Month: May 2025

Integration

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With Home Assistant, I think it’s fair to say that some of its integrations are easier to set up than others.

Some services offer a nice public API, and an easy way for users to get hold of an API key. Then, it’s just a case of popping this API key into Home Assistant, and off you go.

Some services are not so easy. They may offer an API, but require you to jump through hoops to sign up as a developer and create an application before you can get what you need. Or they may not offer an API, and the only way to integrate it with Home Assistant is to scrape web pages. Meanwhile, the integration developers have to constantly amend their integration to carry on working.

Now, this isn’t a blog post about Home Assistant – it’s using Home Assistant as a metaphor for immigration, and it’s inspired by this Guardian Comment piece from last week. We seem to want people who come to the UK to integrate with British culture, but integration works best when both sides work together.

In the late 1990s, there was a pioneering British sketch comedy TV show called Goodness Gracious Me, which was the first to feature an all British Asian cast. One of the recurring sketches was The Coopers, an Asian family that tries a little too hard to be British. I think it’s relevant to this, because, as someone who is white and indigenous to Britain, I have a duty to those who want to integrate with British society to feel welcome. We can’t tell people to integrate harder when we’re unwilling to do the same. Just because we happened to be lucky to be born into a country where lots of people want to live.

Britain is a better country because of immigration. I appreciate living in a multi-cultural society, where I can experience different perspectives on the world. Where there’s a range of different food shops and restaurants from the various diasporas who have settled here. Where the jobs that British natives don’t want to do get done, especially in health and social care. Where Christmas is celebrated alongside Eid, Diwali and Passover. When we all work together so that we can live together in peace, the world is a better place.

Our journey towards an electric car – part I

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Christine and I have decided that we’re going to get a new (or rather new to us) care in the next few months, and we’ve decided that it’ll most likely be an electric car.

Last March, I talked about how our current car was starting to get expensive. It had been in the garage four times in as many months, and April made it the fifth consecutive month to clear the particulate filter. Since then, it’s been behaving itself a little better – so far, it’s only been in the garage twice this year. But there are still some issues. There’s various squeaks and knocks that, whilst not seemingly affecting our ability to drive it, are starting to get annoying. The air conditioning system doesn’t work any more – on a hot day, it just emits hot air. And, throughout the whole six years we’ve owned it, the tyre pressure monitor hasn’t worked properly.

More recently, we’ve noticed a patch of rust on one of the doors. Getting that fixed is likely to be expensive, and it’s getting to the point where I don’t want to throw more money at the car. I’d rather save it, and use that money towards buying a newer car.

Going electric

I’ve deliberately made this ‘part one’ of a series, as I have a few blog posts in mind between now and after we finally get a new car. When I say ‘new’, I mean ‘new to us’ – I doubt we’ll be buying a brand new car. We also haven’t decided on a particular make and model, but what we have agreed is essentially the following:

  • It’ll be roughly the same size, or smaller than our current car.
  • It’ll be electric, or a plug-in hybrid.

We want a smaller car, because our current car (a first-generation Peugeot 3008) can be a pain to park sometimes. And 95% of the time, we don’t need such a big car – we’re just burning extra diesel to carry excess air around. For the times when we do need more space, we’ll look at buying a roof box instead.

We’ve also decided that it’s about time we made the jump to an electric vehicle. We have the ability to charge one at home (more in that in a future blog post in the series) and, as we have solar panels, we’ll be able to do so very cheaply. Plus, more electric vehicles are becoming available on the second-hand market, so we’re more likely to be able to afford to buy one.

Like I said, I’ll be posting more about this in future blog posts over the summer – especially once we’ve bought the car.

How to: read a not-so-smart export meter

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A photo of our electricity meter showing our export reading

Somewhat annoyingly, our smart electric meter stopped being smart on the 26th March. I’m not entirely sure what happened, but since then, we’ve not had any automatic electricity readings sent to our energy supplier.

