The Eurovision Song Contest is, apparently, watched by some 125m people. Including yours truly. 

After Saturday night’s spectacular spectacle, here are my key learnings following the fab-u-lous triumph of Austrian drag act Conchita Wurst.

It occurred to me that UK print firms looking to export or do business on the continent could build an alternative export strategy by studying the voting patterns at this event. It says a lot about national characteristics.

Forget all those countries that indulge in tedious, back-scratching, block voting.

Forget Poland, which gave the UK nil points and worse, nil points for Wurst.

Instead, surely the way forward is to focus on those countries that had the national joie de vivre to give top marks to the bearded wonder.

According to Eurovision’s official stats, these countries gave Austria 12 points:  Belgium, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and of course us here in the UK.

Which nicely proves my point.

So there we have it. Forget language barriers, forget market size and GDP calculations, and boring practicalities such as distance.

The Eurovision scale is the way forward in business. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before the Freakonomics chaps write a book about it.