NEWS

Sakis rocks TV viewers, stirs bishop

Greece’s much-hyped entry in the Eurovision song contest may have come third, but Greeks proved champions in their collective effort to support pop heartthrob Sakis Rouvas in Saturday’s extravaganza in Istanbul. A record 5 million people, or 86 percent of those whose TV sets were on, watched at least 1 minute of the show on state channel NET, according to the ratings. Overall, after TV channels cultivated the expectation that Rouvas would win, 34.2 percent of people in Greece watched the show, or 75.5 percent of those who had their TV sets on. Last year, the figures were 21.5 percent and 58.9 percent, respectively. Rouvas, flanked by two dancers who stripped down to glossy bikinis, came third with 252 points, behind Ukraine (280 points) and Serbia-Montenegro (263 points). Offering his own belated publicity, a bishop yesterday declared Rouvas’s «Shake It» a «porno-song» and attacked the singer, composer and writer of the lyrics. Bishop Ambrosios of Kalavryta translated the English lyrics into Greek and said he took offense at the singer’s offer to give up his life for a night with the object of his desire.

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