Kurt Calleja wins Malta Eurosong 2012 with This is the Night

I have a sudden urge to wash my hair with Gliss shampoo, put on an Ice Watch, make the Leaning Tower of Pisa stand up straight using nought but a vacuum cleaner then sit on a grey sofa with black and white cushions while telling all who will listen how fantastic the interest calculator at the Mediterranean Bank is. Not that the only five adverts Maltese telly seems to have access to had any subliminal effect on me while sitting through an arduous loop of them during the webstream of their national final.

As my internet connection at home is still none too reliable (it kept cutting out every 10 minutes or so) I only saw about half of the 17-hour broadcast where the island nation decided who was best to sing for them in Baku with my link snapping moments before the vital jury scores were cast which sent Kurt Calleja to Azerbaijan over the more-fancied Claudia Faniello. I did manage to see all of Kurt's number, This Is the Night, when my stream was thankfully uninterrupted and thought it had potential. However, it is very reminiscent of the similarly-titled song Sakis Rouvas took to Moscow three years ago.

It all seems like an incredibly long amount of airtime to find something which will fill fewer than three minutes of airtime in May but hopefully this will progress to the final from the semi stage as, once in an arena where the acoustics and sound mixing are handled a tad more artfully - and especially if sandwiched between a pair of ballads - this could do better than people think.