(a.k.a. “I’ve got a stinking headache, anyone got any paracetamol?”)

The Georgian party is always a highlight of the ESC fortnight calendar, and this year’s was a blast once again. Held in the Henkel-Saal, the larger room in EuroClub, we were treated to various examples of Georgian culture – or, as the presenter for the night put it, “many exciting highlighters” (disappointingly, there was no Stabilo Boss gift pack) – from children doing traditional dance through to improbable sheet-based performance art (think Gurtskaya but with seeing).

The head of delegation also gave us a rendition of Lionel Richie’s “Endless Love”, although we thought it was going to be “Hello” considering how often she said it to the technicians while she was trying to get her keyboard to work.

The biggest highlighter of all, though, was the performances by the three Sophos of 2007, 2010 and 2011 vintage. Sopho #2 belted out “Shine” and her new single, Sopho #3 rocked the house with Eldrine, while Sopho #1 gave us her “Visionary Dream” (and a cover of “Chain Reaction”, for some reason) – then the three of them (we’re calling them “the 3Ss”) came together to perform some kind of modern rendition of a traditional Georgian tune. Very nice.

The singers from Austria, Ukraine and Iceland were in attendance again, joined this time by Malta, Finland (had another chat with him – what a genuinely lovely guy he is), Norway, Belarus and Greece – and probably several others I either didn’t see or didn’t recognise!

And once the presenter thanked everyone, including the dancing “squids” (sic), the floor was cleared and the room turned into a standard-issue dancefloor. Although the squids kept on dancing on-stage. Wasn’t it past their bedtime? Anyway, the Georgian wine flowed and flowed, although Bane the press conference moderator (who was on green room duty in Belgrade in 2008) preferred to line up the tequilas at the bar. He’s got a later start than us this morning, mind you.

All in all, then, a cracking night even if the DJ did play Jedward too often for my liking. The only disappointment: no weird food!