After a nine-year wait and the worst score in the whole of Europe, she has got us into the final. Now we adore her.

Everyone will be watching on Saturday, even those who say they won’t be. Just for once, it’ll be enough not to have to hear ‘zero points’ when the juries cast their votes.

We weren’t always this bad, though. We are sixth in the all-time winners’ list. However, that makes it even more embarrassing that our last win was 38 (!) years ago.

Of course, it’s not our fault! First, we blamed the Eastern European countries. There are too many of them and they always vote for their neighbours. We never gave Belgium 12 points and they never gave us 12.

Then the national broadcasting network NOS decided they didn’t want to fork out any more for the annual humiliation and things got really bad – the prole network TROS took over. They sent De Toppers, three overweight, middle-aged  men who somehow manage to fill stadiums in Holland (why on earth send a beautiful girl?), followed by a barrel organ (who cares people usually pay the organist just to leave) and the 3Js (didn’t receive any points at all). TROS then topped it all off with Joan Franka, who, for some strange reason, wore a native American headdress while singing a love song.

It didn’t work.

Now our internationally famous rock singer, Anouk – who refused to take part in any pre-Contest competition, insisted on choosing her own song (Birds), won’t do any media interviews, in a simple black outfit instead of a fluttery dress – has saved us.

It doesn’t matter how she does tomorrow. We’ve already won.