Hosted by www.esctoday.com, Nikki French and Paddy O'Connell, the fourth London Eurovision Party took place last night
www.esckaz.com were kindly invited to the press launch in the afternoon so your on the spot reporters, Mike and Daniel, were there to get all the news, gossip, high dramas and general atmosphere before the massed hordes of London fans arrived for the show.... Read more under the cut
and this is simply the best picture we got all day......Love Glen and Love Malteasers;-)))) Rest of the photos later today.....
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| From London Eurovision Party |
First up we got to meet the lovely Poli from Bulgaria again. This time, as we interviewed her last week, our colleague from OGAE rest of the World, Elsje Lacueva took Poli down to the London landmark of Eros and had a quick chat with her there.
I'm sure this will be on their facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/OGAE-Rest-of-the-World-Eurovision-South-A…)page later today, and of course it will be on esckaz.com too. Had a quick catch up with Poli, she was so excited about being in London and kept screaming at the London buses;-)
Next in line was one of the hosts for the evening, the former UK entrant, Nikki French. We caught up with her and what she's been doing for the last few years and got her to dedicate Don't Play That Song Again to www.escnation.com You can catch that video on the EurovisionKZ you tube channel later too. We also managed to grab a quick chat with Paddy later on so be sure and check that;-))
Then it all started to become a bit of a blur with lots of the performers arriving at the same time, more press, air kisses and love you's all round.
The press area was very small but the esckazers managed to get interviews with everyone, except for Dana International. Obviously she was in full diva mode, and we heard that the only interviews she was going to give were for the BBC and www.eurovision.tv Well that's going to work really well in Dusseldorf isn't it!!!!!
SOOOO huge apologies to Senit (San Marino), Glen Vella (Malta), Anna Rossinelli and her boyzz (Switzerland) we're sorry we didn't chat you to much, you know we love you and loved our time in Amsterdam with you and we will see you in Dusseldorf very very soon!!!
Special shouts go to Hotel FM (Romania) and Raphael (Italy) whom we met for the first time last night
Romanian boys first. The nicest, sweetest bunch of lads we have met in a very long time. David hasn't been back in the UK for four years, has a rather nice tan and is looking very fine. Alex is soooooooo excited to be back in the UK and just loved talking English to us.....note to David.....let them speak too;-))) Gabriel was a perfect gent and all in all these guys really do deserve a final place come May just for the sheer perfect sense of humour, attitude to fans and general all round rocking set they did last night!!! Videos on esckaz.com later....oh and loving the attitude to the web cam thing.....perfect;-))) Interview is here......
Raphael. OMG. This is just the sweetest perfect gentleman. We have yet to meet in all our Eurovision years a more humble person. In 9 years of covering Eurovision this guy really stands out as a true musician who's passions run very deep about everything he does. This showed in the fact that the interview started in Italian with his manager translating, but when he started to talk about music he changed to English, became passionate and lucid, seemed to come to life and show a side of himself that is obviously very very close to his heart. We fell in love there and then, and a huge thank you for singing acapella to us on camera. We are very much looking forward to meeting with him again in Dusseldorf and wish him all the best for Eurovision and his career. Check the video here....
And the show.....well the sound was a huge problem, very much like Amsterdam, but to be fair this was a night-club, the performers did not have much time for a sound check and the venue was packed. We managed to film everybody sing at least their Eurovision songs and highlights for us were.......well if we are honest ALL OF THEM.
Bulgaria rocked the placed and shouted "F***king great audience" at the end......
Switzerland revelled in the chance to sing and perform live.....
Romania look very very much at home on the stage and their other song was very much like early Simple Minds.....
Dana mimed, nuff said......
San Marino was just perfect as ever.....
Mr Malta had the crowd eating out of his hand and just looked like he was having the time of his life......
and finally Raphael from Italy treated us to 10 minutes of superb jazz piano (LIVE) and gave us a perfect rendition of his Eurovision song......
Live videos on EurovisionKZ you tube channel if you want to check them out later.
All in all a fab night, kudos to the organisers, esctoday.com, especially Russell Davies and Kabir Naidoo for putting this together and generally making everything run very very smoothly on the day.......
NEXT STOP.......
DUSSELDORF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
M+D