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Host country: Sweden
Venue: Globe Arena, Stockholm
Date: 13 May 2000
Presenters: Kattis Ahlstrom, Anders Lundin
Won by: Denmark

It seems the introduction of phone voting across Europe has only served to make the voting even more bizarre and biased than ever before. The 'grey' vote, as Terry Wogan put it, meant Denmark romped home in the 2000 contest, with the only real competition coming from Russia. They had a couple of old fellows singing a pleasing, if forgettable song, not dissimilar to Ireland's 1994 winner, 'Rock 'n' Roll Kids'. Denmark's song, though, added the annoying vocoder effect used to equally annoying effect on Cher's hit 'Believe'.

But 2000 was the year the Europeans stopped taking Eurovision so seriously. Following Guildo Horn's antics two years earlier, Germany tried sending up the contest once again, this time with the gold-suited Stefan Raab (above) singing 'Wadde Hadde Dudde Da?'. And this year they were joined in pursuing the comedy vote by host nation Sweden, with Roger Pontare (below) and his Red Indian friends. Both scored inexplicably well.

As for the other entrants Ireland finished highly as ever, with yet another of their usual ballads, while France scored traditionally low, putting as little effort as possible into their entry as usual. Latvia scored impressively in their Eurovision debut, coming third, and so did Turkey, despite entering the same song they do every year. Norway didn't score 'nul points' - they got 57, entering a song called 'My Heart Goes Boom' which, thankfully, bore no relation to Lulu's 1969 winner. Finland's entry 'A Little Bit' was nothing like Gina G's 1996 UK entry, and Estonia's 'Once in a Lifetime' was not a Talking Heads cover, thank goodness.

Israel and Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia both entered groups singing way out of tune, proving that Jemini is not a new phenomenon. The United Kingdom fared very disappointingly, coming sixteenth - our worst placing so far (until 2003!) It seemed the rules that now allow countries to sing in any language - and so half of them sing in English - has been to the UK's detriment, our traditional advantage having now disappeared.

But, of course, politics crept into the voting. All the Scandinavians voted for each other, Iceland and Denmark giving top marks to each other, and same for the East European countries. UK received no points from Ireland or France as usual. And, sadly, there was no Greece this year, which meant that Cyprus were not even guaranteed twelve points.

Meanwhile the presentation of the contest itself was getting showbizzier than ever - this year there was a massive live audience of 13,000, and the first of the wisecracking presnters (right). The year 2000 clearly set the tone for the contests that followed - the only way was up.

Click here to view the 2000 scoreboard (opens in new window)

Countries voting are shown across the top, with each country's cumulative total after the country has voted shown in large type, and the points awarded in small type. Each country gave 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 points to its top ten songs
BBC broadcast: Saturday 13 May 2000, 8.00-11.02pm. Commentary: BBC1 - Terry Wogan, Radio 2 - Ken Bruce. UK vote spokesperson: Colin Berry

Click below to see more images from the night's contest:

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