We’re deep into the national final season and the events and newsflashes are coming thick and fast – so here’s esc-chat.com’s handy overview of everything that’s happened in the past week of Eurovision!

Monday began with German tabloid Bild publishing an interview with Thomas G:son in which the “Euphoria” songwriter more or less laughed their Cascada plagiarism accusations out of town. In particular, Bild’s use of a waveform diagram as proof was shrugged off with the comment that you could find 10,000 pop songs that “looked” the same in such a comparison.

The evening then saw an alcoholic triumph for Koza Mostra in the Greek final – read our report here. Knowing Swedish prices, we hope Greece follows the Georgian delegation’s example and brings plenty of gratis booze with them to Malmö – that’s a sure way to buy some positive blogging coverage.

On Tuesday, it was announced that Russia would be represented at ESC 2013 by Dina Garipova – and that her song, “What If”, had been written by a team of Swedes (surprise!). Garipova won the Russian edition of The Voice and certainly has a powerful set of lungs on her:

Out of sheer boredom as much as anything else, British fans continued to speculate about the identity of this year’s UK participant. Rumours so far have included Bad Boys Inc, Right Said Fred, Mika, Kimberley Walsh and A1. And Paloma Faith. And Diana Vickers. And Dido. And Shirley Bassey. And…

In any case, the entry is set to be premiered on BBC Radio 2 in mid-March. The Daily Star tabloid was more certain and cited March 15th as the date for the big relevation – though this seems slightly unlikely, as the BBC and its press people will be preoccupied with the annual Comic Relief telethon that day. Still, the Star evidently doesn’t realise that the Moldovan final is taking place on March 16th, so one can probably disregard the rest of the piece as pure gossip.

SVT announced that the postcards for ESC 2013 will feature the artists, something that has been missing since Alf Poier showed off his extensive collection of hats in 2003. The Swedes should take a leaf out of NRK’s book: in 1996, the Norwegian broadcaster found an innovative use for an unwanted batch of yellow rucksacks, and we look forward to this year’s participants being filmed in their home countries working out what on earth to do with a giant multicoloured fabric butterfly. Meanwhile, Macedonian TV announced that the Balkan republic’s entry will be called “Imperija” (Empire) and will be presented on February 27th.

Wednesday started with the sad news that Maja Ejaculation Odžaklievska had withdrawn from the Serbian final due to illness – nearly two weeks before the event. Presumably something slightly more serious than a throat infection, then! Although Maja does have a history of dubious claims, with some sources suggesting that she was selected to represent Macedonia at ESC 1995 and Serbia at ESC 1996 before circumstances got in the way (a failure to apply for the contest, sanctions from the international community, a lack of any actual truth to the matter – that kind of thing).

The Israeli songs started to trickle out, semi-final by semi-final, and were met with a largely positive response by fans – although not always of the best quality, there was praise for the variety of entries on offer and broadcaster IBA will be pleased to have attracted some serious attention to a country whose selection process often falls between the gaps a little. Holding their semi-finals on quiet weeknights represents another smart move in that respect.

On Thursday, the title of the Dutch entry was announced as “Only The Dead Birds Fall Out Of The Tree” “Birds Falling Down”, with the same songwriting/production team behind it as much of Anouk’s recent output. It was immediately claimed that the song was not a winner – but frankly, at this stage, qualifying for the final would feel like a victory for the Netherlands… Anouk herself subsequently clarified that the title will be just plain “Birds”, which is probably for the best really.

A busy weekend in the world of Eurovision began with the Irish final on Friday night, which was won by Ryan Dolan and the song “Only Love Survives” – you can read our report here. Almost more entertaining than the contest itself was the accompanying interview with Danny DeVito, although we were sad when, after being promised a clip from War Of The Roses, it turned out they meant DeVito’s hit 1989 movie and not this classic from slightly earlier in the decade:

Saturday night was unusual in that it did not feature any actual national finals, but there was plenty of semi-final action to keep fans around the continent entertained.

After weeks of decisions that many seemed to find difficult to comprehend, the Swedish televoting public finally stuck to the script in the fourth Melodifestivalen semi-final (note: this may not apply if you were genuinely expecting Army Of Lovers to still be relevant despite changing nothing about their act or their music in the last 20 years). Robin Stjernberg (“You”) and Behrang Miri (“Jalla Dansa Sawa”) were given the opportunity of proving their worth in next week’s Andra Chansen round, and we note with some delight that one of the people behind Stjernberg’s song is none other than the wonderfully off-key boy from Norway’s 2003 Junior Eurovision entry.

Meanwhile the direct qualifiers for the grand final were Ulrik Munther with “Tell The World I’m Here” – he was particularly happy with the result – and rocker Ralf Gyllenhammar with “Bed On Fire”. The latter could be a real dark horse for overall victory, although given the choice, we’d prefer a bit of “Opera On Fire”:

The first semi-final of the Romanian selection, which was hosted by stars including Paula Seling & Ovi in ABBA costumes (obviously) and lasted for what felt like several years, eventually selected six finalists including 2005 representative Luminita Anghel and the runaway televoting winner, “Un refren” by Casa Presei. The puzzling but somehow quite wonderful Cezar also persuaded the televoters and jurors of the merits of his operatic vocal stylings.

In light of the horsemeat scandal, there was further bad news for fans of beef as Flank failed to make it through to the Eesti Laul final, and they were joined on the sidelines by last year’s fanfaves Tenfold Rabbit. Instead, the combined jury and televote opted in favour of Liisi Koikson & Söörömöö, Birgit Õigemeel, Rasmus Rändvee & Facelift Deer, Rolf Roosalu and Põhja-Tallinn, thereby completing the line-up for next week’s final (and ensuring the presence of some excellently weird band names even without the aforementioned non-qualifiers).

Meanwhile, the first Hungarian semi-final ended in the joy of qualification for András Kállay-Saunders and Gergő Rácz (jury choices) and Ildikó Keresztes and Laura Cserpes (televote choices).

Sunday began with a healthy dose of scandal in Russia, whose ESC 2013 entry “What If” leaked online and was instantly bombarded with accusations of plagiarism – although it’s funny how no songwriters ever seem to want to plagiarise anything successful, a largely forgotten Hear’Say album track being the alleged offending number in this case. Anyway, the planned official presentation of the song on Russian news TV later in the day failed to materialise, but there are no signs that the song will be changed despite protests from some of the louder online fans.

In the evening, Hungary completed the line-up for the final of A Dal, with the expert jury selecting Tamás Vastag and Gigi Radics as qualifiers before the televote chose Szilvi Agárdi & Dénes Pál and this blog’s favourite, ByeAlex, to accompany them there.

Meanwhile, the qualifiers from the second Romanian semi-final included Carlos Santana’s niece (no, really), repeat offender Elena Carstea – she took part in the very first Romanian final back in 1993, though was understandably unable to defeat the sheer genius of Dida Dragan – and, perhaps most pleasingly of all, even more high-pitched vocal madness from a gentleman named Narcis Iustin Ianău:

What a way to end the week! And the next seven days promise to be no less eventful, with the Spanish final and all three Israeli semi-finals taking place during the week before a weekend that will see Estonia, Hungary, Armenia, Bulgaria and Serbia all selecting their entries for ESC 2013. And that’s before we even get to the Andra Chansen round in Sweden! You can check out all the dates in our Calendar here – and don’t forget to follow this site and join us in the #esc chatroom for all the fun!