00:51. Well done Malta! Olivia Lewis won by a mile tonight with Vertigo. Just the qualifier and the final in Helsinki to go! I'm betting on this song to win Eurovision as soon as the bookies open the betting.

We watched Slovenia's EMA tonight (Saturday) and they chose the right song in their final too. The initial televote reduced the field of fourteen down to two, who sang again; an amazingly good, operatic singer, Alenka Gotar and a not very good singer, Eva Cerne, who happens to be the latest Slovenian Pop Idol. Bearing in mind that Slovenia has sent her Pop Idol winner to Eurovision for the last two years, the signs weren't good, but sanity prevailed and Alenka Gotar won the 'superfinal' vote with her 'popera' song, 'Cvet z Juga' (Flower of the South). We're presuming it will be performed in English in Helsinki and it should give Slovenia a hope of getting past the qualifer for the first time. They're one of the six countries who have failed to reach the final all three times since the qualifier was introduced in 2004.

Here's Alenka's operatic pop song on the Slovene news. Her song now becomes my third favourite of the seven songs picked so far for Helsinki, after tonight's Maltese winner and Moldova. We were a bit surprised that hunky Sebastian came 9th out of the 14 finalists in Slovenia tonight. He came second in our house. (Ten gay men. It was the song, honest. Let's have another look at Sebastian's website. Sigh.) To be honest, his song would have caused great concern had it won, as it bears a striking resemblance to 'Show Me Your Love', last year's Ukrainian entry for Eurovision by Tina Karol, and questions would have been asked. He did it without the skipping rope and the mini dress though, but he was wearing a nicely poufy gold shirt.

We also watched the videos of the songs in tonight's Polish and Estonian finals, then watched the results in each country. They were both disappointing. Old faves Vanilla Ninja and Ines both failed in Estonia, although their songs were weaker than their previous entries, so that wasn't such a big surprise. Although Vanilla Ninja have represented Switzerland, they've now failed three times in their attempts torepresent their home country. Estonia has gone for Gerli Padar, a woman who looks a lot like Pink, with a soft rocky/pop concoction called 'Partners In Crime' which may be favoured by the Eastern side of Europe in May, but does little for me.

Poland chose a song which looked like a load of drivel to start with, but then morphed into a sort of 'Christina Aguilera does swing' kind of song. Only not as good as that would actually be. It's still very poor overall. On the plus side, one of the lead artists is a black man, which is still a rare sight on the Eurovision stage, so good to see from an Eastern European country. On the down side, it involved rapping, which is rarely good.

There were thirteen televised national finals or heats tonight across Europe, including the first heat of Sweden's Melodifestivalen. We didn't watch them all, but we had a damn good go. I've been at my friends' house with the moveable satellite dish for six hours! Time for bed.

Labels: Eurovision 2007, national finals

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