Turbo-Duelling The Slovenian Way

In the absence of a proper Gazette post this week, a brief reminder that the impending Slovenian turbo-duel between Atomik Harmonik and Natalija Verboten will be resolved on Sunday when RTV Slovenija holds its pre-selection for the Eurovision Song Contest.

All fourteen competing songs received their first public airing last night, and this lunchtime they are ironically enough distracting the Gazette from completing a paper it promised to a Slovenian last month.

If you're last year's runner-up in Slovenia, Saša Lendero, your strategy is apparently to keep exactly the same backing vocals you had in 2005 and add the percussion and strings from last year's runner-up in Croatia (Magazin's biblically histrionic Nazaret), not to mention the stamping and the Hey!ing from last year's runner-up in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Now that's regional co-operation for you.

If you're Anžej Dežan, ex-Yugoslav showbusiness can only handle one song called Plan B every twelve months, and a certain Ceca Ražnatović has already accounted for that.

If you're Natalija Verboten, the Gazette has already heard all the verses to your entry SOS when it was watching Linda Bengtzing singing something called Alla flickor on the Swedish version of this show last year, and is now trying to remember whether it noticed a tabloid-friendly brunette in the audience taking extensive notes.

If you're Maja Slatinšek, Andraž Hribar, or anybody else not covered here, there's every chance that you'll walk the whole thing, while Natalija, Saša, Rebeka 'Slovenski superboy' Dremelj and the Atomik Harmonik girls all stand around in the green room and glare at each other.