The 50th Eurovision Song Contest is less than two weeks away. There are so many contestant countries that – like last year – there’ll be a semi-final a couple of days before the final. (Who fans note that The Empty Child will be on at 6.25pm6.30pm to make way for Eurovision.)

The Good
Five that aren’t too bad:

• Iceland (dancy)
• Switzerland (rocky, and the band’s called Vanilla Ninja)
• Slovenia (ballady)
• Lithuania (also dancy)
• United Kingdom (Touch My Fire)

Honourable mentions too to F.Y.R. Macedonia, despite some awful dancing, and Spain, despite being pretty much Las Ketchup.

The Bad
Some of these are awful while some are, in true Eurovision spirit, amusingly bad.

• Belgium (really dull ballad)
• Croatia (a dirge called “Wolves Die Alone”)
• Finland (fittingly, the title is “Why?”)
• Ireland (dreadful – two loud children dancing like it’s a school disco)
• Moldova (oh dear, oh dear, oh dear; you’ll have to see this to believe it)
• Norway (stadium rawk)
• Portugal (Renee and Renato for the twenty-first century)
• Ukraine (the ugliest boyband in the world…ever! rap “Lies be the weapon of mass destruction”)

The Rest
There is a sprinkling of interest amongst the other contestants. Latvia have entered a cut-price McFly; Bosnia-Herzogovina’s Atomic Kitten clones will probably do well despite the song being trite nonsense; Denmark’s entry has lousy verses but an OK chorus; Hungary are going for the Ukraine/Riverdance vote with a crowd of dancers; and Serbia & Montenegro are represented by a Balkan Westlife.

Finally, Austria’s entry is like the Buena Vista Social Club withot the Buena Vista. Or the Club. So like the social then. With yodelling.

But don’t take my word for it – you can watch all the entries, read the lyrics and, oh, so much more on the Eurovision website.

Remember Jerry Springer: The Opera? And this, this, and this?

Well, excellent news as OFCOM have cleared the BBC, ruling that JS:TO included a total of zero breaches of its programme code.

More, including reaction from MediaWatch, at MediaWatchWatch.

I spoke too soon. ITV1 are launching Celebrity Love Island next week.

For now, though, the BBC are also covering the dismal failure of Celebrity Wrestling and the potential return of The Krypton Factor.

Some excellent telecommunications news: E4 is going to be free-to-air on Freeview from the end of May. I’m not sure where The West Wing has got up to, but now I’ll be able to watch it on E4 rather than having to wait long years for a Channel 4 premiere.

More on this: DigitalSpy coverage via The Current Outlook, plus an article in the Guardian.