Molly Sterling will represent Ireland at the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest with the song “Playing With Numbers”!

In tonight’s special edition of the Late Late Show, a combination of regional juries and public televoting was used to select the entry that would represent the country that is still statistically the most successful in ESC history with its (in)famous seven victories.

Indeed, the show was full of the usual clichés – a fact we gently poked fun at with our Eurosong Bingo tweet earlier in the evening – but was otherwise a thoroughly enjoyable affair, with an informed and balanced panel giving their views on proceedings (and rather less in the way of fights and fireworks than last year).

Once the voting commenced, it became clear that things were going to be anything but clear. Eventual winner Molly actually started out by getting the lowest jury vote, but she picked up pace to remain in contention after the juries had given their very contrasting scores. In the end, the televote had the final say – and that was where Molly triumphed, taking victory ahead of 2nd-placed Kat Mahon and Erika Selin in 3rd.

Over in the #esc chat, our community disagreed with the results slightly: Our favourite of the night was Swedish import Selin with her song “Break Me Up”, which achieved a fairly modest average score of 5.72 out of 10, followed by Molly with 5.38.

Ireland will perform in the first half of the second semi-final of ESC 2015 on Thursday 21 May, where they will be hoping to improve on last year’s disappointing result by making it through to the grand final this time. In the meantime, you can view the promo video of tonight’s winner, “Playing With Numbers”, below: