The Trickle Which Shall Become a Flood

Now, Albania is not known for its wealth, but the show was fairly glitzy.

Considering the vast majority of entries verged on the sombre, each act was incongruously welcomed on stage to the intro of Van Halen's Jump before launching in to the tune they wanted to take to the Russian capital in... May.

The Festivali i Kenges existed long before Albania entered Eurovision (this is only their sixth go at winning the Grand Prix) and has a colourful past, albeit in occasional dark shades.

In 1972, Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha decided the festival was a corrupting influence on his people - particularly the young - so had the organisers murdered. The event continued, but under strict censorship.

Today, there remains the lingering suspicion that the government decides which is the best song on the night, rather than the assembled jurors - and there has been more than one occasion when a hotly-tipped favourite has stormed off stage when the results have not gone their way.

However, let us focus on 2009. The youngster Kejsi Tola took a healthy lead early on, getting the top score of 20 from the first three of the seven jurors - and never receiving less than 15 points.

The voting was the only time the sparsity of funds in Albanian telly's budget became apparent.

As each score was read out, a mouse cursor could clearly be seen hovering across the scoreboard graphic, with an offstage technician highlighting the points next to each act, then manually updating it. It was all a bit Acorn Antiques, but strangely cosy to watch.

So, if that technician did their highlighting and updating right (and we have no reason to believe that they didn't) here is the winner of Festivali i Kenges 2008 and Albania's hope for glory in Moscow.

It's called Me Merr Ne Enderr and translates as Take Me In Your Dreams.

We do like the way Kejsi doesn't seem to know what to do with herself during the intro.