Thank heavens there are some of the British public who have their heads screwed on and can recognise a half-decent song. I only watched about ten minutes of the main show, and the results show of this weekends annual effort to pick the British entry to Eurovision, and that was enough.

At one point, John Barrowman came out with the comment that ballads didn’t do very well in Eurovision – you only need to listen to what won for Ireland over a number of years – all big ballads… Based on their voting it is pretty clear what the judges thought would be good – cheesy, gimmicky songs – possibly true, you only need look back a couple of years to Lordi to confirm that, but what it also needs is a half decent song to go along with the gimmick. The gimmick to some extent is there to make your act stand out from the other forty odd in the competition – but once you’ve got that reminder it needs to be a decent song. To my mind there is a common misconception of what is a “Eurovision Song”, but when you look at the reality, that’s not correct. For example following on from Lordi there was a noticeable increase in rock numbers the next year – not that they did overly well. Cheesy europop has won at times, but other years it’s totally the opposite. The trick is producing a song that is memorable for the right reasons, and of course one that can rise above the political voting.

On Saturday, and from the pre-publicity, it was pretty clear who everybody was pushing as our act. However Michelle Gayle’s seemed to be all gimmick and no song – they tried that last year, and look what happened…

True, I don’t think this Andy Abraham’s effort is stand out enough get through the political voting, but at least the public voted for a decent song…