Switzerland 2016 - Franck Renand - Cinderella Dance Tonight

(Click here, watch, then feel a bit dirty afterwards...)

So the Swiss have finally closed their doors to the bedroom composers of the planet, and have allowed us all to vote on the wonders they have unearthed (albeit in a somewhat overcomplicated system that'll turn all but the most dilligent mums and managers away by the fifth hurdle). But we couldn't leave them to it without giving you one last wonder.

The more eagle-eyed regulars among you may remember Frenchman Franck here. He was the slightly worrying geezer last season who spent much of his video sat at a piano while stripped to the waste with 'That's Enough!' inked across his chest in magic marker. Yeah him.

Well, he's upped him game. This year you can watch open-mouthed as he stalks his way around a posh hotel, bothering chambermaids, furtively filming violinists, and vicariously viewing other people having fun while appearing so facially disengaged that you'll be concerned he'll be turning upmon some local news programme somewhere after doing a very bad thing.

I'm sure Franck's a decent sort of chap in real life, but his videos make him look absolutely terrifying!  Right then, bring on Belarus and the Albanians!

Switzerland 2016 - Tommy King - Daddy's Sugar Girl

(Click here to see the king in action...)

The comedy Swiss japes continue unabated. They may have finally closed submissions, but there's still plenty of unmined joys to drag out. Take Tommy here. He's one of Switzerland's most popular Elvis impersonators. Sadly though, on this outing he comes over more like a Butlins Shakin' Stevens trib. Prepare yourself for some fabulously literal visual interpretations of the lyric throughout superbly cringeworthy video - one suspects that the director has something of a hair fetish...

Enjoy!

Switzerland 2016 - Your Favourite Shit - #Shakethatdown

(Click here to hear a surefire number two...)

Oh boy, I think you're going to like this one.  The Swiss have finally closed their doors to the planet's musical freakazoids and their terrible wares - none of who stand a chance of even getting anywhere near that big shiny stage in a couple of months. But we thought it would be remiss of us not to share with you the best of the last batch of loons and hools from the bottom of the pile.

Take this high concept little singalong. In it, a chirpy turd tours Europe, making friends with the locals, and getting them to sing along with him as goes along his way. Quite what the good folks of Turkey, Germany and Azerbaijan, among many others, will think of their hallowed flags being turned into dancing piles of doo doo we don't know. But we do know that you won't be able to get this blasted thing out of your head all night once you've heard it.

That in itself makes it a far better song than 97% of the other applicants. Yes, they're that collectively bad!

Switzerland 2016 - Ra5taman - Smoke Weed To This Beat

(Click here and immediately have a craving for biscuits...)

The Swiss song pull down criteria are getting more and more complicated by the day. So apparantly we can't have the Rectum Raiders or any song that had an old date on their YouTube byline, but we can have Eric Saade and this? (Can't even acknowledgement of doing the actions listed in this song get you jailed in many of the countries of Eurovisionia?)

What a curious old state of affairs!

Switzerland 2016 - Rectum Raiders - Dog Life

(Click here if you want to be our dog...)

Enjoy this while you can, because I doubt it'll be up for long...

For those fainthearted enough not to risk a listen, this is a dirty slice of punk 'n' roll in the vein of Turbonegro or the Backyard Babies, swearily belted out by a quartet of young Dutchmen swathed in tiny bits of leather and flaunting an omni-sexual outlook.

OK, so of its ilk it's not actually all that good, but it'll certainly raise a few eyebrows at SRF on Monday morning when the moderators come to review the weekend's submissions. I give it until 10am...

***STOP PRESS***

It lasted until 8:45am. These Swiss telly folks have no moxy! The Raiders themselves tell me that they'll make the video available any day no. Until then, try searching for their name on Google and see what you come up with...

***STOP STOP PRESS***

They're back - but for quite how long, nobody knows!

Switzerland 2016 - Natalia Wohler - Time To Wuk

(Click here for good time, wukky wukky...)

Is it just me, or does this make your flesh crawl just a little bit? OK, so a little digging tells us that Natalia was born in Trinidad, and still spends much of her year there. But there's still something a little uncomfortable about watching someone whiter than me singing in that accent.

Unless of course 'to wuk' is a verb distinct to anglo-Swiss German that we Brits could never possibly understand?

But putting all of that aside, this is flipping hillarious - and probably in the wrong way!

Switzerland 2016 - Platzhirsch - Holz vor dr Hütta

(Click here for the true sound of the mountains...)

Swiss telly always miss the obvious trick. Despite 'apparently' opening up their qualification process to the whole world, up to now it's only really every Swiss-based artists that have ever made it to the televised bit. Funny that. But despite all that, they usually end up picking something so bland and mid-European that it's got almost no Swiss character to it at all. And this is a shame.

So why not, finally, SRF, choose a song that's just oozing with local colour? You know, one that's oozing with fondue, chalets and Alpine charm. A song like this...

Quite how they'd whittle it down to just six performers would be interesting, mind. Some of this mob look like they could more than hold their own in a decent fist fight.

Switzerland 2016 - Inge & the TritoneKings - Trümmer

(Click here for a wrong kind of beauty...)

Sometime when a marginally novelty act comes back for a second pop at an open application process you brace yourself for a slightly less successful version of the thing that they weren't especially good at last year. But somehow dear old Inge and her men of metal have actually managed to improve on last year's mildly amusing but still fairly weak effort by quite some measure.

