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Israel’s got a lot on its plate right now – what with all this talk of nuking Iran, nuking Syria, nuking Lebanon and the constant need to police the wailing wall for people who are clapping too vigorously. Seriously – it all adds up. The last thing they need right now is multiple eye-witnesses claiming an actual mermaid is haunting their shores.

But that’s what they got anyway.

Israel’s got a mermaid. With that knowledge you may conjure up mental images of Ariel sitting on an above-surface ocean rock playing a pan flute while you bravely stab an octopus lady with an old sunken ship. Don’t – because this mermaid is totally gross. With that knowledge you may conjure up an image of how ‘totally gross’ could still be better than your wife, and decide you’d stab the octo-witch anyway.

Well that’s up to you.

For the record though, we really don’t know what the mermaid looks like. Eye-witnesses do – and here’s what they’ve said. According to Natti Zilberman, a local town council spokesperson:

“The nautical nymph is only seen in the evening at sunset, according to media reports, drawing crowds of people with cameras hoping for a glimpse. People say it is half girl, half fish, jumping like a dolphin. It does all kinds of tricks then disappears… They say it is a female figure, it looks like a young girl.”

Are you convinced yet? Do you accept that the mermaid exists? Well then maybe you need another eye-witness quote. This one’s from a guy named Shlomo Cohen:

“I was with friends when suddenly we saw a woman laying on the sand in a weird way. At first I thought she was just another sunbather, but when we approached she jumped into the water and disappeared. We were all in shock because we saw she had a tail.”

The local government there is taking the whole fish-girl business so seriously – enough to offer a million dollar reward to anybody who can bring in all the severed fins from off this thing. There’s a standing order to re-release the gilled-creature back into the ocean after fin removal as not to upset PETA.

Our sources have just told us the reward is for photos, not the actual fins. That’s dumb – duh, Photoshop, Israel, Photoshop!

We think the witnesses are definitely seeing something, and although we’re not quite liberal enough to believe a mermaid actually exists, we’re not ruling out a dolphin biologically cursed with beautiful human boobies. And unless you can concretely prove our plausible theory wrong, we’re really not interested in hearing from you.

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We’re really thrumming up to the day that the Eurovision Song Contest gets interesting now, so hold onto your hats.

And the Eurovision news is really coming in thick and fast, if the contest’s official website is anything to go by. Why, just yesterday we learnt that the Maltese entry has a side-job as a secretary. This sort of hard-hitting breaking news is enough to leave us giddy, we don’t mind telling you.

So here’s the Eurovision 2009 profiles for Sinéad Mulvey and Black Daisy from Ireland and Noa and Mira Awad from Israel…

Ireland · Sinéad Mulvey and Black Daisy, Et Cetera

Which Ireland will we be seeing at Eurovision this year? The annoyingly twee Ireland or the horrific bellowing turkey puppet Ireland? Well here’s the exciting news – this year there’s Sinéad Mulvey and Black Daisy, who are easily the most contemporary-sounding Irish Eurovision act in decades. True, that means they look and sound like they’re from an earnest 1985 documentary about kids with learning disabilities who’ve formed a band, but it still counts as progress for Ireland. What’s their song Et Cetera like? Rubbish. Next.

Israel · Noa and Mira Awad, There Must Be Another Way

For Israel – possibly the least European country on the face of the Earth – Eurovision has always presented two opportunities. Like the rest of the continent, there’s the opportunity to force-feed the world three minutes of worthless discopop, but there’s also a chance to spread a message. That message is invariably based on the theme ‘Look, we know everything’s pretty buggered up over here, but we promise that we’re not all bastards’. And that couldn’t be made more clear than There Must Be Another Way by Noa and Mira Awad. One’s a Jew and one’s a Muslim, you see, and they’ve put aside their religious differences to sing in perfect harmony. To sing a really bad song in perfect harmony. A really bad song that you wouldn’t be able to hum if someone held a gun to your head. Ich.

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Despite the all the threats against his life, Paul McCartney and his 5,000 bodyguards finally played their long-awaited peace concert in Israel last night, with no disruption whatsoever from fanatical snipers or would-be suicide bombers or whatnot. Paul McCartney lives to fight another day!

Of course, Paul McCartney’s masterstroke was to address both sides of the Middle East conflict in their own language right at the start of the concert. First McCartney opened with “Shalom, Tel Aviv, shana tova, ahlan!” giving the crowd the traditional Hebrew greeting ahead of Monday’s Rosh Hashanah celebrations. Then he added “Ramadan kareem” which, as we all know, is Arabic for “Not the face! Not the face!”

