Another eventful Eurovision week has come to a close, so it must be time for our weekly review of all the fun!

Monday started with the media bandwagon for Melodifestivalen really picking up steam, with “expert” tabloid commentators Anders Nunstedt in Expressen and Markus Larsson in Aftonbladet both ranking Ralf Gyllenhammar’s “Bed On Fire” as Sweden’s best chance for a good result at this year’s ESC. The bookies were still firmly in favour of Yohio, though, and this was reflected in the running order, which was also announced in the wake of Saturday’s Andra Chansen round: previous hot favourite Ulrik Munther would open the show, while Yohio was given the prized position of 10th and last in the line-up.

Following the controversial selection of “Kismet” as the Bulgarian entry for ESC 2013, singer Elitsa expressed her acceptance of the result, telling broadcaster BNT: “The vote was a little bit surprising for us, but on the other hand it is nice that all our works have been assessed and all three songs were liked. Now we will see how we will develop the choreography of ‘Kismet’.” That fairly conclusive statement would surely be the end of the matter, then. (Thanks to Andy from ESCKaz for the translation!)

Also on Monday, the full results of Estonia’s Eesti Laul pre-selection were revealed, and it turned out that Winny Puhh – the source of many cries of “robbed!” from fans around the continent – finished second in the first round of televoting, hence only being deprived a spot in the superfinal by the jurors. Travesty of justice or a narrow escape? We may never know! Meanwhile, we think it’s fair to say there was quite a close result in the second semi-final…

On Tuesday, it was confirmed that Belarus would be represented by the song “Solayoh”, despite it having previously appeared in demo form on composer Marc Paelinck’s MySpace – another sensible interpretation of the EBU’s new rules concerning songs and their release dates (or perhaps just a reflection of the fact that only striving musicians use MySpace these days). Alyona Lanskaya turned up later in the week to perform the song during the Romanian final – looks like a pretty safe qualifier to us:

Wednesday saw the big overhaul of esc-chat.com’s front page to reflect our presence in Sweden and our comprehensive coverage of Melodifestivalen 2013. Editor Felix made friends at the welcome party, including an already delighted Robin Stjernberg.

In more controversial news, Kathleen Rayter withdrew from the Israeli final, citing her concerns as to the bias of the jury members. She duly surrendered the optimal last position in the draw, which was happily snapped up by the next competitor in line, Niki Goldstein – despite the fact that the phone lines had been open for several days already and would not be reset, meaning that he had little chance of making any real impact with the televoting public. Still, an extra appearance on prime-time TV isn’t to be sniffed at!

With a couple of stories appearing on tabloid newspaper websites in the late hours of Wednesday night, Thursday dawned with the news that the BBC had selected Bonnie Tyler to represent the United Kingdom in Malmö with the song “Believe In Me”. One or two clever fans had previously noticed that her new album contained a suspicious three-minute “radio edit” of the track – so at least one of the dozens of rumours was right! The 61-year-old rock siren, who is best known for songs like “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” and “It’s A Heartache” (and whose name is pleasingly rendered in Greek as “MPONI TAILER”), will be hoping to avoid the fate endured by another experienced old head, Engelbert Humperdinck, at last year’s contest.

Meanwhile, over in Sweden, tabloid Aftonbladet crowed that SVT were giving preferential treatment to Yohio in the run-up to Saturday’s Melodifestivalen final. Looking at the article more closely, their claims basically amounted to the fact that SVT were following the “visual kei”-styled artist in order to produce a documentary about him at a later date… and that he’d been given the final spot in the running order. Not exactly a SCHLAGERSKANDAL, then. Over at the Friends Arena, esc-chat.com grabbed interviews with plenty of this year’s MF performers – you can check them out (along with some rehearsal photos) here.

Thursday night saw the final of Israel’s Kdam pre-selection, which was won by Moran Mazor (not Moran Mazuz, and certainly not Moran Mazoz – Twitter was a confusing place for a few minutes after the results were announced!). You can read our report on the final here.

On Friday, Macedonian TV announced that they were definitely changing Esma & Lozano’s song for ESC 2013 in the wake of the alleged controversy about its lyrics and the government-friendly video clip that accompanied it. And all this despite “Imperija” enjoying one of the most positive fan responses ever seen for a Macedonian entry. The new song will supposedly be co-written by Elena Risteska of “Ninanajna” (2006) fame – perhaps not such a terrible idea, considering her 12th place remains the ex-Yugoslav nation’s best ESC result to date.

Friday night saw the dress rehearsal for the Melodifestivalen final, as live-blogged by esc-chat.com editor Danny.

This was followed on Saturday by more entertaining interviews from our Stockholm-based team – the one with the old boys of Ravaillacz is particularly worth a look – as Sweden prepared for its big night. To say that the result of the Melodifestivalen final was a surprise would be a bit of an understatement, but it is Andra Chansen qualifier Robin Stjernberg who will go forward to defend the nation’s colours on home soil in May – you can read our full report here and see our pre-contest interview with him below:

Not to be outdone by the Swedes, Romania decided to throw up something of a surprise too, with the operatic disco stylings of Cezar and “It’s My Life” winning the combined jury and televote (our report here). Whether Europe wants to accompany him along the path of his life in May remains to be seen, but Romania has a habit of coming up with performances that are enough to get them through to the final fairly comfortably, so time will tell!

And finally, on Sunday, Sweden woke up to the collective hangover of another Melodifestivalen extravaganza. The tabloids were predictably full of complaints because the Swedish public’s will had been overruled by some faceless international juries – as if the voting system wasn’t known well in advance and, for that matter, as if the Swedes hadn’t been perfectly keen to vote for Robin Stjernberg too, placing him a comfortable second in the televote behind Yohio! Ignoring all the fuss, we completed our coverage from Stockholm with an extensive gallery of photos from the afterparty, including editor Felix having his glasses eaten by Ralf Gyllenhammar. A perfectly normal end to a perfectly normal week.

And that was the last seven days in Eurovision! Our Calendar of national final events is starting to look rather empty, although Moldova and Azerbaijan should throw up some entertaining moments this week – and, of course, we’re now entering the high season for remixes, new video clips, alternative-language versions and all sorts of other goodies. So stay tuned to esc-chat.com and our Twitter account for all the news and gossip!