The 2016 Eurovision Song Contest: The Stand Outs.

Across 10 agonisingly long episodes I've laid out the main themes of the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest.

Tradition now dictates that I now spend some time talking about the acts that really stood out from this year's contest.

As always what makes those acts outstanding is the creative way in which they dealt with the main themes of the competition. Or that they introduced separate issues that were unique to them in a creative and fun way.

Belgium: This year they were represented by Laura Tesoro who was really a remarkable find.

In her face Laura Tesoro resembles the British actress Hayley Atwell. While I think the show was actually cancelled during the Song Contest Hayley Atwell is probably currently most famous for playing the lead in the US TV Show "Agent Carter." This is part of the Marvel comic book universe and really the sister show of "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D."

Despite a disappointing second season Agents of Shield has received some recognition at previous Song Contests. In the UK the current third season was broadcast in the Sunday night 9pm drama slot where it was in competition with shows like "War & Peace," "Deutschland 83" and "The Night Manager" to name but a few. As a result I have almost the entire second half of that season lined up on my DVR waiting to be watched.

However one of the main characters is Sky/Daisy who has short, bob-like dark hair and a distinctly Mediterranean skin tone. Her superpower is that she cause inanimate objects to resonate at a set frequency. In one sequence in the third season she's trying to get that frequency right and says; "Don't worry. I'm just tuning up." Her nose then starts to bleed dramatically.

Watching that sequence you can't help but wonder if the show is perhaps being a little bitchy about the musical talents, faux bisexuality and Cocaine habit of Demetria (Demi) Lovato. After all if they were that is exactly the sort of thing the Song Contest would approve of.

Much of the Marvel universe centres around the battle between the Avengers backed by Shield and Agent Carter's Strategic Scientific Reserve (SSR) and Hydra - a fascist organisation that worked with Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The big scandal in the latest edition of Captain America comic book released about the time of the Song Contest is that right at the end Captain America is seen pledging allegiance to Hydra suggesting that he was a Nazi all along.

Both Agents of Shield and Agent Carter spun off from the Avengers movies. These feature the character Black Widow being played by Scarlett Johansson.

Hayley Atwell first really rose to prominence in the historical mini-series "The Pillars of the Earth."

This was a Canadian, German and Hungarian co-production that was based on an novel by British author Ken Follet and featured a largely British cast despite being filmed in the UK, Austria and Hungary. That is the type of pan-European creative co-operation that the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) which stages the Song Contest gets very excited about. The TV monster "Game of Thrones" can trace its roots directly back to the Pillars of the Earth.

The Pillars of the Earth is centred around the pillars that hold up society during that period of history. So you've got rival Kings representing monarchy, and various Bishops and Monks representing politics and religion. Hayley Atwell's character Aliena represents the pillar of love or lust. As result there are numerous scenes when men and boys are shown lustfully spying on her as she gets undressed or swims in a lake.

Although it's nowhere near as salacious as Game of Thrones The Pillars of the Earth does feature a significant amount of violence and nudity. However whenever Hayley Atwell is in a scene where you would naturally see her breasts or her buttocks the shot is edited to you don't. Not only that the edit seems so abrupt and clumsy it sort of breaks your concentration taking you out of the story reminding that you're watching a TV show.

Over the course of 8 hour long episodes this does lead you to speculate whether despite a degree of nudity being essential to the story after being chosen for the role Hayley Atwell insisted on a no-nudity clause in her contract. That in turn leads you to speculate about whether she's actually a bit of a bitch and quite difficult to work with.

It turns out though that it was all just one extremely elaborate joke. In the final episode Hayley Atwell features in quite a hot and heavy sex scene where you get to see pretty much everything. Just as the sex scene is reaching it peak there's another abrupt edit with the action cutting to the immediate aftermath of a pre-pubescent girl having been raped.

It did seem to be the director having a laugh at his audience by going; "Dirty B*ggers!" That is exactly the sort of joke that goes down rather well with the Song Contest crowd.

With The Pillars of the Earth actually starting to come up on the fringes of particularly European Union (EU) meetings I did write about this in detail closer to the time in a post entitled; "Hayley Atwell's Boobs." By a magnitude of about a thousand that post was the most read thing I have ever written on this blog.

That obviously sort of contributes to the discussion about the way that in societies which have quite prudish attitudes to sex and nudity any mention of the subject causes this sort of repressed excitement. After all rather than reading a post entitled Hayley Atwell's Boobs everyone could have used their Internet connection to instead watch a mind boggling array of pornographic videos including the sequences from The Pillars of the Earth I was talking about.

In terms of appearance the big difference between Laura Tesoro and Hayley Atwell is that Laura Tesoro is ginger-haired.

The big movie at the 2016 Oscars was of course "The Revenant." As I explained at the time this was a metaphor for the efforts to combat climate change which unlike the movie ended in failure at the COP21 Summit in Paris, France in December 2015. The movie The Revenant was heavily influenced by a French TV Show "Les Revenants (The Returned)."

Two of the central characters in Les Revenants are ginger-haired twin sisters. One is killed in a traffic accident to return as a zombie while the other is allowed to grow up and mature as a normal young woman. At the end of the first season of Les Revenants the zombies start to emerge as a separate tribe apart from the humans.

This poses lots of questions about tribalism and otherness that are at the heart of most wars and racism - particularly the Nazi Holocaust. During this period of the story the ginger-haired zombie emerges as the most prominent - almost the leader of the tribe.