When you’ve been around for as long as Paul McCartney, you don’t worry about little things like fanatical death threats. That’s because, when you reach an age where death could come just as easily from a fall on an icy street, a sudden loud noise behind you or a faulty walk-in bath, Islamic extremists just seem noisy and a little attention-seeking in comparison.

That’s why, although threats were made against his life when he announced last night’s concert in Israel, Paul McCartney vowed to play on regardless, with his only defence being his music and the 5,000 bodyguards he hired to protect him from everything.

And play on he did. In photos taken a few hours before the concert, you can see no sign of anxiety on Paul McCartney’s face at all. Although, actually, it might have been there – Paul McCartney’s face now resembles a 3D representation of Edvard Munch’s The Scream sculpted from a bucket of week-old porridge so perfectly these days that we haven’t got a clue what’s going on with it – but we’ll guess there wasn’t.

And Paul McCartney was right not to worry either, because in the end the concert came off without a single assassination attempt. E! Online reports:

McCartney then unleashed a string of hits from both his Beatles and Wings days, among them “I’ll Follow the Sun,” “Live and Let Die,” “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” “Yesterday,” “Jet,” “Drive My Car,” “All My Loving,” “Eleanor Rigby,” and, of course, his signature sing-along “Hey Jude.” The concert, which boasted two encores and many, many wild standing ovations, lasted about two and a half hours.

No wonder Paul McCartney got such a wild reception – as well as songs by The Beatles and Wings, Paul also managed to spin some brand-new material into the show, like the just-written Don’t Blow Me Up, along with others like Please Don’t Blow Me Up, Think Of My Children (I Beg of You) and the fan favourite in-waiting Don’t Bloody Blow Me Up I’m Paul McFuckingCartney.

So we can all agree that Paul McCartney’s Israel concert was as epic and statesmanlike as it could have possibly been, and all because he thought to address both the Jewish and Arab sides of the argument in their native languages. It’ll backfire for sure when the Greek Orthodox gang realise they they didn’t get a shout-out and send over a suicide squad to finish Paul McCartney off once and for all, but hey ho.

And because of this, Paul McCartney’s concert tonight in Israel is shrouded with danger. Islamic extremists are apparently so determined to kill Paul McCartney tonight that nobody is taking any chances – which is why 5,000 bodyguards have been hired to surround Paul McCartney at all times during his visit. That’s even more that George Bush needed.

The message of this is clear – although he takes the death threats incredibly seriously, Paul McCartney will not deprive the Israeli people of his music. The other message, of course, is that Paul McCartney’s got so many bouncers around him at the moment that there won’t be anyone working the door of your local nightclub tonight, so you could probably get away with jeans and trainers if you wanted.

Paul McCartney has played some important concerts in his life – Shea Stadium, The Super Bowl, Red Square – but none have been quite as important as tonight’s concert in Tel Aviv. That’s because religious extremists didn’t decide to promote any of the other concerts by promising that Paul McCartney would get blown up by the middle of the second half.

Islamic fanatics have threatened to kill Paul McCartney if his concert tonight in Israel goes ahead. You see, to them Paul McCartney is the ultimate icon of western opulence and his death would be as heavily symbolic to the world as the events of 911. Also, they’re totally pissed off that Paul McCartney never responded to their letter asking if they could use Wonderful Christmastime as their theme tune.

But Paul McCartney has refused to cancel tonight’s concert, believing that not singing C Moon to a load of middle-aged Jewish people would literally be as bad as dying anyway. So McCartney’s decided to do the next best thing instead – he’s hired 5,000 bodyguards. The Mirror reports:

The vast security for Sir Paul McCartney’s Tel Aviv concert tonight even dwarfs the protection given to President Bush when he visited Israel. A 5,000-strong security team will ensure Macca, 66, is watched around the clock in the wake of death threats from Islamic fanatics. A massive security army guarding Macca includes 20 agents from Israel’s elite Mossad intelligence organisation as well as officers from Britain’s MI6.

He’s just playing it safe, of course – Paul McCartney doesn’t need all that security. He has his own ways of stopping the terrorists, like launching into a 20-minute version of Hey Jude so utterly tedious that it’ll knock any religious extremist into a deep slumber for up to a week. He could achieve a similar effect by playing any song from his last three albums, but the risk is just too high – these fanatics aren’t people you’d want to anger, remember.

