| Sunday,
December 21, 2008 | ||
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  IN an interview with evil scaremongering British rag, The Daily Mail, Lord Andrew of Lloyd Webber has announced that he and his team have finalised the six-strong shortlist of the acts going forward to Your Country Needs You, which gets underway on Saturday nights on BBC1 in January. Although no names have been officially made public yet, the Lord sayeth that he hath: "A really talented close harmony group, two wonderful-looking black guys, a couple of really good girl singers and sweet girl twins from Sheffield." The show begins on Janury 3 with an introduction to the competition, the audition phases and Lloydy's trip to Moscow to meet Mr Putin. Presumably, the final six will be introduced to the public at the end of the show before the eliminations get underway. As the weeks progress, the acts will take part in Contest-related tasks (perhaps one week it will be 'Approaching Heads of Delegations in Their Hotel Rooms with Envelopes Full of Cash in Exchange for Douzes'), while Lord Andy gets busy in his Churchillian bunker with the songwriting task ahead, assisted by his stern-faced stenographer, Miss Frobisher. It all sounds like jolly good tongue-in-cheek fun - and guaranteed to be hated by 'proper' fans in internet forums far and wide. |
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    CREDIT Crunching isn't just affecting first-time house buyers. The global financial crisis means that Latvia and San Marino are ducking out of the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest. Although both nations expressed a keen interest in joining in with all the fun in Moscow, the cost of participating in the event would, their nation's broadcasting-related accountants have decided, would be better ploughed elsewhere. Lithuania may just be following their example. We'll keep you posted. |
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  FIRST of all, Johnny Logan was supposed to be making a triumphant comeback. Then, Eoghan Quigg from off of The X Factor made public his desire to represent Eire at Eurovision. But now, it has been confirmed, RTE and Ireland will be having a multi-act national final in February/March next year. Prior to the official announcement, there was some highly entertaining posts on certain internet forums as various Irish-based fans claimed to have an "exclusive" from their "contacts" at RTE just cooling on the widowsill, which they refused to go public on in case it stopped the flow of traffic to their respective websites. Whoops Dragovic couldn't even hope to be that important in the Eurovision world. All we'll say is, most of the tips these folks with contacts were sitting on turned out to be rather blunt. |
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  THE full line-up of Melodifestivalen 2009 has been revealed, as indeed has the cities each act will perform in - and with which song. Old favourites such as BWO and Shirley Clamp are back in the mix, but melodi-executivalen Christer Bjorkman has hinted that a broader variety of tunes will be on display in '09 and that it could be a tighter race than usual. Sounds like something of a schlager embargo. Is that a schlambargo? Intriguingly, Maria Haukass Storeng, Norway's top-five finisher in Belgrade, is now trying to represent Sweden in a duet with Anna Sahlene, better known as Estonia's 2002 representative, when she went by just her surname and got just a smany points as Jessica Garlick. Here's the full list of who's doing what and where: |
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  OVER on Spanish telly's official website, you'll find the 455 shortlisted (yes, that's right SHORTlisted) songs entered in to the national final via MySpace. The same system which, of course, resulted in Baila El Chiki Chiki in Belgrade. Sorted in to categories, each surfer is entitled to 20 votes - but a maximum of five per artist - each day. At midnight, Spanish time, on January 20, the vote grinds to a halt, numbers are totted up and the five most popular acts from each category will go forward to the next stage. Whatever that may be. More than 100,000 votes are reported to have been cast so far, and despite some technical hitches, it all seems to be going according to plan. Bravo. |
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  EIGHTEEN songs were scheduled to take part in the Norwegian heats for 2009, but an unexpected submission of quality songs led the song-picking types at NRK to increase the number of tunes to 21. These will now be split into three heats of seven songs, leading up to the grand final in Oslo's Spektrum on February 21. No artists announced yet, but rumours suggest the line-up includes Wencke Myrhe, the Norwegian lass who shimmied her way into sixth place, with loads of votes from the UK, at the Albert Hall in 1968. |