After a week, I reported the issue to Octopus, who are our energy supplier. We exchanged some emails back and forth, and tried various things, but apparently to no avail. What was weirder was that the gas meter still submits regular readings.

This web site has loads of information about smart meters, including how they work and how they communicate with your energy supplier. As well as the gas and electric meters, all homes with a smart meter have a ‘communications hub’ that sits on top of the electric meter, and it’s this that sends the data. So even though it was sat on top of our electric meter, it was only sending data from the gas meter. Weirder still is our ‘in home display’ (IHD) – the small black screen that sits away from our meters in our dining room. That was still accurately displaying data from both gas and electric meters.

With Octopus unable to fix the problem remotely, we’ll need an engineer to come out. And right now, there’s a long wait for smart meter engineer visits, as energy companies are currently prioritising those with a ‘radio teleswitch’ (RTS) meter. These older meters were used for (for example) Economy 7 tariffs, and listen for a radio signal to switch to a cheaper tariff – they’ve been around since the 1980s. Alas, the radio signal is being switched off at the end of next month, and there’s an estimated 400,000 RTS meters still in use. That doesn’t leave very long to have these replaced with smart meters.

Going back to manual readings

So whilst our gas readings are being sent automatically on a regular basis, we’re back to doing manual readings for electricity. As we have solar panels, we have to do two separate readings – an import reading, for the energy we use from the grid, and an export reading, for the energy that we sell back to the grid.

For the import readings, we can just use the IHD – press a few buttons, and it’ll give us our usage. But the IHD doesn’t display export readings. For that, we have to take a reading from the screen on the meter itself.

Our electricity meter is in our cellar, under the steps down from the kitchen. After we had our kitchen renovated, we also improved the access to the cellar, but it’s still in an awkward place. I have to move our tumble dryer out of the way, and crouch in the small space under the steps to take the reading.

It’s also not the most straightforward process. The meter itself has a small screen and two buttons, and you need to know which combination of button presses are required. Thankfully, Octopus offers this excellent guide to how to read various types of meters, and so I was able to submit both import and export readings. The next day, we were credited £116 for all the electricity we’d exported since the 26th March.

Hopefully, it won’t be too long before an engineer visits and fixes the issue for us. In the meantime, I’m also waiting to see if we can get an Octopus Home Mini, which bridges across to your home Wi-Fi network and sends data in near real-time.

Birthday blogging

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Today is my 41st birthday. After turning 40 last year, it’ll be a long time before I have another big birthday to celebrate.

I’m once again lucky that my birthday has fallen over a bank holiday weekend. We’re off to Beamish again; as we went there last July, we have annual passes with a couple of months left to run. It also gives us an opportunity to visit the areas that we missed last time – namely the 1940s and 1950s farms, and the funfair. Our visit also coincides with the Festival of Transport, so we’ll be able to travel on the short steam railway which wasn’t open last year.

We’ll be staying overnight nearby, as it’s a two hour drive each way.

How many UNESCO World Heritage sites have I visited?

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A photo of Salt's Mill in Saltaire, a UNESCO World Heritage Site near Bradford.

Something I used to do was ask my Facebook friends a new question every day. It started in 2022, and I managed to keep going every day well into last year before running out of ideas for new questions. One of those questions was how many UNESCO World Heritage Sites have you visited?

I think, in my mind, UNESCO World Heritage Sites are relatively unusual, and that most people would have only visited one or two in their lifetimes. As it happens, there are well over a thousand UNESCO World Heritage Sites across the world, in over 160 countries. 35 of these are in the UK alone. So, with this in mind, here are all of those that I have visited, split by country.

United Kingdom

A photo of Bridgetown in Barbados, a UNESCO World Heritage Site

Barbados

Barbados has just the one UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is its capital, Bridgetown. I went on holiday with my parents in 2000, as I’d turned 16 and it was their 25th wedding anniversary. To date, it’s the only time I’ve been to the western side of the Atlantic Ocean.

A photo of one of the canals in Bruges.

