Hello BBaBers!

Apologies for the lack of updates throughout August as it has been a particularly hectic time away from the world of the Contest and I have had to devote my attentions to other things.

However, September is set to bring far more excitement about Eurovision 2011 - Germany is set to announce the host city this month and some of the early bird nations will be getting themselves ready with national final business.

I am off on 10 days of holidays to different bits of Italy in about seven hours from now, so shall we agree to rendezvous back here on the weekend of September 11?

In the meantime, here's the song which is taking us to Deutschland next year to keep us all entertained. See you soon!

Have you seen this? It's the recently YooToobed promotional video for the UK's 1985 entry to the Eurovision Song Contest, Love Is... performed by Vikki Watson, which finished fourth in Gothenburg.

Onstage, Vikki just sang this while plonking herself on an old wooden chair at strategic points but, judging by this video, perhaps the other approach would have clawed in a few more votes.

Seemingly based at the bar of the Embassy Club, a glamorously dressed Vikki makes a a habit throughout the song of popping off to the Ritz at a moment's notice to meet a man in his hotel room.

I know Mrs Thatcher was all for the Brits being entrepreneurial - but was it this type of self-starter industry she wanted the rest of Europe to see us being so good at?

I do hope the Daily Mail never gets wind of this.

There I was in the pub on Friday when my mobile started chirruping away at me. It was Liverpool Echo reporter John Sutton who was working on this story for Saturday's paper and he wanted a rundown on how the city had fared at Contests past for the accompanying boxout.

But my contribution was nowhere near as interesting as the main article. Actress Margi Clarke (whom I sometimes see walking about the streets of Aigburth, the part of Liverpool we both live in) wants to represent the United Kingdom at the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest with the ;leccy' dance track Holographic Disco. Younger BBaBers will know Margi for her role as brassy Scouse mum to Tyrone Dobbs in Coronation Street (although I will always love her best for playing Queenie in Making Out in the late '80s and early '90s). She does have some musical background though, having performed with Half Man Half Biscuit on a version of Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien and isn't a stranger to belting a tune out on stage. Whether she has belted a song out live to 20,000+ people in an arena on an international television show is something that needs to be verified if she's serious about doing well.

By 2005, the unthinkable had happened to Ireland. The nation which could have won the Contest by a mile in the '90s if the singer had just turned up on stage, coughed down the mic, then walked back to the green room, was in dire melodic straits. Relegated in 2002, their return in 2003 almosts saw them back in the Top 10, only for them to plummet once more in 2004, winding up very nearly at the bottom of the scoreboard. This meant the unthinkable; Ireland would have to qualify from the semi-final the following year.

The selection format which Irish telly, RTE, had used in the post-relegation period was a show called You're A Star, where unknowns got the chance to be matched up with a song from an established composer.

When Donna & Joe came through as the winners of the third series of You're A Star, it was clear that the law of diminishing returns meant this particular format was doomed as a way of choosing a song for Eurovision.