Poll : Sexiest Woman of Eurovision 2012

Well, we didn't actually get round to it last year, but it's high time to revive the annual tradition of the sexiest woman of Eurovision poll! The previous winners are Paula Seling (Romania) in 2010, Hadise (Turkey) in 2009 and Kalomira (Greece) in 2008. Who is your favourite of 2012? The voting form is in the sidebar, and you can vote for as many women as you like.

Here is the full list of contenders -

Greta Salóme (Iceland)
Eleftheria Eleftheriou (Greece)
Anmary (Latvia)
Rona Nishliu (Albania)
Elena Ionescu (Romania)
Iris (Belgium)
Pernilla Karlsson (Finland)
Shiri Hadar (Israel)
Valentina Monetta (San Marino)
Ivi Adamou (Cyprus)
Soluna Samay (Denmark)
Granya Baysarova (Russia)
Alevtina Begisheva (Russia)
Zoya Dorodova (Russia)
Galina Koneva (Russia)
Natalya Pugachyova (Russia)
Valentina Pyatchenko (Russia)
Yekaterina Shklyaeva (Russia)
Kaliopi (Macedonia)
Joan Franka (Netherlands)
Filipa Sousa (Portugal)
Gaitana (Ukraine)
Sofi Marinova (Bulgaria)
Eva Boto (Slovenia)
Nina Badrić (Croatia)
Loreen (Sweden)
Maya Sar (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Anggun (France)
Nina Zilli (Italy)
Sabina Babayeva (Azerbaijan)
Pastora Soler (Spain)

NOTE : In spite of my best efforts, I couldn't work out which of the seven Russian grannies is being left out, so I included all of them to be on the safe side!

Poll : Sexiest Woman of 2011 World Curling Championships

Roll up, roll up, and welcome along to the third running of Euro Women's legendary (kind of) annual poll to find the sexiest competitor of the world women's curling championships!  In a way, it's the fourth, because there was a special poll for the Olympic tournament last winter.  Our previous winners are Jennifer Jones of Canada (2009), Eve Muirhead of Scotland (2010) and Natalie Nicholson of the USA (2010 Olympics).  Of the three, only Muirhead is in the field for the 2011 worlds, and thus eligible for this poll.  Also likely to be in contention this time round are Danish skip Lene Nielsen, the Swedish trio of Cecilia Östlund, Sara Carlsson and Liselotta Lennartsson, Russian third Anna Sidorova, and the Norwegian skip Linn Githmark, who was once photographed nude for Ana Arce's famous series of curling calendars. Here is the full list to choose from -

Lene Nielsen (Denmark)
Helle Simonsen (Denmark)
Jeanne Ellegaard (Denmark)
Maria Poulsen (Denmark)
Mette de Neergaard (Denmark)
Amber Holland (Canada)
Kim Schneider (Canada)
Tammy Schneider (Canada)
Heather Kalenchuk (Canada)
Jolene Campbell (Canada)
Andrea Schöpp (Germany)
Imogen Lehmann (Germany)
Corinna Scholz (Germany)
Monika Wagner (Germany)
Stella Heiß (Germany)
Wang Bingyu (China)
Liu Yin (China)
Yue Qingshuang (China)
Zhou Yan (China)
Yu Xinna (China)
Kim Ji-Sun (South Korea)
Lee Seul-Bee (South Korea)
Shin Mi-Sung (South Korea)
Gim Un Chi (South Korea)
Lee Hyun-Jung (South Korea)
Anna Kubeśkova (Czech Republic)
Tereza Pliśkova (Czech Republic)
Luisa Illková (Czech Republic)
Eliśka Jalovcova (Czech Republic)
Veronika Herdová (Czech Republic)
Anna Sloan (Scotland)
Claire Hamilton (Scotland)
Vicki Adams (Scotland)
Rhiann MacLeod (Scotland)
Eve Muirhead (Scotland)
Liudmila Privivkova (Russia)
Anna Sidorova (Russia)
Margarita Fomina (Russia)
Ekaterina Galkina (Russia)
Nkeiruka Ezekh (Russia)
Linn Githmark (Norway)
Henriette Løvar (Norway)
Ingrid Stensrud (Norway)
Kristin Moen Skaslien (Norway)
Marianne Rørvik (Norway)
Mirjam Ott (Switzerland)
Carmen Schäfer (Switzerland)
Carmen Küng (Switzerland)
Janine Greiner (Switzerland)
Nicole Dünki (Switzerland)
Patti Lank (USA)
Caitlin Maroldo (USA)
Jessica Schultz (USA)
Mackenzie Lank (USA)
Debbie McCormick (USA)
Anette Norberg (Sweden)
Cecilia Östlund (Sweden)
Sara Carlsson (Sweden)
Liselotta Lennartsson (Sweden)
Karin Rudström (Sweden)

How to vote : go to the right side-bar! As ever, it's possible to vote for more than one woman at a time (and, indeed, it's highly encouraged). Choose wisely!

