16 May 2011 Last updated at 04:43 ET

Eurovision Song Contest woos back TV viewers

Next year's contest will be held in the winner's capital city of Baku

More than nine million viewers in the UK watched Saturday's Eurovision Song Contest, according to early estimates.

The audience peaked at 12.7m towards the end of the show as Azerbaijan won, while the average viewing figure for the three-hour broadcast was 9.5m.

This compared with 5.5m viewers in 2010, when the UK came last with a previously unknown act, Josh Dubovie.

Boy band Blue, this year's UK entry, and Ireland's Jedward generated greater interest in the annual contest.

Blue came 11th, whilst identical twins Jedward, who gained fame on The X Factor, steered Ireland to eighth place.

Italy's Raphael Gualazzi took second place, followed by Eric Saade from Sweden.

Blue managed to notch up a respectable score - 100 points - compared with last year's entry Dubovie, 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.

The event, which was hosted by Anke Engelke, Judith Rakers and Stefan Raab, attracted 35,000 fans to the Fortuna Dusseldorf Arena.