While the UK may currently be getting in a froth about Susan Boyle, the rest of the continent is gearing up for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow, which is just a matter of days away. And it really is: the first semi-final (for these days there are two, don’t ya know, and you can watch them both on BBC3) is a week on Tuesday, followed by the second one on Thursday May 14th. The grand final then takes place two days later on Saturday 16th.

The UK is of course pinning its hopes – or hoping for more points than simply from Ireland and San Marino (and since the latter aren’t even taking part this year it would be a tall order to get points fro them) – on Andrew Lloyd Webber and his newest discovery, the ballad-belting diva Jade Ewen, who has been furiously plugging her song across Europe and will be guesting on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross this week too. But this year the contest has its hottest favourite in a very long time in the shape of Norway’s song Fairytale – so hot a favourite in fact that you would be forgiven for thinking the Scandinavians have the contest all sewn up.

At first glance it sounds like the kind of kitschy nonsense with which the contest has become synonymous.Performed by Belarussian-born singer/violinist Alexander Rybak (he’s the bloke in the picture), a Harry Potter lookalike with a wide toothy grin and a bizarre seagull-like eyebrow arrangement, it boasts jaunty folk rhythms, frenetic Cossack dancing and lyrics like “years ago when I was younger”, remarkable considering its performer doesn’t look a day over 12.

But it’s also insanely catchy, memorable from the first listen (that chorus will be stuck in your head for days) and Rybak has a kind of wholesome appeal that is guaranteed to leave tween viewers swooning. It’s all too easy to see why Eurovision fans have taken this one to their hearts. And it’s certainly benefitting from some full-on PR – in my other guise as editor of the originally-titled Eurovision Blog I have been receiving almost daily updates on Rybak’s movements. I can probably tell you where he is right this second (well he was in Sweden, last I heard) He’s even been out to dinner with our very own Jade Ewen and claims to have fallen in love (we have yet to dicscern whether or not this is mutual).

Whether Rybak can win however is another matter entirely. True, the song might have been the standout favourite since it was first chosen back in February but there is a growing sense among Eurovision fans that it may have peaked too soon, that it’s possibly not a good as everybody seems to think it is, or even that it could all go horribly wrong on the night and be waylaid by a disappointing performance.

Which is of course everything in Eurovision: true, there is a built in fanbase who will vote for their favourites in droves – plus of course Norway’s geographical location may allow them to benefit from so-called ‘neighbourly’ voting (although the reintroduction of jury votes this year might curtail even that) – but at the end of the day, if the casual viewer hasn’t heard your song before isn’t impressed on the night then chances are you’re screwed. And besides, when was the last time the favourite actually won the contest? Not recently, that’s for sure.

Either way there seems to be something of a backlash – for every person who has declared their undying love for the song, there seem to be several more very keen to point out that it isn’t actually that good. Which could be true, but equally it could smack of sour grapes or just from the general public’s keenness to knock something which is proving successful and popular – as we particularly seem to love doing in this country (I’m sat here waiting for the inevitable Susan Boyle backlash to start, for example – it can only be a matter of time, especially since Simon and Piers both already put the boot in at the launch of America’s Got Talent last week).

And of course Norway have such a reputation for producing bad Eurovision songs, having scored ‘nul points’ more often than any other country, that anything they produce automatically tends to be dubbed a turkey before anybody has even heard it. It’s easy to forget they have actually won the contest twice and last year were the only Western European country to finish in the top five.

So in many ways the odds should be stacked against Rybak and his fiddle, yet while the song may have lost some of its initial steam, and there is some serious competition out there, there’s no reason to doubt that they won’t do very well indeed. Winning, on the other hand, is another matter entirely. Time – and indeed May 16th – will tell…..