Laura Moore voted sexiest woman of The Apprentice (UK) 2010

Perhaps it will be small comfort the day after being knocked out of the competition, but Laura Moore is the runaway winner of our poll to find the sexiest woman of this year's UK series of The Apprentice.  Sandeesh Samra was the runner-up, while Stella English - still in the competition and one of the favourites to win - finished third.  Here are the full results...

1 Laura Moore 29%
2 Sandeesh Samra 17%
3 Stella English 16%
4 Paloma Vivanco 14%
5 Liz Locke 13%
6 Joanna Riley 10%

Kara Tointon voted sexiest woman of Strictly Come Dancing 2010

In an incredibly tight finish, Kara Tointon has pipped last year's winner Ola Jordan in our annual 'Sexiest of Strictly' poll.  Ola was perhaps somewhat hampered by her early departure from the series this time round!  Aliona Vilani and Katya Virshilas (both still in the competition) were in third and fourth place respectively, while Kristina Rihanoff demonstrated her enduring popularity by finishing fifth in spite of an early departure from the show.  Here are the final results...

1 Kara Tointon 22%
2 Ola Jordan 21%
3 Aliona Vilani 13%
4 Katya Virshilas 12%
5 Kristina Rihanoff 11%
6 Tina O'Brien 7%
7 Flavia Cacace 6%
8 Natalie Lowe 3%
9 Pamela Stephenson 2%
10 Felicity Kendal 1%
= Patsy Kensit 1%

Poll : Sexiest Woman of The Apprentice (UK) 2010

In the last series, two beautiful women - Yasmina Siadatan and Kate Walsh (pictured) - fought it out for The Apprentice crown.  Will history repeat itself this year?  Just in case it doesn't, you can always vote for your favourite in our poll!  Here is the full list of contenders -

Joy Stefanicki
Laura Moore
Sandeesh Samra
Stella English
Paloma Vivanco
Melissa Cohen
Liz Locke
Joanna Riley

Scroll down the page to find the poll.  Multiple voting is permitted; the vote closes on December 1st.

Poll : Sexiest Woman of Strictly Come Dancing 2010

With veteran magician Paul Daniels as her celebrity partner this year, the chances of Ola Jordan successfully defending her Strictly title seem not a lot - but you'll like her. Perhaps so much so that she'll be able to defend her Euro Women 'Sexiest of Strictly' title instead? Kara Tointon and Tina O'Brien will surely be giving her a run for her money, though. Here are the full list of contenders -

Kara Tointon
Erin Boag
Ann Widdecombe
Aliona Vilani
Felicity Kendal
Flavia Cacace
Tina O'Brien
Natalie Lowe
Michelle Williams
Ola Jordan
Patsy Kensit
Kristina Rihanoff
Pamela Stephenson
Katya Virshilas

Scroll down the page to find the poll. You can vote for as many of the women as you wish; the vote closes on December 1st.

Are Glamour Girls Always Dealt the Losing Hand on Reality TV?

Archive article : first appeared in Telewatcher in early 2009

One of my guilty pleasures in life whenever Big Brother is running on TV is to read the acres of often unintentionally hilarious comment the series generates on the online forums. On the launch-night of Celebrity Big Brother 2009, the response to Page 3 girl Lucy Pinder’s entry into the house was especially intriguing. Historically, models – and especially glamour models – have done particularly badly on both Big Brother and the celebrity version. But in this case, the initial feedback was startlingly favourable, with many women making approving comparisons with Melinda Messenger (a previous glamour model contestant on the show), principally on the grounds that Pinder was following Messenger’s example in keeping her body ‘well covered up’. This is seemingly the main criteria for a topless model to be accepted by a female audience, and such acceptance is all-important – because the vast majority of those who take part in the show’s eviction votes are thought to be women.