Belgium

  • La Grand-Place, Brussels. I had a weekend in Brussels with my parents in the early 2000s. At the time, my mum worked for a charity that was applying for a six-figure sum of funding from the European Commission, and so it was decided that she would submit the funding bids in person so that there was no risk of it getting lost in the post. We therefore went as a family and made a weekend of it, travelling down on the Eurostar.
  • Belfries of Belgium and France. These include belfries in Brussels and also Bruges, which we visited in 2014. Speaking of which…
  • Historic Centre of Bruges. The whole of central Bruges is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it’s easy to see why as it’s lovely. Previously I’d been briefly with my parents in 1992, on our way back from a holiday in eastern France.
A photo of Mont St Michel in Northern France

France

France is the country that I’ve visited the most after the UK, so it’s not surprising that I’ve visited several UNESCO World Heritage Sites over the years.

Greece

I have been to Crete, which is home to several UNESCO World Heritage Sites, but as I was only three years old at the time, I don’t really remember it.

Ireland

I have been to Ireland – well, Dublin. There are two UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the Republic of Ireland, but neither of them are in Dublin, so I haven’t been to them.

Italy

I have been to Italy twice – once to Venice, in 1999, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and once on a day trip in 2001 to Ventimiglia, a town known for its markets on the French border, which isn’t.

Jordan and Oman

I have been to Amman in Jordan, and Muscat and Salalah in Oman, but this was a work trip so I didn’t get to see any of the heritage sites whilst there.

Romania

I was lucky enough to go on an A-level Geography field trip to Romania in 2001. Whilst there, I got to see the Danube Delta and some of the Villages with Fortified Churches in Transylvania.

Spain

I’ve been to the northern coast of Spain once, staying near Santander, but it was thirty years ago and so I can’t remember whether we visited any of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites there.

Switzerland

I’ve been to Geneva once, all the way back in 1992, but not to any of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites elsewhere in the country.

Where next

I’ve hinted at a few places that we may go back to in the UK. Next month, there’s a possibility I may check off another international UNESCO World Heritage Site, but I can’t be sure that it’ll happen yet.

How to: Use automatic Octopus tariff data in the Solax app

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A screenshot of the page where users can generate an Octopus API key

If you have a Solax inverter attached to your solar panels, and get your energy from Octopus, then you can now calculate your earnings using live tariff data in the Solax app. I gather this feature has been there for a few months, but I’ve only recently found out about it. Here’s how to set it up.

Firstly, open the SolaxCloud app. On the home screen, tap the Earnings section. At the top right, you should see an icon that looks like a calculator with a lightning bolt on it, so tap that. You’ll now see two tabs – ‘To Grid’ and ‘From Grid’.

Get your Octopus API key

Before we continue, you’ll need to generate an API key. Log into your online Octopus Energy account (on the web, not on the app). At the top, it should say ‘Hi, [your name]’, display your account number, and then show a link called ‘Personal Details’. Click that link.

You should now see several boxes, one of which is called ‘Developer settings’. Click the ‘API access‘ button.

Scroll down a bit, and you’ll see a box labelled ‘Your API key:’. Copy this key, and preferably save it in a password manager. You can only have one API key, but you can use it for multiple things – I use my key for the Octopus Energy integration for Home Assistant, for example. You can regenerate your key, but it’ll invalidate your previous key, and you’ll only be shown it once on the Octopus web site. That’s why it’s best to treat it like your password.

Whilst you’re on Octopus’ web site, make a note of your account number too, as you’ll need this in a moment.

Enable automatic tariff setting

Back to the SolaxCloud app. Below the ‘To Grid’ and ‘From Grid’ tabs, you should have two further tabs: ‘Customized’ and ‘Automatic’. Tap ‘automatic’.

A new box called ‘Tariff provider’ appears, so tap this, and select ‘Octopus’. There’s another option called ‘Nord Pool’ which may work if you use a different energy supplier. I don’t, so I’ve only tested this with Octopus.

