Well, that's no fun, Ireland's turkey has been knocked out at the heats stage of the Eurovision Song Contest, meaning neither Ireland nor Dustin The Turkey will appear at the main Contest on Saturday night. Which is a shame. Though, it has to be said, while the concept of entering a wise cracking puppet turkey into Europe's big song competition was amusing, his song was pretty awful.
In a pre-Eurovision poll conducted by the BBC, Sweden came out top by quite a long way – their entrant, Charlotte Perrelli, has already had one Eurovision win, back in 1999, and could win again with new song 'Hero' if the Beeb's pan-European poll is to be believed. Ukraine, Switzerland, host nation Serbia and Russia were the next most popular entrants in the pre-Contest poll, the UK entry – Andy Abrahams' 'Even If', came so low down, I didn't get that far down the list. If Perrelli was to win on Saturday night she'd be the second singer to have two wins in the Contest – Ireland's Johnny Logan won in both 1980 and 1987.
There are two semi-final heats this week (the second tonight) – though we here in the UK, of course, don't have to bother with such tedious early stage shenanigans, us having a guaranteed place in the final as a result of us paying for the whole thing. France, Germany and Spain likewise – and last year's winners are also guaranteed a spot in the final. A viewer vote decides which of the 38 countries competing in the semis will get through to Saturday's final, though a jury of pundits will also get to put one artist from each heat through in addition to those selected by the viewers, seemingly in a bid to ensure the notoriously political Eurovision voting doesn't leave one bit of the continent particularly badly represented on Saturday night. Which countries compete and get to vote in each of the two heats have also been strategically organised so to reduce the impact of viewers in any one country automatically voting for their neighbours.
The voting at the final on Saturday, however, will be left to viewers all across Europe, as normal. It will air on BBC1 from 8pm.