Tonights live show was hosted by Graham Norton, in front of a very partisan and enthusiastic standing audience. Pete Waterman took to stage and explained that the six competing acts would first of all perform a song by Stock, Aitken and Waterman tonight.
The first performer was Karen, she opened the show with the Kylie Minogue song What Do I Have To Do. Next to sing was Alexis, he took on the challenge of covering the Rick Astley number Never Gonna Give You Up. Third to take stage were the group Uni5 who had specially been put together for this competition. They covered the Bananarama song Last Thing On My Mind. Esma was the fourth artist and she sang the Donna Summer classic This Time I Know It's For Real. Josh performed in fifth position singing Jason Donovan's Too Many Broken Hearts. Girl group Miss Fitz ended the first round of singing with a cover version of the Steps and Kylie Minogue hit Better The Devil You Know.
To help Pete Waterman decide which three artists to choose to progress to the final round, all six acts sang together an Abba Medley. Pete then revealed that the three finalists would be Esma, Alexis and Josh. They all took turns in performing the United Kingdom entry That Sounds Good To Me. This was the first time the song had been revealed to the public.
It was then up to the televoting public who would take the Eurovision crown and follow in Jade Ewen's footsteps and represent the United Kingdom in Oslo. After an interval act where Sugababes and Alexander Rybak performed, Graham Norton announced the results. In third place finished Esma. The runner up was Alexis and the winner was Josh.
The United Kingdom are automatically qualified to the Final of Europe's Favourite TV Show by virtue of being one of the Big Four nations. The United Kingdom finished in 5th place last year in Moscow with Jade Ewen and It's My Time.
