I'll have to give some of the entries a rewatch - must admit it's quite faded and I can only remember a few songs, plus a couple more names.

Seem to remember it feeling pretty different (in a broadly positive way) to the ones before though!

Totally - iirc (big if!) the 2000s contests in general were a bit challenging.

Not universally of course, but in general I found the 2010s contests better.

My bad on that, evidently my memory crapped out. Was dead certain too!

Incidentally it's also a rule that if you enter you need to show all other entries.

Lebanon *almost* entered because it refused to show Israel's entry and exited last minute - their song is on the compilation CD for that year.

I usually only lurk on BS (tbh I find it useful but not fun) but there is an answer to that.

EBU and therefore Eurovision geographic criteria are drawn by two lines (plus the South Caucuses countries) so lots of MENA is eligible.

Jordan and Lebanon are eligible - the latter nearly entered once.

I generally don't post on BSky but I do live in B&H.

Caroline Lucas genuinely had a huge personal vote (a rare thing!) and when the Greens locally struggled people were very explicit about vote-splitting for Lucas.

Doesn't detract from not denting them nationally but Lucas was a rarity.

I'm rarely on BSky and that's largely because it's too similar to pre-Musk Twitter after the rot started.

It's the specifics of social media that are the problem imo. Twitter c 2014 and Masto had/have much less of this. Shame one's dead and the other requires a lot of adjustment from the user.