San Marino 2018 - Gianluigi Colucci & Aurora Lecis

(Click here for your first slice of S&M…)

So while we've been having folks entering the Sanmarinese process from corners of the globe so far flung that even the people who make the maps have to go back and check where they are, the people from their local telly have been bemoaning the fact that there have been precious few home-based entries, claiming indeed that nobody had actually entered at one point. Well that isn't strictly true - there have been two.

The first sees the unconventionally handsome Gianluigi Colucci getting all moody under his floppy, curly fringe in a pretty serviceable mid tempo offering. It's even got an actual video and everything. (Although it looked like his niece doing a media studies course in whatever the local equivalent of sixth form is, but we shouldn't quibble, as it still puts it in the top three per cent of entries as far as presentation goes.) Indeed, this wouldn't look out of place something like a Swiss or Slovenian televised qualifier (even if it would reap the usual results), so surely this has to be considered for the latter stages at least.

(And here for your second…)

The second and final local entry comes from a lass called Aurora Lecis. She might be offering the now over familiar self-recorded somewhere around the house style of video presentation, but she's got a smashing voice, and certainly knows how to deliver a song. Quite how this would translate when given a microphone on a big stage in front of a load of people we can't yet tell, but surely she should be given a pop at the golden ticket as well, just to be sure.

In a country with just about enough singers to fill a decent sized phonebox, surely they should give pretty much any home runners who can hold a tune a chance to represent them on the big Lisbon stage. It's great offering all these people from Haiti and the Philippines and Cameroon the opportunity - especially as they've been delivering the better tasting performances up to now – but surely San Marino should foremost be nurturing the local talent if they want to have a long and fruitful future in this contest. Because to be fair, we're not sure that Valentina has got too many left in her.

***STOP PRESS***
Turns out that someone may be telling porkies, as rumour has it that one of this pair is actually from Italy proper, and sings in a showband. How could they?!