Friday 6 February 2009

Featured : Vanilla Ninja

Vanilla Ninja are a girlband from Estonia. They were the overwhelming favourites of the public when they competed in Eurolaul - the Estonian national selection for Eurovision - with the song Club Kung-Fu, but were overlooked by the international jury of musical 'experts' who made the final decision. Strangely they were then invited to compete for Switzerland in the 2005 competition, which at least had the advantage of allowing the Estonian public to vote for them in the televote! They did so in droves, and the group's rock track Cool Vibes finished in a creditable eighth position on the final leaderboard.

You can visit Vanilla Ninja's official site, complete with photos and videos, here. Please note the site will first appear in Estonian, but there is an option in the top right-hand corner to switch to English.

Thursday 5 February 2009

Featured : Elena Paparizou

Although raised in Sweden, Elena Paparizou has twice sung for Greece at the Eurovision Song Contest. In 2001 in Copenhagen it was as part of the group Antique, and the song Die for You finished a creditable third behind Estonia and the hosts Denmark. In 2005 she returned to the Eurovision stage in Kyiv as a solo artist with My Number One, which swept all before it to score Greece's first ever victory in the contest.

You can visit Elena's official website (where she goes by her now-preferred spelling of Helena), complete with photo gallery and biography, here.

Suggest a poll

This website is going to continue to focus heavily on polls as it develops, so if you have any bright ideas for polls you'd like to see in the future feel free to leave a comment. As I said in the previous post, there are other Eurovision-related polls on the way, but there's room for plenty of others. The only criteria is that they should be at least vaguely related to topics concerning female European celebrities (and Europe includes the UK).

Sportswomen? Actresses? Socialites? Let me know what you think.

Estonian Eurovision poll

It's still a couple of months before all the entries will be known and we can open our 'sexiest woman of Eurovision 2009' poll, but in the meantime we'll have some other Eurovision-related polls to whet your appetite. We're starting today by asking you who you think is the sexiest singer or girlband to compete for Estonia since the country first appeared in the contest in 1994.

Among the contenders are Ines, who famously performed in a green cowboy hat in 2000. She started as favourite to win the competition but ultimately finished fourth. Others are the Swedish imports Sahlene (who controversially carried the hopes of the country when it hosted the contest in 2002) and Sandra Oxenryd. Also there is Maarja, who has the rare distinction of having sung in the Eurovision in two consecutive years.

Vote wisely!

Eurovision 2008 poll

Kalomira of Greece won a knife-edge victory over Ukraine's Ani Lorak to be crowned the sexiest woman of the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest in our poll. Both women polled 14% of the vote, but Kalomira was one ahead in terms of the absolute votes cast.

1 Kalomira (Greece) 14%
2 Ani Lorak (Ukraine) 14%
3 Vânia Fernandes (Portugal) 12%
4 Maria Haukaas Storeng (Norway) 11%
5 Morena (Malta) 7%
6 Jelena Tomašević (Serbia) 6%
= Nico (Romania) 6%
8 Tereza Kerndlová (Czech Republic) 5%
9 Rebeka Dremelj (Slovenia) 3%
10 Sirusho (Armenia) 3%
= Tamara (Macedonia) 3%
12 Regína Ósk (Iceland) 2%
13 Olta Boka (Albania) 1%
= Soetkin Baptist (Belgium) 1%
= Hind (Netherlands) 1%
= Isis Gee (Poland) 1%
17 Kathleen Burke (Ireland) **
= Gisela (Andorra) **
= Diana Gurtskaya (Georgia) **


(** - less than 1% but more than zero)

Gemma Atkinson poll

The Gemma Atkinson poll has now closed. The most popular option was 'four', with 45% of the vote.