SuRie wins over the audience as UK's Eurovision entry

Many commentators were surprised by the selection of SuRie as the UK's entry for Eurovision 2018. The bookies' favourite, by some considerable margin had been Asanda. That's the difference between recorded and live performances, though. Asanda was dreadful. She was out of breath and missed more notes than she hit and on occasions seemed to lose the plot completely in a very poor live effort.

Jaz Ellington came across well but still didn't manage to capture the audience or panel's attention as much as many had expected.

My own favourites, Goldstone, were extremely confident and professional, delivering a faultless performance of a catchy number but it was a catchy number from any time between 1973 and 1993 and really not 2018 material. I quickly covered what I could see would be losses on that bet and sank the required amount in to SuRie who was rapidly taking over the favourite spot.

SuRie has to thank the audience for much of her victory. They were remarkably supportive and anyone would have thought that she had arranged for the venue to be filled with only her fans. They started clapping enthusiastically from just a few beats in which didn't happen with any one else at all. A few tried with Asanda but soon gave up. SuRie really did appeal to everyone. I can only guess that she had done well during rehearsals and somehow managed to get through to people earlier as all this could not have come about purely during the live show we saw.

She has good experience of the Eurovision scene and even stage too, having worked with the Belgian entries over a couple of previous years. That is useful as we have seen many otherwise competent acts fail when they try to do the real thing in front of millions.

The song itself is OK, anthemic in places but certainly the beat will get people going along and the lyrics seem to have an appeal too. She has a slightly android look which suits Eurovision but I am not sure I like the robotic dance moves. By that I don't mean she is doing a 1970s Kelly Marie but seems to have a rigid and well-rehearsed set of moves which she will stick to come what may. This makes her slightly less likeable in my view but when she does appear to relax and acknowledge that there are others around then the ice breaks and you get what it is that the crowd are cheering for.

If she can weave the same magic on the big stage then maybe she will do better than I had previously expected at my first review. To a large extent now, Eurovision voters go for personality and some relationship that can develop between them and the artist. It appears that SuRie has that quality and I wish her well.