Last night was the annual OGAE UK and OGAE Ireland Eurovision Fan parties which took place in O'Reilly's Irish Bar in Marktplatz, Dusseldorf.
For those not in the know, OGAE stands for 'Organisation Generale des Amateurs de l'eurovision' and is one of the biggest world fan clubs of the Eurovision Song Contest.
We arrived at O'Reilly's Bar in good time and it was already heaving with excited Brit and Irish eurovision fans, drinks in hand and all singing along to past eurovision songs which were being played on a video screen. It was fantastic, everyone knows every word to each song and everyone knows all the actions and it was surely a spectacle to behold! The whole place was entirely bedecked with union jack flags and Irish tricolours.
Everyone was partying, dancing and singing along and having fun, meeting old friends and making new ones... there was a rumour in the air that there was a huge surprise tonight and everyone was hoping that it might involve Blue but as Tam and others feared, .. would Blue come to a small very crowded pub to stand on a very small stage after having spent their lunchtime at the exclusive Big 5 party on a large boat on the Rhine with national TV networks. The rumour mill went into overdrive ...
Then suddenly, one of the hosts announced that Blue would indeed be making a brief appearance to thank their UK fans and would be arriving within the half hour. The fan crowd reaction exploded into squeals of frenzied Blue delight and many hearts started fluttering in anticipation. Drew actually lost the power of speech at the thought of being close to Duncan James and had to be calmed down by Tam.
Half an hour went by, nervous glances from the fan crowd towards the stair way approach and still no Blue. We had positioned ourselves at the front of the very small stage, just to the side and were not budging!
Then out of the blue (sorry for the pun ;)) the host asked the crowd to clear a pathway to the stage and at that point we knew ... Blue were in the building!!
And so .... Blue managed to jostle their way through the screaming masses and made it to the small stage. The fan crowd went berserk with a cacophony of whoops, screams, cheers. claps and various people from both genders shouting out the name of their favourite band member....
They all individually thanked all the fans in the bar and how important their fans were to them and they came across as genuinely nice, friendly and lovely guys. They seemed a bit surprised and taken aback by the fan reaction they received as the baying crowd continued to scream their devotion ... Drew was apoplectic at this point as he was standing within touching distance of Lee. Tam had his smelling salts at the ready just in case.
Blue sang a snippet of 'I Can' in accapella to the screams and shouts of the fans .... their vocals were spot on and Tam and Drew do not have any worries about their vocals for Saturday!
Blue were not staying long but we were impressed by the fact that they took the time out of their busy schedule to say a thank you to their fans who have followed them to Dusseldorf to support them on Saturday.
Finally we were given an opportunity to take photos and have photos taken with Blue which led to a massive surge towards the stage with cameras flashing everywhere in all directions. It was actually quite difficult to take a photo because of this but Drew did manage to fling himself at Duncan James (his favourite) and shook his hand and wished him and the boys all the best for Saturday and for a UK win. Duncan was charming and lovely and he turned to Drew and then clasped his hand with both of his and thanked Drew for all of his support. Unfortunately, Tam (who is no David Bailey and was being mercilessly jostled) was not quite quick enough in capturing Drew & Duncan posing for the camera and caught the back of Duncan's head instead as you can see from the photo below. It looks in the photo like Drew is trying to cling on to Duncan and not let him leave rather than the actual pleasant photo event that it was... ahhh well .... Drew is a happy bunny and will not be washing that hand ever again!
As you can see a fantastic night was had by all, the Boys from Blue were absolutely lovely and it was just great to belt out a medley of past and present UK and Irish eurovision favourites.
Off to prepare for semi final 2 ....... byeeee
