COUPLE number four take to the floor – and it's Azerbaijan's biggest celebrity, insurance company public relations manager Anna Sazhina, looking like the Bride of Frankenstein.

Two minutes of prancing around the stage to Phantom of the Opera with her dance partner and boyfriend Eldar Dzhafarov, before he pulls out an engagement ring and goes down on one knee.

"I'm just throwing up everywhere. Hang on. I'll speak to you again in a minute," says commentator Len Goodman in the first of many lessons in the art of diplomacy during the evening from the Strictly Come Dancing head judge.

It's BBC1's live Saturday night extravaganza Eurovision Dance Contest, where 14 nations sent a professional dancer and an "amateur celeb" partner to Glasgow to cha-cha-cha their way to glory.

But wait. Would you Azerbaijan it? Our Anna turns out to be not merely a humble public relations spin doctor but a competition ballroom dancer by night.

And a closer inspection of the other couples reveals how seriously our wacky European cousins are taking it all.

There's a Russian Olympic ice-skating champion, a Ukrainian Olympic gymnast, two professional Aussie dancers representing Greece.

And, for the UK, PC Beth Green from The Bill, actress Louisa Lytton who was voted off Strictly Come Dancing

in 2006 before the semi-finals, teaming up, once more, with Italian stallion Vincent Simone.

The couple, pictured right, didn't win (no, really?) but the show ticked all the Eurovision boxes – the political voting; the dolled-up eastern European televote announcers reading out the scores by candlelight and completely missing host Graham Norton's beautiful sarcasm; Norton fumbling his way through all of three lines of French translation during the entire 135 minutes when France weren't even competing; a Russian singer sounding like an angry man at a bus stop; a mad bloke from Ukraine with a comedy moustache and Rab C Nesbitt-style comb-over hairstyle.

And, to top it all, Goodman and fellow Strictly judge Craig Revel Horwood's fabulous jingoistic commentary, which made Terry Wogan look like Henry Kissinger for services to global harmony.

"Look at the state of them. They look like death row," Goodman said as the judging panel gave the UK low marks.

Revel Horwood's analysis of Russia's routine: "They said if this dance had a name they would call it Shout for the Soul. I would say shout for the vodka."

Goodman's view: "Too much posing and posturing, then he got his silly shirt coming off his shoulder, with his black greasy oily hair."

Then he turned on the Hellenic Aussies: "Never trust a man with a sequined tattoo, that's what I say."

And finally: "Every waiter in Britain is a Pole, and they are giving us just one point."

Surely, there's a Nobel Peace Prize somewhere down the line for this pair – or, better still, Wogan's job on the Eurovision Song Contest.