Well it’s all over for another year but just how will Eurovision 2009 be remembered? As the year that the UK finally revived its flagging fortunes? As the year that Norway scored more points in a Eurovision setting than one ever thought remotely possible? Or simply as one of the best contests in years, one in which it finally became about the music again as opposed to a popularity contest between friends?

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All of those things, actually. Quite aside from the spectacle of it all – courtesy of Moscow who literally threw a fortune into creating a lavish production – there was a noticeable change in atmosphere, with – for once – musical prowess triumphing over showy performances. Who would have thought this time last year that a simple ballad, nicely presented, from Iceland could finish in second place, or that the UK – basking in a kind of ‘nul points’ glory, would once again find itself in the top five?

To be fair, there was a certain amount of showiness in Alexander Rybak’s winning song, from the bouncy Cossack dancers to his perpetual cheeky grin – but that didn’t detract from the fact that it was a good catchy tune which deserved its place at the top of the scoreboard. At the other end of the spectrum gimmick-laden performances from the likes of Greece’s Sakis Rouvas and Ukraine’s Svetlana Loboda struggled to make the sort of impact they might have done in the past.

The powers that be say that the re-introduction of jury voting at this year’s contest – which was 50 per cent public votes, 50 per cent juries – proved that the voting in the past had not been partisan – but I can’t help feeling the scoreboard might have looked very different if it had all been televoting again. Yes Norway would probably still have won – the song was clearly unstoppable from the very first set of scores – but I can’t help thinking you would have seen certain Baltic and Balkan nations a lot higher up the scoreboard, and certain other countries a lot further down.

As for Graham Norton – well it did sound at times as if he was reading from the Terry Wogan Book Of Eurovision Quips – but he brought a breath of fresh air to the contest, and how nice to hear somebody getting enthusiastic about the songs and the scoring for once. Let’s hope he sticks around, as he is a more than worthy replacement for Tel.

So what of the UK? Well the Sunday papers might have carped on about Andrew Lloyd Webber ‘failing to weave his magic across Europe’ but that’s just a cynic’s point of view – for goodness sake, we were in the top five! Do these people know how hard that is to achieve these days, with so many more countries in the fray? Just because we didn’t win does not mean we shouldn’t be immensely proud of Jade Ewen, who gave a superb performance on the night and really deserved her success. Even if we hadn’t done so well she would still have every reason to be proud of that performance.

A note of caution however – now that the UK has restored its former glories, what are we going to do to keep them up? There’s no point just sending some old random tat to Oslo and hoping that the juries will save us from a fate worse than nul points. Now we have made this effort we have to do exactly the same thing every year – get a good songwriter, a good performer, and just go for it. Any takers…….?