I liked the poles. I don't mean the Poles, who were pouting, and gyrating, and even churning imaginary milk and washing imaginary clothes, while singing a very chirpy song. I didn't mind the Poles, though I couldn't help thinking that this was the clean bit from a new erotic musical. But what I really liked was the Tolmachevy Sisters' poles. These weren't poles to slither round in a G-string. These were poles as bayonets. The poles said: we know you're going to boo us, and we're ready to fight back.
I liked the ponytails, too. At first, as the Russian twins sang back to back, there was just one. And then, as they sprang apart, there were two. It was like a country in a federation that had suddenly split in two. No wonder Ukraine's Maria Yaremchuk sang "Tick-tock, can you hear me go tick tock?". The Tolmachevy sisters kept smiling, but you couldn't help worrying about her heart when they sang, "maybe there's a day you'll be mine".
The Swede wasn't bad, though she wasn't half as good as the Swedes in 1974 whose victory had my Swedish mother treating us all to R White's lemonade. But this year's winner wasn't a pretty blonde. This year's winner, of a song contest watched by hundreds of millions, was someone in a dress with a beard.
When Conchita Wurst won, with a song that everyone said was like a James Bond anthem, it seemed, on Twitter at least, like an outbreak of world peace. The victory, said Wurst, was "dedicated to everybody who believes in a world of peace and freedom. We are," she added, "unstoppable." She had tears in her eyes as she spoke, and many of us watching did, too.
Whatever else you can say of a man who dresses like a woman and keeps the beard, you can't say she hasn't got courage. Wurst spoke for all the people who feel cut out of the mainstream, and who have to fight to get their voices heard.
Actually, she didn't quite speak for all of them. She didn't, for example, speak for the person from the Sunday People who sent out a tweet saying: "This 'She' nonsense … She's a bloke."
The tweet caused an outcry, and was later deleted, but it summed up what many people thought. It may well have summed up what Ukip's leader, Nigel Farage, thought. He said on a radio phone-in that he absolutely hated Eurovision, and thought Britain would never win because of European "prejudice".
For many people in this country, Eurovision is a version of Europe. It's a world where an awful lot of money gets wasted on an awful lot of frivolous things. It's a world where you can't call things what you used to call them, and where politicians claiming staffing allowances of £220,000 spend time regulating the shape of carrots.
It's the kind of world, in fact, glimpsed in a book that came out last year. The book is called Mr and Mrs MEP and their Helpers. The book shows Mr and Mrs MEP being picked up in a limo. When Mr MEP wants to send a letter, an assistant brings him an envelope. The assistant gives it to a messenger, who gives it to the postman. It takes, in other words, four people to send one letter. The book, by the way, isn't a satire. It's a colouring book for children issued by the EU.
We need to be part of Europe. Of course we need to be part of Europe. We need it for trade and business, if nothing else. But most of us don't have a clue what the EU actually does. Nine out of 10 of us can't name our MEP. We don't know if they're actually doing any work. And if they can't be bothered to tell us, how would be know?
It isn't, I'm afraid, the drag queens of the world who are "unstoppable". It's all the people who are planning to vote for the joke politicians fielded by Ukip, whose names they don't know, just because they're feeling a bit fed up. They're doing it because no one has made a good case for Europe. Someone has to make a good case for Europe. Someone, that is, other than Nick Clegg.
We can't say we weren't warned. Even Wurst sang that we "were warned". Let's just hope that warning didn't come too late.