Now, you’ll have two options: ‘API Key’ and ‘Select a package’. ‘Select a package’ lets you manually choose your tariff and region, but it won’t update automatically if you change your tariff. So, we’ll select ‘API key’. Here, enter your account number, and then the API key, and tap ‘Save’. You should find that your current tariff and meter point access number now appear in the app. Scroll down, and you’ll be able to see the underlying tariff data, both as a graph and the raw data.

I’m on a fixed tariff with Octopus, so at present there’s no fluctuation with my import and export prices. However, if you’re on a tariff such as Octopus Agile, you’ll now see this data in the SolaxCloud app. What’s more, any future earnings will be calculated using this tariff data, and so it’ll more accurately reflect how much money your solar panels and/or battery are saving you.

Join Octopus

Octopus is now the UK’s largest electricity supplier, with a market share of 22%. And, with features like API access, the chances are that if you’re geeky enough to read this sort of blog post, then you’re already signed up. However, if not, here’s my referral link – you’ll get £50 off your first bill if you sign up. Financial incentives aside, of all the energy companies that I have used, Octopus have had the best customer service by far.

Authors I’ve read 5 or more books by

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Last weekend, on Bluesky, there was a meme going around where you listed the authors where you have read five or more of their books. I duly complied, but felt it was also worth a blog post to provide a bit of commentary on top.

The ordering of these is essentially the three authors that came to mind, and then the rest were from my Goodreads profile. Also, when I say ‘read’, this includes books that I have listened to as audiobooks. Indeed, this is primarily how I consume books, but I do try to fit in e-books and paper books where I can.

Terry Pratchett

I have read a lot of Terry Pratchett over the years. As a teenager, I read the Johnny Maxwell trilogy, and then started with the Discworld books in 2017. I’ve now read every core Discworld book (all 41 of them), as well as some of Pratchett’s non-Discworld works like The Carpet People, his Long Earth series with Stephen Baxter, and Truckers, the first book in the Bromeliad Trilogy. I tried to get our nine-year-old into the latter, but they weren’t interested and didn’t get a lot of the references, alas.

John Scalzi

Although I’ve not yet read any of his Old Man’s War series, for which he is best known, I have read a number of John Scalzi books. This includes the Lock In series – well, the two books and the prequel – Starter Villian, The Kaiju Preservation Society and The Android’s Dream. I picked up the majority of Scalzi’s books in a previous Humble Bundle, so they’re there for me to read in due course. I’ll also be picking up his latest novel, When The Moon Hits Your Eye when my next Audible credit is available. It’s once again narrated by Wil Wheaton, who does an excellent job – especially in the newer books.

Scott Meyer

Scott Meyer wrote an inventive fantasy/sci-fi series called Magic 2.0, and I’ve read all of those that have been published so far. If you like Pratchett and Scalzi, then you’ll like this series. I haven’t read any of his other books yet though.

Yahtzee Croshaw

Yahtzee Croshaw made a name for himself doing fast-faced and highly sarcastic video game review videos, in a series called Zero Punctuation which ran until 2023. But he has also had seven books published to date (plus two unpublished works available from his web site) and I’ve read five of them. They are, once again, mainly sci-fi, and include the humour that you would expect.

Roald Dahl

I think I’ve read every Roald Dahl book. More recently we’ve started reading some of them to our nine-year-old, hence why they’re showing up in my Goodreads lists.

Juno Dawson

Last year, I started reading Juno Dawson’s Her Majesty’s Royal Coven series. The first two books are fantastic, and I need to read the prequel soon before the final book, Human Rites, is published this summer. I’ve also read several of Dawson’s non-fiction, including The Gender Games and What’s The T? – I recommend both.

Terry Deary

As a kid, I wasn’t into reading fiction so much, so instead I read a lot of books like Horrible Histories. We’re now reading some of these with our nine-year-old.

Matt Haig

As with Juno Dawson, I’ve mainly read Matt Haig’s non-fiction works, like The Comfort Book and Reasons to Stay Alive. But last year I also read The Midnight Library and it fully deserves all of the accolades it received. Just an excellent novel. I need to read more of Haig’s novels in future.

