Yippee!! Eurovision is upon us once again as Belgrade hosts this year's competition. All the sad Euro-muppets will be partying through the marathon event and enthralled to know which eastern bloc country will win it this year. The carve-up started this week with the first semi-final where eight out of the nine countries eliminated were from the west with only Slovenia missing out.

Talking point of the night was Ireland’s entry "Irelande Douze Pointe" which took Eurovision to a embarrassing new low as Dustin the Turkey, a TV personality puppet, crowed, “Shake your feathers and bop your beak, wave ‘em in the air to the turkey beat”. It was so bad it was booed at its finale and that takes some doing at Eurovision where rubbish is the norm.

Dustin is no chicken and to his credit intended to ruffle a few feathers to give their European neighbours a right stuffing, but in the end he was culled like the famous Christmas bird and finished with a poultry score near the bottom of the pecking order and also managed to fall fowl of the rules by having seven performers on stage instead of the permitted six.

Finland once again demonstrated their thirst for the unusual with bare-chested rockers Teräsbetoni, but then who knows how the millions of viewers will vote following their overwhelming success with unique band Lordi a couple of years ago. Ballads seldom do well in Eurovision but Israel’s "The Fire in Your Eyes" is as good as any previous efforts. My own personal experience of the Greeks is that they are not very glamorous, but there will be many male viewers wanting to acquaint themselves with Greece’s Kalomira to find her "Secret Combination".

From the second semi-final, however, the west, surprisingly, came storming back with Charlotte Perrelli who won for Sweden back in 1999 with the very popular song "Hero" along with Denmark’s ‘barrow boy’ Simon Mathew singing the catchy "All Night Long".

The pretty damn stunning Ani Lorak [Karolina in reverse] singing "Shady Lady" for the Ukraine’s entry certainly kept my attention throughout and could well be the winner.

My own personal favourite though has to be Latvia’s "Pirates of the Sea", a vibrant sea-shanty number with really meaningful lyrics of “with a hi hi hoo and a hi hi hey”. In their Jack Sparrow costumes they could be the first pirates ever to win the competition and singer Aleksandra has a chest of pure gold.

Germany, France, Spain and United Kingdom have automatic qualification as they bank roll the whole competition without any chance of success. France’s entry by Sebastien Tellier sparked huge controversy by deciding to sing in English whilst Spain’s effort by Rodolfo Chikilicuatre, an Alvin Stardust look-alike, is my prediction for ‘nil pointe’, it is plain awful. U.K.’s former bin man and "X Factor" star Andy Abraham sings "Even if" an improvement on last year's entry but then that’s hardly surprising.

The only certainty besides the naff songs and Eastern European winner will be the outfits. Men in their ultra-tight leather trousers prancing about on stage displaying their business at the front and party at the back, but hey, the girls luckily are more scantily dressed than ever before. It was just a shame the girls from the Czech Republic were eliminated as their silver ‘Ann Summers’ outfits would have complimented the occasion especially as the whole event appears to take place in a wind tunnel in force nine gale.

Click here to read Clint Wayne's review of last year's Eurovision show