In a similar selection process which brought them so much fortune last year, Finland chose Hanna Pakarinen and the rock chick ballad-type song ‘Leave Me Alone’.  The song is one of my big favourites this year, I personally think it’s great – catchy and classy, and will get the applause it deserves from the home turf.  The problem is that these songs haven’t fared well in the past (look at Gracia for Germany in 2005) despite being good performances.  The national selection performance was a sound one, and I think it has enough appeal to do fairly well, I just think it will unfortunately be back to form for Finland – although I hope not.

Another of my favourite performances of the evening was without a doubt the Finnish entry.  I always loved ‘Leave Me Alone’, but was worried about Hanna pulling off the vocal on the night.  However, much to my delight she sang *perfectly*.  I actually think this was flawless, and the presentation was wonderful: fantastic pyrotechnics, a great backing band, smoke, and a sultry, angry attitude set alight by the look on Hanna’s face.  This was great, and Finland certainly deserved to break the top ten, but unfortunately the dirty voting meant this missed out.  Finland should at least be content with the fact that they were the highest scoring western European entry for the second year in a row.  As for my prediction, I was delighted to see this do better than the other western counterparts, and although they deserved much, much better, Finland proved me wrong and finished a lot higher than I predicted, reckoning they’d come last, but polling enough votes to end up in 17^th place.