- It's... THE EUROVISION SONG CONTEST QUALIFYING ROUND. Bloody Soviet Union. If only they were all still one country, we wouldn't have to go through this fiasco.

- The semi-finals are beneath even Terry Wogan's dignity, so instead we've got that bloke who used to do Celebdaq. Oh lord. Of course, Britain gets a bye to the finals because we put in so much money.

- Live from Kiev. Welcome to Beautiful Ukraine! Your hosts: Mariya Efrosinina and Pavlo Shylko!

- Bafflingly drawn-out sequence of traditional and contemporary Ukrainian song and dance. Are they trying to get the entire population on the show?

- Twenty five will enter! Ten shall qualify!

- 1. AUSTRIA: Global Kryner - "Y Asi". Jesus fucking christ. Oompa jazz. Well, it's certainly different. Actually, it's not bad. Except for the backing yodeller. He's unforgivable. Not least because he can't even yodel. Wow, this is seriously weird. I... kind of liked that. Except for the yodelling.

- 2. LITHUANIA: Laura & The Lovers - "Little By Little." Utterly bland mid-paced power ballad. Some countries like this sort of thing. Could win, but shouldn't.

- 3. PORTUGAL: 2B - "Amar." Our first truly bad singing performance of the night. It wasn't a good song to start with, either. Typical Eurovision pop anthem. One-note chorus. Horrid. If this qualifies then there's no justice in the world.

- 4. FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, MOLDOVA!: Zdob Si Zdub - "Boonika Bate Doba" Novelty Modovan indie-pop! This is great! You don't get this sort of thing anywhere else. "Boonika Bate Doba" means "Grandmama Beats The Drum." It's a song about the lead singer's grandmother's love of drumming. He has her on stage! In a rocking chair! "Ladies and gentlemans, this is the grandmama!" She twirls around and bashes a big drum! Genius! That was fantastic! That could win the main contest! I'm going to rewind and listen to that again. Yup, it's still brilliant. That's a winner. Moldova gets it. DESERVES TO QUALIFY.

- 5. LATVIA: Walters & Kazha - "The War Is Not Over" Two blokes on stools strumming guitars. Imagine Westlife as a Latvian pub duo. It's a typical Eurovision plea for peace and hugs. I've heard a lot worse, to be fair. But they're fucked, coming after Zdob Si Zdub.

- 6. MONACO: Lise Darly - "Tout de Moi" If Disney made films in French, the tedious romantic ballads would sound like this. Passable, but it's not going to win. I get bored and Google for the Moldovan lyrics on the web. They're even better than I'd hoped. ("Who's the Beatles? Where from is Peter Pan? / Who's the gypsy Jimi Hendrix?")

- 7. ISRAEL: Shiri Maimon - "Hasheket Shenishar" Another boring overwrought ballady one. Utterly dull.

- 8. BELARUS: Angelica Agurbash - "Love Me Tonight" Disco! Yup, this ought to go through. But it reminds me of "I Will Survive", which is obviously infinitely better. And the Belarussian accent doesn't really lend itself to disco. DESERVES TO QUALIFY. That's two.

- 9. THE NETHERLANDS: Glennis Grace - "My Impossible Dream" She's got a dream. She'll be breaking free. She'll make it on her own. She'll do so against all odds. She'll be holding her head up high. She'll be finding her identity. The sort of inspirational ballad a computer might write. Shit.

- 10. ICELAND: Selma - "If I Had Your Love." Hey, this is pretty good. Dumb epic pop. Slows down strangely for the chorus. Possibly a little bit too quirky for the Eurovision voters, but I like it. It's better than the British entry. Good old Iceland. You can always rely on them to punch above their weight in this contest. DESERVES TO QUALIFY. Three.

- 11. BELGIUM: Nuno Resende - "Le Grand Soir" Imagine a cross between Peter Andre and David Copperfield. Only even more boring than that sounds. This doesn't deserve to qualify. Belgium must be trying to avoid winning for budgetary reasons.

- 12. ESTONIA: Suntribe - "Let's Get Loud" Fucking hell. It's the Estonian Girls Aloud. Although not as good, and a bit too twee. Good enough to deserve to qualify, though. God knows who thought it would be a good idea for them to pretend to DJ, though. DESERVES TO QUALIFY, MARGINALLY. Four.

- 13. NORWAY: Wig Wam - "In My Dreams" Hair metal! Nobody's tried this before, have they? It's daring! It's different! It's twenty years out of date! But that's not a problem, because this is clearly Norway's answer to the Darkness. And this is... actually pretty good. Really. Bound to qualify. DESERVES TO QUALIFY. Five.

- 14. ROMANIA: Luminita Anghel & Sistem - "Let Me Try" The Romanians have learned from last year. It's all about the stage show. So meet Sistem - Romania's answer to Stomp. Luminita Anghel (really?!) belts out a passable Europop tune while Sistem smash up some oil drums and break out the angle grinders. Not as good as it sounds on paper, but still DESERVES TO QUALIFY, MARGINALLY. Six.

- 15. HUNGARY: Nox - "Forogj Vilag" "Spin The World", apparently. Ooh, folk dancing! This is the sort of thing Hungary would have entered 15 years ago, but with a 2005 remix. Hey na na na na na! Hey na na na na na! Our first rousing nonsense-lyrics chorus of the night! Verses are a bit dreary, though. I'm wavering on this one. Oh, alright... DESERVES TO QUALIFY. Seven.