So far, so good for Lucy Pinder, then. But within a matter of a few days, the mood on the forums had turned on its head, in a seemingly inexplicable way. Suddenly, Pinder was being charged with hypocrisy for precisely the same reason she had been so lauded at the outset. By stubbornly keeping her body so firmly under wraps, the argument went, she was treating the very thing she did for a living with disdain, and by extension was treating the loyal fans who had created such demand for her steamy pictures with equal disdain. This perception, as Pinder would herself acknowledge, played a large part in her early departure from the show. But the viewers’ change of heart seemed on the face of it to be fairly typical of the fickle attitudes of those who inhabit the forums. Now that Pinder has been evicted, however, it’s become clear with hindsight that rather more was going on than met the eye – and the show’s producers played a large part in engineering the chain of events that unfolded.

The turning-point in Pinder’s fortunes started with the all-too-predictable revelation that there would be a ‘twist’ on the normal method of nominating housemates for eviction. Only ‘Head of House’ Terry Christian would be permitted to nominate, and one of those nominations would be based on his assessment of which of his fellow housemates had exhibited the least talent during a session in which they were each required to give a demonstration of whatever had made them famous. So the two actors were required to do a spot of acting, the five singers (including, among others, La Toya Jackson) were required to sing, the politician Tommy Sheridan was required to address the housemates in public meeting style, and the one-time TV weathergirl Ulrika Jonsson was required to deliver a weather forecast. But there was a discernible frisson in the air when the penny started to drop about what this unmistakable logic might mean for Pinder – could she really be required to demonstrate her ‘talent’ for posing topless? Unsurprisingly, the answer was no – or, at least, so it appeared at the time. Instead, she was invited to do something seemingly unrelated to her line of work – a presentation on, among other things, her reason for disliking the Labour Party. The only nod to her career outside the house was that the item was dubbed ‘Lucy’s News in Briefs’ and she was provided with a special pair of ‘briefs’ to wear, leaving her legs on display for the duration of the presentation. But even this wheeze seemed somewhat illogical for a topless model, given that it left her top-half covered up.

Unsurprisingly then, Pinder’s performance was by some distance the least captivating of all the celebrities, and the Head of House was left with little choice but to nominate her on that basis. It was at this point that the murmurs on the forums began – it was her own fault, some suggested, for not engaging with the true ‘spirit’ of the task by disrobing a little more during her presentation. After all, how else could she be said to be demonstrating what had made her a celebrity? At face value, this appeared to be a totally unfair criticism. The producers had set her an apparently very specific task which she had fulfilled to the best of her ability. Indeed, a fairer charge seemed to be that the producers had stitched her up, and made it inevitable due to her unequal role in the task that she would be nominated for eviction.

But a somewhat different picture emerged during Pinder’s post-eviction interview. The host Davina McCall spent much of the exchange persistently – albeit semi-jokingly – demanding to know why Pinder had so stubbornly failed to take her clothes off during her stay in the house, and specifically challenged her to explain why she hadn’t at least stripped to her bra during the ‘talent’ task. And suddenly the strange realisation dawned about the true nature of the task the producers had set Pinder – it had in fact been devised as a huge tease. The only costume requirement that had actually been specified was that she wear the ‘briefs’ provided, but contrary to initial on-screen impressions, how much else she wore was entirely left to her own discretion. She could in fact have worn nothing else if she had wished, and it appears that the producers thought there was at least a chance that she might actually take that option. Essentially they provided her with a huge dilemma, and by leaving enough ambiguity in the stated rules left her enough rope to either hang or save herself. By stripping off, she could have dodged the first eviction by avoiding being branded the ‘least talented’ – but in doing so she would have risked the familiar wrath of the predominantly female viewing audience. So while this dilemma was entirely artificial and contrived, it nevertheless neatly encapsulated the problem virtually every pin-up girl will face in any ‘celebrity’ reality TV show – because they essentially just have famous bodies, while all their fellow contestants are famous as people. The fact that so few people even knew what Lucy Pinder’s voice sounded like before she entered the show is testament enough to that.

Perhaps the only solution is for the producers to stop playing games and to be much more up-front about the blindingly obvious reality of why women like Pinder are always signed up for the show. Maybe it should even have been written into her highly lucrative contract that she was fully expected to ‘sex up’ the programme, something that was clearly the unspoken expectation in any case. And, while a certain section of the viewing public would doubtless still disapprove, a more direct approach might lead them to focus their ire more on the producers, and show a little more tolerance to the model herself.