Whereas Totenköpfchen was a half-decent concept struggling to find a decent riff, Trümmer is one of the most creative metal tracks I've heard in months - that also happens to have an octogenarian gran barking out the lyric. And somehow, this time, it all makes perfect sense.

As four chaps in Breaking Bad chic shred out some big noise, with creepy piano and Bond-style trumpets belting out incongruously in the background, dear old Inge finally manages to croak out some indignant menace on top of the ever thickening wall of sound. I'm not sure quite how they've managed to pull this off, but somehow they've delivered one of the best things I've heard all season.

Three more years of this level of improvement and they'll win the whole darned thing - if the old gal can hang on that long, that is...

Switzerland 2016 - Mimis Levandes - Oh Captain My Captain

(Click here for multiple eargasms...)

Swiss TV exec in a shadowy Lugano office: "You know what we need in this damn final? Not a dozen willowy teen girls hooting out witless techno, or some bedroom Scouser who can't actually sing...

Slightly timid researcher: "But what then, my leige?"

Swiss TV exec in a shadowy Lugano office: "What we need is a chunky Greek bloke on a beach whining out a love song to Robin Williams! And the more film references he clumsily crowbars in, the better! Can you get me that, young whelk!"

Slightly less timid researcher: "I think I might have just the thing, sir..."

Switzerland 2016 - Nico Honey - MamBoy

(Click here, enjoy the tune, and then stay very, very quiet...)

Erm, considering the speed that Swiss telly are pulling down any submitted video with even a hint of old age or controversy, we're somewhat startled that nobody's pointed out this cheeky little blighter to them yet...

Shall we tell 'em? Nah, it'll be funnier if we don't...

Switzerland 2016 - Maria Christina - That's What It's All About

(Click here and fly Air Christina...)

People rejoice! For it came to pass that we have our first slightly batty old girl of the season - and more terrifyingly it's probably one of the better songs in the Swiss process so far.

The video's clearly had a few pence spent on it too. Either Ms Christina is the wife of some rich industrialist in the midst of an expensive vanity project or she's actually a bit of a big deal in some remote canton - either way, this doesn't look cheap!

Switzerland 2016 - Kingun - Leave My Girlfriend Alone

(Click Click here...)

You know what Eurovision needs more of? Songs about jealous lovers murdering night club letches...

***STOP PRESS***

We've found it, and it's back!

Switzerland 2016 - Ludmila Davidenko & Pavel Petel - Bogachka (Rich B*tch Never Pay)

(Click and gamble whether the humourless Swiss have taken it down yet, just like they did that silent one)

When deciding whether to enter a song for this or that country's Eurovision qualifiers there are always a few questions that you should ask yourself. "Is it appropriate for the nation I am considering representing?" should usually be the first one, followed by "Is it any good?" And "Will anybody outside my circle of friemds actually get it?"

So with this in mind I'm still trying to ascertain the thought process behind this somewhat misplaced curiosity. "I know," the artist thought "as a moderately well-known underground drag comedian from Russia, I'll submit a song that not only includes a cheeky Madonna sample, but all kinds of unauthorised samples from a rather stern looking lady who's probably quite important somewhere. On top of that I'll almost certainly be slagging her off in some kind of cruel way, and then credit myself as a moderately well known female pop singer, and to make it even better, I'll leave on the opening screen that betrays the fact that I fruitlessly tried to enter it in for the Armenian selection last year.  The swiss are going to bloody love it!"

How long until the Swiss take it down from their site, do you reckon?

Switzerland 2016 - Männerchor Steili Kressä - Köttbullar

(Click here for meaty pop joy)

ESC fans rejoice! The traditional explosion of all that is truly unhinged and mediocre has kicked off today - oh yes, the Swiss open submissions process is open and ready for business, and it's delivering its usual delights.

The familiar barrage of home produced warblers and international hopefuls have already deluged Swiss telly with their shoddily made produce, but we'll come to that lot in good time. What today is really for is the annual day in the sun for traditional season openers Männerchor Steili Kressä, and they haven't let us down.

As ever, they've provided a ditty about next year's host nation, and of course what could be more Swedish than meatballs. Delight as our favourite drinking men's choir present their tasty savoury delight to a succession of well known Swedish pop acts, then marvel as the meatball itself gets a starring role. It's complete and utter glorious cobblers, of course, but we wouldn't want it any other way.

Moldova 2016 - Sasha Bognibov - Alone

Click here to see the rapture, iPad followers…

Ladies and gentlemen, after a long, arid summer – musically speaking, of course – it's my pleasure to announce the official opening of the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest On Season. And what better way to kick off proceedings than with Moldova's perennial prince of darkness, the great Sasha Bognibov.

Many regular commentators of the early stages of Eurovisionism feared that he may never have been able to top last year's masterpiece, Wounded Swan. And indeed, while Alone doesn't rise to quite that level of gloomy majesty, it feels like he's attempting to move things off down a slightly different track this time around.

Beginning with a slightly chilling children's xylophone, Sasha's familiar haunted vocals soon poke through the dark atmosphere, as he wonders, in song, whether he'll ever find his true soul mate. And then, quite suddenly, the tempo pumps up to true Europop levels, and we're led in to classic ESC territory.

It's no world beater, this must be said, but his songwriting is maturing year-on-year, and one of these days he's going to find himself on stage in that tiny Chisinau studio, competing for the crown that he do dearly craves. Could this, finally, be his year?

Video from YouTube. Underlying © lays with the owners of the clips