UK did even worse at Eurovision than originally thought

Michael Rice came bottom of the kitsch song contest in Tel Aviv, Israel, with his song “Bigger Than Us,” but organizers heaped further humiliation on Britain after revising a number of scores.The changes pushed the UK further below the rest of the board — wiping away nearly a third of the points they picked up on the night.Fortunately, the Netherlands’ winner Duncan Laurence was unaffected.The revision resulted from an error following the dismissal of the Belarussian jury, which had broken the rules by revealing their votes from the first semi-final. An aggregated result was substituted for the judges from Belarus, but human error led to a miscalculation, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) said.”The EBU and its partners digame and Ernst & Young deeply regret that this error was not identified earlier and will review the processes and controls in place to prevent this from happening again,” they said in a statement.The UK is accustomed to dire performances at Eurovision, having finished in the bottom five in seven of the last 12 contests.But its embarrassment in Tel Aviv was even worse than usual — Britain hadn’t claimed last place since 2010.The contest was beset by controversy due to it being hosted in Israel. Laurence’s win means it will head to the Netherlands next year.