17 October – Symphonies of dreams and highlights

It’s a vexed question these days. no, not how much this website is better than all those others. It’s about who should be able to compete in our favourite TV show. The natural answer is those countries that fall within the European Broadcasting Area. But things aren’t quite what they seem these days, and other places want a piece of the action. Countries who have a niche broadcaster that has its biggest audiences for our TV show.

You may think I’m talking about our friends in San Marino. But I’m not. SBS is the Australian TV station that broadcasts the show at goodness knows what times. But they’ve not done badly for themselves, and today’s birthday girl Dami Im/임다미 only managed to finish second in Stockholm. If she’d have won, I might have packed in Eurovision and taken up octopush instead. As it happened, she was beaten by the equally lovely Jamala. We may have seen Australia’s swansong in Liverpool, but we love how our favourite TV show throws up surprises.

Dami is 35 today.

Happy birthday/생일 축하해, Dami/다미!