Estonia 2018 – Elina Netšajeva – La Forza (rehearsal excerpt)

(Click here for a glimpse into the future...)

First up I'll warn you that there's spoilers involved in this clip, so if you don't want to view the news, turn away now. 

Sill here? Good. So Estonia have been having their first Eesti Laul rehearsals over the last day or so, and the occasional shot of operatic Elina's unwieldy frock have been sneaking out of the Suurhall. But now we have this – shoddily shot phone-taken clip of the big reveal that is still both wow-making and ludicrous in equal measure.

Indeed, there have been two main tropes of the old frocky horror in Eurovision qualifiers over the last few years - the big massive sprawl where you stand on a plinth in a sea of fabric, and the  projecto-dress, where all manner of lightshows and beamed onto your immediate surrounds. So why nobody ever thought to combine the two terrible ideas into one massive horrible whole is beyond me. And we never expected it to come from the usually more creative Estonians, either. It's like they've been reading the South East European playbook or something.

Of course, this will do very well. Faux operatic tunes are traditionally lions in qualifying - but we must also remember that they frequently fall in the finals, no matter how well they're sung, or ill-advised their garb is. Sure, it would mix things up a bit on that Tuesday night in May, but would it even see the Saturday once folk have got over the novelty of this enormous garment?

I've got Barbara Dex on speed dial, just in case, mind.