There’s always a lot of pressure when you’re the home entry. You country won the previous year, the winners got the best treatment a country has to offer, and then the attention turns to hosting the thing. You get to sing in front of a home crowd, which maybe makes up for no trip to somewhere exotic or expensive. Deep down the TV company doesn’t want you to win. So what do you do? Do you go out to win, or just ‘throw’ the performance and finish a respectable top 10? As long as you’re not an Austrian entry, you’ll probably do OK. Today’s birthday girl Hanna Päkarinen only finished 17th, perhaps because she didn’t want to win anyway. Hanna is 35 today.
Hyvää syntymäpäivää, Hannah!