Adam Kay

I remember seeing Adam Kay when he was performing comedy songs in a double act with Suman Biswas, as The Amateur Transplants. We saw them in Manchester – Christine and I were in the early months of our relationship and still lived apart. Back then, Kay was still a practising doctor with comedy and writing as a side-hustle.

Then he published This Is Going To Hurt which was both hilarious and heartbreaking in equal measure. Since then, he’s written a follow-up, Undoctored, but the reason why he features here is that he’s also written a very good series of science books for kids, starting with Kay’s Anatomy. We’ve read all of them to our nine-year-old.

Caitlin Moran

Another author who is here because I’ve read her non-fiction books. Indeed, How To Be A Woman was the first audiobook that I listed to on my Audible free trial, 12 years ago. I’ve also read her follow-ups, More Than A Woman and What About Men? as well as her collections of previously published columns for The Times newspaper. I would recommend them all, although I scored More Than A Woman highest.

Jay Rayner

I think I’ve read all of Jay Rayner’s books – mostly through the audiobooks which Christine and I listen to in the car. Rayner’s dulcet tones have accompanied us on many a long-distance drive over the years.

Gill Sims

Gill Sims is known for the Why Mummy series, of which I’ve read the first four books. There’s also the Saturday Night Sauvignon Sisterhood, which is a free-standing book that tangentially takes place in the same universe. All the books are very relatable if you’re a parent.

Neil Gaiman

I almost didn’t include Neil Gaiman here because, whilst I had read more than five of his books, I won’t be reading any more. I touched on this last week, but following the allegations that surround him, I can’t bring myself to read any more of his work. And that’s a shame, because Anansi Boys was one of my favourite books of all time.

What does this say about my taste in books?

Firstly, I was surprised that I had read five or more books from as many authors as this. Logging what I read on Goodreads has helped here. But I’m also a little disappointed that the majority of authors are straight white men. Admittedly, some of those straight white men, like Pratchett and Scalzi, are/were good allies, but I need to read more books by women and people of colour.

Also, I definitely have a thing for stories with humour, ideally in the sci-fi and fantasy realms, and most of the books that I read have been published relatively recently. Indeed, as I write this, all the authors bar Pratchett and Dahl are still alive.

Playlist of the month: British Eurovision hits

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Screenshot of the British Eurovision hits playlist

Tonight is the final of this year’s Eurovision song contest, so we’ll see how well this year’s British entry, “What The Hell Just Happened?” by Remember Monday gets on. You can read my verdicts on this and some of the other entries on Tuesday’s post.

Last May, the theme was my favourite all-time Eurovision songs, and so this May I’m focussing just on those that have represented the United Kingdom. As usual, you can listen along on Spotify.

