Wogan's paranoid fantasy "just a fantasy"

Tired of the endless whining about block-voting, the organisers of Eurovision called in PriceWaterhouse Coopers to audit this year's voting.

They found no evidence of orchestrated irregularities:

[Svante] Stockselius said that the robustness of the tele-voting system meant block voting could not occur.

"We have looked into it and we have had auditors look at it, but it is not possible to manipulate the voting," he added.

"I wouldn't say 100% because that would be impossible but there is no way you can manipulate the tele-voting.

"People say this in their disappointment when they try to find explanations."

This misses the point slightly - not even Wogan at his most drunk suggests that the Greek government is pulling strings to ensure their 12 points go to Cyprus; the point is that - for the purely innocent reason that countries which share borders are more likely to share common tastes - the current voting system is liable to favour small nations which tend to give leg-ups to each other's neighbours than, ooh, haughty off-shore island nations which enter camp airline-themed bands, for example.

Still, you have to admire everyone involved for burning through cash on a consultant's report which doesn't even understand the question it should be asking. This is like watching Man United beat Stockport five-nil, and when people suggest it wasn't a fair contest, arranging drug testing for the United team to disprove those claims.