And anyway, we’re only assuming that Paul McCartney will be playing the concert tonight. For all we know he could be sending on a stand-in in his place. For all we know that could be your nan up on stage tonight. Don’t pretend you could tell the difference.

No, instead, the concert in Israel could be Paul McCartney’s last because a gang of Islamic extremists are running around telling everyone that they’re going to kill him if he follows through with his plan to play there.

However, Paul McCartney has shown admirable strength of character by refusing to bow to these religious fanatics. In fact, if anything this death threat has just strengthened Paul McCartney’s resolve – not only will he play the concert in Israel, but he’s even going to turn it into a live album, entitled Paul McCartney Live Behind Six Inches Of Reinforced Plexiglass Inside A Sealed Lead Box Surrounded By Several Bodyguards And At Least A Couple Of Tanks.

You know what offends Islamic fundamentalists the most about the west? No, it’s not our consumerist lifestyles, our swaggering cultural dominance or our free and easy attitudes to sex and stimulants – it’s the bloody Frog Song.

Seriously, al Qaeda didn’t even exist until Paul McCartney wrote The Frog Song. There they were, Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Hamza, all sitting round the kitchen table discussing the Pauly Shore movie Biodome when – bam! – all of a sudden The Frog Song by Paul McCartney came on the radio and everyone more or less instantly decided to bring western civilisation to its knees. True story.

Since then, the terrorists have been determined to finish Paul McCartney off, and now it looks like they might have their chance. Next Thursday Paul McCartney is going to play a concert in Tel Aviv, which would be fine except for all the Islamic extremists carping on about killing him if he does. But, as The New York Times reports, McCartney is unbowed:

Paul McCartney has refused to cancel his concert in Israel, despite threats from Islamic militants, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported. The response follows comments made by Omar Bakri Muhammad, a militant Lebanese Islamic activist, in an interview. Mr. Bakri said, “If he values his life, Mr. McCartney must not come to Israel… He will not be safe there. The sacrifice operatives will be waiting for him.”

Oh God, this is worse than we thought. Paul McCartney is relevant again. Ugh.

Anyway, it’s absolutely right that Paul McCartney should play on in Israel despite the death threats. If he can see off threats from Gordon Ramsay he can definitely see off threats from organised terrorist groups. You know what they say – if Israelis aren’t being charged through the nose to listen to an old man with a face like a ruptured hot water bottle sing a load of 40-year-old songs in a way that can’t even come close to replicating the original versions before being relentlessly hounded to buy an overpriced programme and tour T-shirt then the terrorists have won.

Actually, Paul McCartney should be safe, because terrorism experts have already dismissed the death threats as not credible. For some reason the Islamic activists sort of went off the idea of blowing up Paul McCartney’s car with a mortar as soon as they realised that he’d divorced Heather Mills and she wouldn’t be coming with him. Funny that.

Anyway, let’s just hope that Paul McCartney remains safe duing his time in Israel. Not because we care about him or anything, but with John Lennon already shot and George Harrison already stabbed, can you imagine what an obnoxious bighead Ringo Starr would turn into if Paul McCartney got blown up by a terrorist and he was the last one left? God, it’d be unbearable.

Although we’re often quite disparaging about the Eurovision Song Contest, it’s impossible to deny the impact that it has on its winners. Like the woman who won it last year. You know who we’re talking about. That woman. The woman with the song. You remember. She’s massive now.

Here are the Eurovision betting odds for Israel, with help from Paddy Power…

Israel (pop. 6,876,883; a country in the Middle East on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean sea) Boaz, The Fire In Your Eyes

Before we begin, watch the video above with your eyes closed. Is the singer male or female? Wrong – Boaz is a bloke. He just has the girliest voice in all of history. With thudding inevitability, Boaz is the winner of Israel’s Pop Idol – a television show that appears to reward the singers who can produce the most phlegm. To the untrained ear, you see, The Fire In Your Eyes sounds like a man with terminal Bronchitis trying to hawk up a massive flob. That’s clearly not the case, though – the song is a tender lament about a miserable bloke with super-acute nasal abilities: “Sometimes the wind brings a good, familiar smell,” it goes. Now, perhaps that’s an old Israeli proverb that we haven’t heard, but regardless we’d like to invite Boaz to our house – he needs to learn that quite often the only smell the wind brings is a sort of rotting fish smell from the local petrochemical factory. Current Eurovision betting odds – 50/1

Tomorrow: Latvia! But if that’s too long to wait – or you feel like making more money than you know what to do with – head right over to the Paddy Power Eurovision betting odds page to see the latest, and best, betting odds.