  • “Love City Groove” by Love City Groove (1995). Yes, the song and the band have the same name. This was the first time that the UK entry featured rap. Though the band have released two albums, their other songs haven’t been played enough on Spotify to even show the number of streams.
  • “Ooh ahh… Just A Little Bit” by Gina G (1996). I’m pretty sure that this is the most well-known of all of the songs on here as it had a good life outside of Eurovision too. The opening bars are like a klaxon for summoning people to the dance floor.
  • “Love Shine a Light” by Katrina and the Waves (1997). A year later, and the UK won – indeed, this was the last time the UK won. Katrina and the Waves are of course better known for Walking on Sunshine.
  • “Where Are You?” by Imaani (1998). The UK hosted Eurovision in 1998, following our win in 1997, and this was a good song. The rest of Europe mostly agreed, and it came second to Diva by Dana International.
  • “Say It Again” by Precious (1999). Precious were a girl band, and this is classic pop. It came fifth, and whilst Precious did an album, they didn’t last much longer. Former member Jenny Frost found further fame when she replaced Kerry Katona as a member of Atomic Kitten, and later as a TV presenter.
  • “Flying the Flag (For You)” by Scooch (2007). I’ve missed a few years as these were mostly forgettable, but the band Scooch re-formed for this one off song. Again, it’s pure pop, and came with a great performance based on the band as flight attendants, but it didn’t score highly with our European neighbours.
  • “It’s My Time” by Jade Ewen (2009). A string of disappointing Eurovision results left the UK with no choice but to unleash its secret weapon: Andrew Lloyd Webber, who co-wrote the song. It mostly paid off, ranking fifth and the UK’s best result for seven years. Jade Ewen would join the Sugababes later the same year, replacing the final original member Keisha and completing their Ship of Theseus transformation.
  • “Children of the Universe” by Molly Smitten-Downes (2014). 2009 turned out to be a blip with more disappointing results to follow. This came 17th but deserved to do better. Molly was better known as being part of Stunt, who collaborated with Sash! for Raindrops (Encore une Fois) in 2008.
  • “Still in Love with You” by Electro Velvet (2015). I like a bit of electro swing, and whilst it wasn’t the best song, I have a soft spot for this. There’s a fun mash-up with the Bird’s Eye Potato Waffles tune. Alas, it came joint last in Eurovision that year.
  • “Space Man” by Sam Ryder (2022). And finally, our last big success in 2022. Whilst Ukraine won that year, we managed to come second, and hosted the 2023 contest in Liverpool due to the ongoing conflict.

Bifrost – a Hue smart light emulator

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A screenshot of the Bifrost logo

Today I’m writing about Bifrost, which is software that emulates a Philips Hue bridge for controlling smart light bulbs. It works with Zigbee2MQTT, and is designed to replicate the core Philips hardware using open source software.

Bifrost allows you to control any Zigbee smart lights (bulbs, strips etc) using the Philips Hue app, without needing to buy the Hue Bridge. The Hue bridge normally costs around £50 on Amazon (sponsored link). Instead, Bifrost can run on the same hardware as, say, Home Assistant, or an old an PC.

Setting up Bifrost

I’ve recently installed Bifrost on the same Raspberry Pi that hosts my Home Assistant instance (there’s an addon to make it easier). As it stands, it’s relatively new software, and so it has to be configured manually using a YAML file. You also need to be using Zigbee2MQTT, and have Zigbee smart bulbs – non-Zigbee devices aren’t supported, and nor is Home Assistant’s built in Zigbee controller. Also, Bifrost only works with lights – for example, I have a Zigbee smart plug which controls a light, and Bifrost ignores this.

The other thing to be aware of is that Hue uses ports 80 and 443, so if you want to use Bifrost, there can’t be any other software acting as a web server on the same machine. I had to pause my use of Nginx Proxy Manager to get it to work; thankfully, I’m now using Homeway for remote access to Home Assistant so this wasn’t an issue. Whilst you can tell Bifrost to open other ports instead, most Hue apps won’t work if you do this.

Once Bifrost is running and has found your Zigbee devices, you should be able to use the official Hue app to set up your lights. You’ll need to tell the app that your bridge doesn’t have a QR code; if all goes well, it’ll detect the Hue mDNS packets that Bifrost broadcasts, and it’ll then work just as if you had a genuine Hue bridge.

Benefits of the Hue app

The official Hue app has some features that other smart home apps don’t have – mainly the ‘Scene Gallery’. If you have multiple multi-colour lights in a particular room, Hue can offer to set them to different, but complementary colours.

It should be noted that, with Bifrost, you can use the Hue app to control (theoretically) any smart lights, regardless of whether they were manufactured by Philips or not. The multi-colour lights I have were a couple of cheap Tuya Zigbee strips from AliExpress, and they work fine in the Hue app through Bifrost.

Other Hue emulators

Bifrost isn’t the only emulator in town. There’s also DIY Hue, which, like Bifrost, can be installed using Docker or as a Home Assistant addon. There’s a comparison between Bifrost and DIY Hue here.

Home Assistant itself includes a Hue emulator. It’s an older integration that has to be configured using YAML, and it’s more limited. It probably won’t work with the official Hue app – I haven’t tried it myself. It’s mainly there as an easier way to bridge devices in Home Assistant into Amazon Alexa.