- 16. FINLAND: Geir Ronning - "Why" Oh dear, they're taking it seriously. Maudlin nonsense about children crying. Geir is so distressed about the crying that he mimes it, lest we be uncertain about the crying. "Why can't love be all that matters? Why? Why? Why?" Fucking awful.

- 17. THE FORMER YUGOSLAV REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA: Martin: "Ti Si Son" Slightly folk-tinged pop, the sort of thing that eastern European countries regularly enter in order to "express their culture." Alright, but not particularly memorable. Big drumming interlude in the middle eight improves things a bit. Hey, a last-minute key change! I thought people stopped doing those in 1986! Okay, I guess, but I can live without hearing it again.

- 18. ANDORRA!: Marian Van Der Wall - "La Mirada Interior" See, San Marino? If Andorra can be bothered entering, what's your fucking excuse? Unfortunately, it's rather boring, but hey, there's only seventeen people in Andorra, and I'm sure they're doing their best.

- 19. SWITZERLAND: Vanilla Ninja - "Cool Vibes." If this isn't a Swiss J-Pop band, I'm going to be hugely disappointed. Hmm. It's a girl rock band. I'm going to be hugely disappointed. Very eighties. Technically, it's awful. ("Cool vibes - why don't you kill me?") But it's so silly, and so intangibly Eurovision, that I kind of want it to qualify. And then, after Saturday, never ever hear it again. DESERVES TO QUALIFY, although I'm not quite sure why. Eight.

- 20. CROATIA: Boris Novkovic featuring Lado Members - "Vukovi Umiru Sami" Because if you want to win Eurovision, you sing in Serbocroat. And yes, yes, there's the traditional Croatian bagpipes. And the panpipes. I like his coat. The rest, not so much. Everyone looks utterly miserable, except the drummer, who's grinning like a loon and possibly thinks that he's clubbing a seal. Not very good.

- 21. WELCOME FOR THE FIRST TIME, BULGARIA: Kaffe - "Lorraine" Lounge bar jazz. In one ear, out the other.

- 22. IRELAND: Donna & Joe - "Love?" The Irish "Please Don't Let Us Win The Fucking Thing Again" committee pulls out all the stops by entering a duo consisting of the passably attractive Donna, and her brother Joe, a ginger teenager who looks like he's just spotted an oncoming train. DOESN'T DESERVE TO QUALIFY, but I hope it does anyway, because it's hilariously poor. Nine.

- 23. SLOVENIA: Omar Naber - "Stop" One of those songs that might well be quite good if you spoke the language, but isn't going to cut it for a Europe-wide audience. Gets quite epic near the end. Could well qualify, but I don't particularly want it to.

- 24. DENMARK: Jacob Sveistrup - "I'm Talking To You" How retro, a piano. Slightly old-fashioned. Not technically bad, but totally forgettable. I've heard worse, I suppose. Rhymes "heart" and "start." "I've never felt like this before / I've got to make you mine." That sort of thing.

- AND FINALLY, POLAND: Ivan & Delfin - "Czarna Dziewczyna" Apparently that means "Black Girl." That can't be right. What kind of fucked up language has a word as complicated as "dziewczyna" for either "black" or "girl"? Anyhow, it's a fast folk number, and the lead singer looks like a gay folk-dancing Vegas-era Elvis. It's very Eurovision indeed, circa 1985. Probably the last we'll hear of it, but it's very jaunty, so what the hell. DESERVES TO QUALIFY.

And that's my Ten To Watch (tm): Moldova, Belarus, Iceland, Estonia, Norway, Romania, Hungary, Switzerland, Ireland and Poland.

The hosts signal the start of voting time with some tubular bells. Interestingly, the ten minute countdown clock starts to run while they're still running down the recap, which seems a bit tough on the people at the end of the list. By the time Poland comes up, there's only 3:45 left to vote in. Then again, they traditionally have the advantage of being fresher in the mind anyway, so maybe it cancels out.

"And now we'd like to show you a little film about some amusing moments of show preparation." It's just footage of the stage being built. Gripping. To give the Ukrainians their due, the show was technically flawless.

Voting is all collated together in Cologne, by the way. So there's no national voting. While we're waiting for the votes to be verified, here's some Urkainian ballet.

Clips of the people who got a bye to the final. The UK. Malta (boring, fat). Turkey (we'd like to be Ruslana, please). Albania (not bad). Cyprus (alright). Spain (novelty pop). Serbia & Montenegro (boy band). Sweden (bland). Ukraine (political rap which the Ukrainians love because it was an anthem of the revolution). Germany (boring mid-paced rock). Greece (forgettable). Russia (dull). Bosnia & Herzegovina (celebrating 50 years of Eurovision!). France (passable).

And the winners, in random order, are... Hungary. Yay! Romania. Yay! Norway. Yay! Moldova. Yay! I'm four for four! Israel. Bleh. Denmark. Okay, I guess. Macedonia? Really? Croatia. Well, we get to see the drummer again. Switzerland! Yay! Vanilla Ninja qualify! And finally... Latvia. They were crap! Oh well, five of my picks go through. Ireland fail to qualify. Don't think that's happened before. See you on Saturday, pleasant yet stilted hosts!