In fact I seem to remember joking at the time that if the Nazi Holocaust had only killed ginger-haired people no-one would have minded that much. A ginger-haired ex-girlfriend may have been involved.

The second season of Les Revenants centres around the French town where it is set being flooded by heavy rains and taken over by the army. In the weeks following the Song Contest the weather itself seems to have been trying to recreate scenes from the show.

With her very curly hair and dare we say annoying demeanour Laura Tesoro resembled Fleur East who was a contestant on the 2014 series of the X-Factor in the UK.

Fleur East's big sob-story in the competition that for years she'd been trying everything to break into the music industry. The X-Factor was her last chance and if she didn't do well she would be forced to quit. After coming second she released her first album "Love, Sax and Flashbacks" prompting everyone to go; "Are we sure the music industry isn't better off without X-Factor."

Obviously if the UK were to send someone like Rihanna, Coldplay, The Rolling Stones or The Who to represent them at Eurovision it would be massive overkill and not really fair on the other contestants. However for the UK to say that an artist of the calibre of Fleur East is too good for Eurovision can only be viewed as an insult.

So even before they'd got onto their main points the Belgian Song Contest entry brought all this to the table. In case anyone wanted to discuss it while sticking to the informal; "You may only talk about Eurovision"  rule.

The big controversy about Fleur East's X-Factor final performance is that she performed the Bruno Mars song "Uptown Funk" and then released it as a single on iTunes. This was done several weeks before Bruno Mars released the single forcing his record company to bring forward the release. Neither Fleur East nor X-Factor won themselves any friends that week.

The half-time show of the 2016 Super Bowl was of course performed by the British band Coldplay.

However the bit everyone seems to remember was that they invited Beyonce to perform her single "Formation" which was intended as a show of support for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and Huey Newton's Black Panther Party. As Beyonce abandoned her fringe, extremist nonsense and was welcomed back into the mainstream by Coldplay and Bruno Mars Uptown Funk was played to lighten the mood.

As such Belgium didn't so much nod at this years trend of "The Black Music" they utterly dominated it by invoking the Super Bowl half-time show. The song itself was basically every Bruno Mars song ever smashed together into a three minute song.

The title of the song was "What's the Pressure."

In August 2015 an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist cell based in the Molenbeek district of the Belgian capital Brussels carried out a failed terror attack on a Thalys train travelling through Belgium between the Netherlands and France.

In November 2015 an ISIL terrorist cell based in the Molenbeek district of the Belgian capital Brussels carried out a terrorist attacks against multiple locations in the French capital Paris. They murdered 130 civilians.

In March 2016 an ISIL terrorist cell based in the Molenbeek district of the Belgian capital Brussels carried out a terrorist attacks against the Zaventam Airport and the Brussels underground rail (Metro) system. They murdered 35 people.

As such I think the question posed by the Belgian entry this year was rather rhetorical.

Featuring lyrics like; "I see massive walls weighing down the people all around" and "And I will try to stand my ground // Won’t be bound" the song sounded like a plea for ethnic and religious harmony in defiance of the rhetoric of people like Donald Trump with his calls to ban Muslims from the US and build that wall against illegal immigration.

However the singer Laura Tesoro is only 19 years old and in her performance seems much younger and immature. Against the backdrop of all the terrorist attacks and the general cheesiness of the entire package this seemed to be done in mockery of the European left who argue that you can't say anything critical of Islamist terrorists because it is Islamaphobic. At the same time these leftists seem happy to blame everything on the Jews and the Zionist conspiracy.

A prime example of this would be Belgium's response to the Paris Massacres. I would have liked to see the Belgians respond to that in the same way the Americans responded to the Boston Marathon bombings. They locked down the entire Watertown suburb of Boston and then conducted house-to-house searches until their suspect had been apprehended.

I really think that the Belgians should have done the same thing in Molenbeek. Rather then searching each house for contraband what they should have done is clearly identified every single person living in every address in the suburb. Obviously if they are wanted for connections to ISIL or associated groups they would immediately be taken into custody.

However the Belgian liberals rejected this idea on the grounds it was Islamaphobic. They argued that it would tip the residents into terrorism or cause them to join ISIL in Iraq and Syria. I think that argument is rather moot because if Molenbeek residents did then decide to engage in terrorism the security services would already know who they are and be able to quickly take them into custody. If they decided to travel to Syria or Iraq it would hardly be a great loss to Belgian society.

During the Song Contest Belgium announced that they would be starting airstrikes against ISIL in Syria eliminating the threat of any Molenbeek residents who had travelled there. The Belgians authorised these strikes under United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2249 (2015). This seemed done in mockery of the French.

All military action against ISIL anywhere in the World is authorised under UNSC Resolution 2170 (2014). As a Chapter 7 resolution this not only allows nations to fight ISIL it actually obligates them to do everything in their power to defeat them.

Following the Paris Massacres France introduced 2249 (2015). This has no legal validity precisely because it undermines the authority of 2170 (2014) by suggesting that nations can opt out of their Chapter 7 obligations if they find defeat ISIL too Islamaphobic or otherwise upsets their liberal sensibilities.

However with its domination of the theme of "The Black Music" Belgium's main target of mockery was US President Barack Obama.

He was being portrayed as the immature, self-absorbed, stage school brat who really can't understand what the pressure is and why urgent action is required.


Despite the brilliance of Belgium's entry this year I think that as a sign of friendship everyone started them off at minus 12 points in the voting.

After all understanding the pressure no-one was going to force Belgium to provide security for the 2017 contest.

17:25 on 6/6/16 (UK date).