Eurovision 2025 – my verdicts

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Screenshot of the Eurovision Song Contest home page for this year's contest in Basel, Switzerland

This week, it’s the 69th (nice) Eurovision Song Contest, which is being hosted in Switzerland following Nemo’s win last year. As per last year, I’ve listened to all of the 37 songs that will be entered into the semi-finals this week, and this Saturday’s final, and here are my verdicts. If you want to listen yourself, here’s the official playlist on Spotify.

Douze points

  • “C’est La Vie” by Claude (Luxembourg). Claude has a nice voice, like a Francophone John Legend.
  • “Esa Diva” by Melody (Spain). This is exactly the sort of song you would expect Spain to enter – a big latin-themed dance track.
  • “Gaja” by Justyna Steczkowska (Poland). Poland doesn’t have a strong record with Eurovision, apart from its memorable 2014 entry with “We Are Slavik” by Cleo, but I think this is good.
  • “Hallucination” by Sissal (Denmark). I think this is one of my top picks, actually. Some great lyrics and a strong voice.
  • “Laika Party” by Emmy (Ireland). I really like this one too. It’s also mildly controversial (by Eurovision standards of controversy) as Emmy is Norwegian, and indeed has tried multiple times to be Norway’s pick for Eurovision. As one of the song’s writers was Irish, she was eligible to perform for Ireland. I like how the lyrics are based on the true story of Laika the dog, the first earth animal to go into space.
  • “Mila” by Princ (Serbia). I don’t think this will win but I enjoyed listening to it nonetheless.
  • “Milkshake Man” by Go-Jo (Australia). Australia participating in Eurovision is just something that’s not worth thinking too hard about. Eurovision always needs at least one novelty act and thankfully this one is catchy.
  • “Róa” by Væb (Iceland). Iceland probably would have won the 2020 contest if it had gone ahead. This is good too.
  • “Run with U” by Mamaga (Azerbaijan). Azerbaijan hosted Eurovision in 2012 and often does well. This year’s entry is catchy pop and I think it could score well.
  • “Serving” by Miriana Conte (Malta). I liked Malta’s 2021 entry, “Je Me Casse” by Destiny, and it came seventh that year. This is in a similar vein, although the song had to be re-recorded as the original chorus was about ‘serving kant’.
  • “Tutta l’Italia” by Gabri Ponte (San Marino). You may have heard of Gabri Ponte – he’s quite big in the Eurodance scene at the moment – but you’ll almost certainly remember his previous band, Eiffel 65, and their 1998/99 song “Blue (Da Ba Dee)”. He’s back, with this song in Italian. Potentially one to watch, although previous established dance acts like Darude and Cascada haven’t always done well at Eurovision.

Nul points

  • “Deslocado” by Napa (Portugal). Nope, found this really boring.
  • “Tavo akys” by Katarsis (Lithuania). I can’t even remember why this song was bad, which probably says a lot.
  • “Volevo essere un duro” by Lucio Corsi (Italy). There are two other songs being sung in Italian in this year’s Eurovision (San Marino, mentioned above, and Estonia for some reason) and this isn’t the best one.

The UK Eurovision entry

Last year, we were represented by Olly Alexander from Years & Years with “Dizzy”. I think it was an okay song, but I gather the performance on the night wasn’t well-received. It came 18th out of 25 songs, and scored the dreaded ‘nul points’ from the public vote, gaining points only from professional juries.

This year’s entry is “What The Hell Just Happened?” by Remember Monday, and it’s an upbeat country-themed pop song. I think it certainly stands out against a lot of Eurodance. I don’t think it’ll win, but a top 10 position would be well-deserved.

Looking back at last year’s top 5, two of my top picks were in there. But I also liked the Norwegian entry which came last. Of those that I disliked, Joost’s “Europapa” was disqualified after some backstage shenanigans, but the Israeli and Irish entries came 5th and 6th.