Italy were crowned winners of The Eurovision song contest 2021 tonight after one of the most extraordinary public votes in recent years.

One of the pre show bookies favourites,  Maneskin “Zitti e buoni” held off a strong challenge from another of the pre show contenders Barbara Pravi ‘Voila!’ who represented France.

At the other end of the leaderboard, many were stunned as the early  public vote results  were announced  and  four countries failed to score with United Kingdom, Germany,  Spain and hosts The Netherlands all suffering the ubiquitous “Null points” from the televote.