Sve Je Isto, Samo Miše Nema

So much for a Slovenian turbo-duel at last weekend's EMA, where it turned out that 22-year-old Anžej 'Plan B' Dežan walked the whole thing while Natalija, Saša, Rebeka Dremelj and the Atomik Harmonik girls all, presumably, stood around in the green room and glared at each other.

The Glory of Carniola couldn't face it, possibly due to a premonition that Natalija Verboten - despite the aforementioned Swedish schlager connection - would turn up surrounded by rollerbladers and wearing a leprechaun's hat, or that Lendero would appear out of a giant mandolin.

In the past, when the show was directed by RTVSLO's head of entertainment Miša Molk, EMA wouldn't have been EMA without a voting scandal (notably the 2002 version, when the telephone system collapsed and Molk awarded the contest to the transsexual trio Sestre). Molk left her job several months ago, but some things seem not to change: the public favourites, Saša Lendero and Atomik Harmonik, were awarded no points by the expert jury. As Tijana Dapčević (herself on the shortlist to represent Serbia-Montenegro at Eurovision this year) might say: sve je isto, samo Miše nema.

The Gazette's Eurovision attention now turns to Croatia, where - if rumours are to be believed - a constellation of late-90s pop fixtures such as Jelena Rozga, Danijela Martinović and Doris Dragović may all compete in the Dora festival, Croatia's version of EMA (or vice versa).

No official list of Dora participants - let alone their songs - has been officially released, but the tabloid 24 sata is already doing its best to stir up accusations of plagiarism against what would be the early favourite, a duet between Severina and last year's Croatian representative Boris Novković.

On the other hand, the supposed original is allegedly Wild dances by the Ukrainian singer Ruslana, the model for the essentialised-folkloric choreography suddenly characteristic of noughties Eurovision. Short of Severina coming on stage in a Xena-esque leather bra and brandishing a whip and trembitas (after all, she's almost been there, done that), it's going to be hard to know what's officially a Wild dances copy and what's, well, as near as makes no difference.