Recently by Jamie McLoughlin

Good morning BBaBers! The weekend nears, our next advemture in Eurovisionland doesn't, so what better time to introduce you to Boom Bang a Blog's newest series of ESC-related shennanigans which will both inform and educate?

Not quite on the same scale as A Bluffer's Guide to Eurovision, welcome to Semi-Despatched. From today, BBaB will be taking a look at those songs and performances which had to go through the Contest's semi-final phase, first introduced in 2004.

With so many countries now taking part each year, it's a sobering thought that over the past seven Contests, 107 songs have failed to make it to the Saturday night final. That's just under 10 per cent of all the songs ever entered into the Eurovision Song Contest since it began in 1956. Some of these fallers at the first hurdle include favourites to win the entire event, as well as some who were never expected to make it past this first sift.

Over the coming months, Boom Bang a Blog can't promise it can bring you every single song which failed to make it from the semi. We'll try and cover as many as we can, however - and we'll start today at the ideal spot. The beginning.