AHEAD of tonight's Eurovision final fans are asking themselves if an act from the West of Europe can ever win the contest again.
Tonight's final here in Helsinki is dominated by at least 16 countries which would geographically lie on the Eastern part of Europe. Thursday's semi-finals became a graveyard for the hope of many of the Western countries if you include Belgium, Netherlands, Portugal and Malta. However, there were some also from the East who went down including Croatia, Albania and Poland. Despite all ten qualifiers in Thursday's semi coming from countries on the East side of Europe they did have a much larger involvement with 18 out of the 28 countries represented by them.
Tonight's final is a similar matter with 16 out of the 24 finalists coming from the Eastern Europe, which at first sight would not appear to bode well for the likes of Scooch and Ireland's Dervish, but nobody in Finland doubts that the Eastern Europeans have put forward some fantastic songs in comparison to what the West has done.
The one saving grace for the UK, Ireland and Germany is that all 42 countries including those who were eliminated in Thursday's semi-finals, will vote tonight. And if there was to be an anti-Eastern vote then Scooch might benefit from it.
My favourites are Hungary, Serbiia and Latvia, but with many suggesting the Ukraine drag queen could steal the show.
Serbian Marija Šerifović performs the winning song ''Molitva''.

Serbia's entry, Molitva (A Prayer), performed by 23-year-old Marija Šerifović, has won the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest in Helsinki, Finland, with a score of 268 points.

Second place was claimed by the Ukrainian drag queen Verka Serduchka, and third place went to the Russian entry of Serebro. Turkey took the fourth place with ''Shake It Up Shekerim''. Greece with Sarbel's ''Yassou Maria'' came 7th as the first Western-European country, while Ireland took only 5 points, finishing below France and the United Kingdom which shared the second-last place.

16 out of 24 finalists came from Eastern Europe, which caused many Western European countries to doubt the possibility that a country from Western Europe could ever win the final. Although France, the U.K., Spain and Germany are the big sponsors of the festival and are automatically selected for the final round, they all ended up at the bottom of the ranking. The fact that affiliated countries vote for each other (neighbourhood countries such as Scandinavian, Balkan  or ex-Soviet countries) is also an annually returning matter discussed in the media.

A record 42 countries entered the 52nd edition of the Eurovision Song Contest, but 18 didn't make it through the selection rounds. Serbia competed as an independent country for the first time, separate from Montenegro or Bosnia-Herzegovina, and immediately won the competition. This year's edition was the first to host new styles like jazz side by side with traditional ballads and rock. The winning song was also the first non-English song to win since the transsexual artist Dana International won for Israel in 1998.

The competition took place in Finland because last year the Finnish hard rock song 'Hard Rock Hallelujah' by Lordi won the competition. The song kicked off the final in Helsinki. Hosts were Jaana Pelkonen and Mikko Leppilampi

After the victory, many Serbs took to the streets with flags to celebrate the victory. Aleksandar Tijanic, director of RTS state television, was glad that Serbia made the news in a positive way: "I'm so glad it wasn't some war song. Hosting this event in Belgrade next year will mean we have finally crossed into normality." The country is still sometimes associated with the Yugoslav wars which led to the disintegration of Former Yugoslavia.