Julia Alexandratou back in the news

During the day I'll sometimes watch the news in Greek on NET at noon, but we usually get our main fix of Greek news on the Star channel, simply because it comes on after Smallville. It is, frankly, shamelessly tabloid, and probably the kind of news we wouldn't give the time of day to - if we could actually understand it.

When we first arrived in Crete there was acres and acres of coverage devoted to the Miss Greece contest, and to one contestant in particular - Julia Alexandratou. This blonde bombshell seems to be Greece's equivalent of Jordan. We didn't quite understand what had happened, but whatever it was, it was an excuse for the editors of the Star news bulletin to run the same shots of her over and over again. Mostly, it must be said, of close-ups of her breasts bouncing in slow motion as she walked down the stairs during the swimsuit section of the beauty pageant - plus one other clip.

Then Eurovision came along and all that was swept aside.

So, imagine our delight last week when recovered from Eurovison fervour, Star news had put Julia back centre-stage. We think she has a new single out. Or has just posed topless somewhere. Or the news editors got bored and just wanted to replay the shots of her breasts.

In any case, the most important thing was that they could once again run 'that other clip'.

Apparently the story behind the Miss Greece contest is that she turned up as the odds-on favourite, sleepwalked her way through the show as if the result was a foregone conclusion, and then was caught on camera making the most hideous grimace when she didn't win. That grimace must be the thing I have seen more than anything else since we arrived in Greece. Star love showing it in all the frame-by-frame glory they can muster. The pictures that accompany every news report about her are basically bounce-bounce-bounce ggggrrrriiiimmmmaaaaccccceeeee bounce-bounce-bounce.

The animated gif below doesn't really do it justice, but I hope you'll get the general idea.