Your breasts are a deadly weapon, Ljubica

Well, actually that's a line from the Serbian song that qualified on Tuesday night, but it could also very aptly apply to the Armenian singer, whose performance tonight bizarrely started with an extreme close-up of her bosom. It evidently did the trick. A more (well, even more) wholesome highlight of the evening was Niamh Kavanagh's amazing performance for Ireland - the song has improved out of all recognition since the national selection, but she could have been singing the Dublin telephone directory and it would still have sounded fantastic. She's certainly the class singer of the field, as she was all those years ago in Millstreet. I can't believe that some people on the forums are denouncing her performance - pulling out of the last note slightly early hardly negates the whole of the previous three minutes.

The only other standout performances from my point of view were Romania and Turkey. My general impression is that it was a weaker show than Tuesday's, which is peculiar given that it had a larger concentration of the generally favoured songs. Israel and Azerbaijan may have made it safely through, but I'm not sure either are really looking like potential winners anymore. So where does that leave us? If the bookies are to be believed, the next most likely winners are Germany, Armenia and Turkey. With all due respect to Armenia's Eva Rivas, I'm not sure her bosom (or even her apricot stone) is quite that dangerous, and while I love the German song, I'm not sure how well it's going to translate on stage. So my gut feeling at the moment is that Eurovision might just be Istanbul-bound for the second time in seven years. But the great thing is that - unlike the last couple of years - it looks very open and unpredictable for Saturday night.

As for my prediction...well, eight out of ten wasn't at all bad given the two shocks that very few people seemed to anticipate - the failure of both Sweden and Croatia to qualify. Bizarre though it may seem, I actually voted for Israel and the Netherlands - if I'd been voting 'honestly' I would of course have gone for Ireland, but as I've mentioned in previous years, I have a personal rule of only voting for entries sung entirely in a language other than English. As ghastly as the Netherlands' song was, I thought they deserved some reward for an endearing performance, and for doing what I never thought they'd do again - singing in Dutch!