Sanremo
Pull up a very long drink. It's time for the song festival to end all song festivals. You'll need patience, as they name the winner around midnight - at the earliest. There's always plenty of general dicking about on the way to that announcement.
Once again RAI has said the winner gets first refusal on a Eurovision ticket.
Here's how it goes:
First up, we get 20 songs from so-called big artists. We've heard them already this week, at least twice. This time, it's a blood bath as 17 lose all hope when a three-way split between televoters, the press jury and RAI's demoscopic jury vote them out. They also count results from the week.
We arrive at a top three.
There's usually an enormous amount of talking and filler before they perform again in a super final. The same three-way split picks the winner.
There's a press conference where the winner either says they will or won't go to Rotterdam - or they take time to decide, but it's usually a yes.
We all go to bed.
