Everybody Loves Estonia

Following the unintentional entertainment of Montenegro's attempts to select its Eurovision entrant last week, this week I found myself plonked in front of my PC for two hours (not something I could do every day) watching the webcast of this year's Estonian final, the Eurolaul.

Now, this was a totally different ballgame. Although they have only been entering the Contest since 1994, the Estonians got the grasp of what made a crowd-pleasing tune fairly early on, and went on to win the whole European kit and caboodle in 2001 with something quite dreadful called Everybody.

Could the ultimate victor in this 10-strong tussle of tune repeat the feat? Read on...

It was a mixed bag of styles, but one thing which struck me as I peered into the tiny screen in the centre of my monitor was that at least four of the songs taking part would fit seamlessly in to the UK charts.

The line-up kicked off with the token joke entry, and as my Estonian isn't quite up to scratch (there were no subtitles), I think they were a hugely popular comedy trio called Kreisiraadio, singing something unbelievably stupid called Leto Svet, which involved much waving of the Estonian flag by three ladies in gold bikinis, and a chorus which sounded remarkably like Natalie Cole's Pink Cadillac. I'm sure it was hilarious to the doemstic audience, but once a song gets to Eurovision, the joke has to appeal to everybody from Reykjavik to Jerusalem to get votes - the mistake Blighty made with Scooch last year.

Once that was out the way, there was a brilliant ska (ish) song called Real Big Money which I suspect would have got hefty votes from the UK if selected, followed by a Scissor Sisters/Mika crossover called One on One, which didn't quite realise its potential.

After some rather dreary Balkan rock tunes, another contender was a Pop Idol winner called Birgitte with a brilliant Bond theme-esque ballad - 365 Days - which had oomph in all the right places to get a her-yooge applause from the crowd.

After that, there was the one kept until the end - a sure sign of the broadcaster's preferred choice for the national entry - which was an impressive, if bizarre number called Ice Cold Story. It had everything you'd expect from the Contest these days, half-naked male violinists covered in blue hair gel, a man with a frosty beard thumping out a guitar solo, and lead vocal from what appeared to be a schoolgirl channeling Lena Zavaroni at the height of her Opportunity Knocks powers.

Ten songs of mostly good quality. And guess who got the ticket to Belgrade?

A hugely popular comedy trio called Kreisiraadio with something called Leto Svet.

Tsk.

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