We may have been mocking poor Sebel Cəfərova and her strangled mangling of Euphoria from the Azeri process, but a couple of you fine folks have pointed in the direction of an even more frightening event from last year's selection tournament in Baku that managed to escape our attention.
I won't spoil the fun by giving anything away, but do stick with it to the end, because it just keeps giving - and the reaction of the hostess is particularly entertaining. Big ups to Roger Fry and Phil Colclough for tipping me the wink to this rare jewel.
Now that they've finally won the thing, the Azerbaijani's are opening up their selection process to one and all. Over a period of some months, a good 80 acts are singing their favourite Eurovision songs in the hope of being selected for a mammoth final some time in the distant future.
We're a couple of weeks into the process, and the gems are starting to fly. Witness the pain of this poor lass, who starts out badly and digs herself into a bigger pit of pain as she goes on.
And to think, they've already been through a pretty harsh audition process to get this far! This, dear readers, is a bit special.
Ukraine clearly had Nan envy after last year's Russian Granny extravaganza, and decided to go a bit more serious and traditional. But somehow it ditched the charm and came over as a bit cold and calculating. But it's still a jolly little could of minutes of folk-flavoured fun.
Perhaps surprisingly, this got beaten by a howling ballad that sounded a bit like The Lion King being chucked down a stairwell in an echoey car park.
The Ukrainian national final takes place tomorrow morning at the ungodly hour of 9:50am UK time, and of the songs taking part, there are very few that would encourage me to rouse from my slumber that early in the day.
Everywhere you look it's mawkish lady ballad followed by slightly bluesy shouty lady, and it's probably worth hanging on in there with your lay in an get up just in time for the results.
However, there was just one song among them that looks like being a cheerful aside, by two cheeky chappies who clearly can't dance for treacle. The song's pretty poor, but at least it's lively, and the whole thing becomes worthwhile bang on the two minute mark when the shaggy haired lad clearly looses his mind.
Such a shame they released a version of the song on the internet waaay to early and it'll be instantly disqualified if they win. Although they won't.
Tonight's final of the 51st Festivali i Këngës in Albania offers up the usual tableau of histrionic balladeers in frightening frocks, growly voiced men in blue suits and the fabulous Dr Flori, but there's one particular song that's really caught my eye, and it could be the dark horse to watch out for.
Adrian and Bledar may not be the prettiest of lads, but there's something epic about this sombre epic that shows flashes of dark-hearted folk with some massive orchestral flourishes to the choruses.
It won't be a popular choice among the more hardened FiK fans among you, but I really feel that if selected, this could do surprisingly good business in Malmo next May. ***STOP PRESS***
The pre-Christmas finals continue apace this weekend, and the Lithuanians choose their pick for Malmo tonight. And as much as I hope that Miss Sheep and her mates make it though, I've got a sneaking regard for this over expressive little chap. He might over egg his presentation a tad, but there's something curiously endearing about the whole affair. The backing track has got a gently chunky long raincoat jangle pop feel about it, and his vocal melody never quite goes where you predict.
You know how sometimes in a Eurovision performance the song starts off with some ill-advised little staging concept, but after about a verse and a half the act break ranks and carry on with a regulation two-step dance routine.
Well someone clearly forgot to tell Linas Adomaitis and his mob the rules. Car crash is perhaps slightly apt for this one.
Sorry, what's that you're saying?...it made it to the Lithuanian final you say? Strewth!
We have our first guaranteed entry for Eurovision 2013 (Belarus chose their winner last week, but we know how unlikely that is to go unchanged), and it comes from a most unlikely source - a Salvation Army band!
Now it's as yet unclear how many of this mob are actually fully paid up members of the old Sally Ann - indeed one old boy in his 90s looked as though he may not even make it through the song, let alone get onto the stage in Malmo - but what we do know is that it's a catchy, likable Christmas Market kind of pop rock tune with a smashing optimistic chorus.
It may be glued to a gimmick, but unlikely the dreary Do The Monkey from the same final, it's a sweet tune that could get a half decent result in Sweden, despite the funny outfits!
So it was not to be. What could have been the greatest ever moment in Eurovision history was cast aside because two pensioner judges couldn't pick the joy out of the racket. A single point more from the juries and it would have made the superfinal - and then who knows what would have happened.
It was a vain hope for we punk-leaning Eurovisionists, but for a brief moment there we thought it was going to happen. From the first audio-only YouTube clip, we were hooked. Surely they couldn't look anywhere as near as the sounded. And then this clip from Estonian breakfast TV crept onto the web...
Oh my days, we thought. This might just get out of its semi-final.
Then came the official video. No one had any idea what was happening, but it looked fantastically brain bamboozling. We likely more and more and more...
Then, when we finally got to see them play in front of people in the semi-final in the video at the top of this page, we wept real tears of joy. Finally a song by a band that I'd actually go and see in real life might actually get to Eurovision. They're in the final. It couldn't happen... could it?
It's going to do it. It's really going to do it! But despite coming an easy second in the televote, and guaranteeing it a slot in a superfinal it would have surely walked, the churlishness of two grandparents cost Europe possibly its greatest ever delight. Well done ETV, I'm sure your nice fresh-faced ballad lass will battle you to a nice lower mid-table position in its semi-final, and we'll all be struggling to remember who she was this time next year.
