EUROVISION 2015: VIENNA

EUROVISION 2015: VIENNA

Day 2

So I woke up this morning, slightly fatigued after out "strategy meeting" over ran into the early hours. As usual I checked my phone for messages and then checked my Timehop to see whether anything monumental happened in my life on this day in previous years. To my surprise I realised that it was on this day last year I was "outed" by the British Press for certain fetishes I was not even aware I had. Poor Molly from The UK was obviously not expecting this sort of behavior!!!! I have a funny feeling the guy involved in photoshop for the newspaper was having an amusing day to himself.

The schedulers for this years Eurovision have been very kind to us press peeps and the first 4 days rehearsals do not start until 12pm so there is plenty scope for a long lie. I got up at leisure and had a long shower before deciding that although I felt better than I expected to - dark glasses were definitely required for the first part of the day. We headed out at midday for our half hour wander up to the arena and entered the press centre for the first time. It was bigger than we thought and it is lovely to see how excited and helpful all the volunteers are. They genuinely want to make our stay in Vienna magical and everyone was full of smiles. The free tea, coffee and crisp is just an added bonus.

The first few days at Eurovision are lovely because you meet up with old friends again and there is always a buzz of excitement as to how the songs will be staged, who will be the best fun to interview and what will be the biggest fashion disaster. I met up with Eurovision legend Terry Vision who has been present at the last 179 Eurovision contests but still doesn't look a day over 13. The poor artists do not know what they are letting themselves in for when they are interviewed by the irrepressible Terry. We also took part in our first Eurovison Podcast for ESC Insight - for those who have never experienced this, it is like an episode of loose women but with about 10 panelists and Ewan Spence trying to hold it all together in the middle. Great way to start off the proceedings and the podcast will be aired tomorrow.

As you can see, the first day in the press centre is a busy affair and it is important to get in early so you can fight for your seat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! However, shortly after this we had the "official opening ceremony" and afterwards there were free sandwiches and drinks on offer. The scrum seemed to come from nowhere but within another 30 minutes normality had resumed once again. With no rehearsals on today it was a gentle way to break ourselves into the business of all things Eurovison once again. Tomorrow will be a different story.

Finally all there was to do was finish up for the day and head back to our "local" for  one or two refreshments and a good chin wag with friends we have not seen for a while. Every year there are new members join us and it is lovely to make new friends liek the delightful Dimitri pictured in the photo below. He likes a woman who is a handful and a bad influence (i'm obviously not his type) It was also lovely to finally proved to Garrett that Ewan and Roy were not in fact the same person.

We took the gentle stroll home and admired many of the local establishments as we passed by. I think it is amazing though that in our 2 week visit to Vienna they are doing some live recordings of The Peep Show - I might see if I can get a ticket to be in the audience