This is it! This is actually it! This is actually Eurovision week. Finally. Finally.

You’ll be bored of these reminders by Saturday, but don’t forget that we’re liveblogging the Eurovision Song Contest this weekend, right here. We’re doing it because we love you. And you love us too, right? You love us enough to stay in and comment on the liveblog, right? Because lord knows that we’re pathetic enough for doing it in the first place. We don’t want to be doing it alone.

Here are the Eurovision 2009 profiles for Quartissimo and Martina Majerle from Slovenia and Soraya Arnelas from Spain…

Slovenia · Quartissimo and Martina Majerle, Love Symphony

Confusing Slovenia and Slovakia used to be quite easy to do – after all, they sound the same and we get the impression that people from both countries are monobrowed hunchbacks – but not any more, and we’ve got Eurovision to thank for that. As we’ve already told you, Slovakia’s Eurovision entry is morbidly depressing, but Slovenia’s sounds like it should be used on an advert for diamonds or wildly expensive catfood or something. Love Symphony by Quartissimo and Martina Majerle is also unusual for another reason – there’s hardly any singing in it. Honestly, the first third of the song is nothing but a bunch of old men wanking about on violins, and you don’t even get to see what the singer looks like until about 30 seconds from the end. It’s all very mysterious. Mysterious but not good. Definitely not good.

Spain · Soraya Arnelas, La noche es para mí

Before we start, let’s play a game. Guess which Spain has entered Eurovision this year – the one that’s all history and flamenco guitars and boredom, or the one that’s all Benidorm and all-inclusive chip dinners and awfulness? Neither! In a dramatic departure from the norm, Spain has tried something fresh and new for this year’s Eurovision – it’s decided to rip off Touch My Fire, the 2005 UK Eurovision entry by Javine. Only, you know, it’s in Spanish so it’s a sort of Javine/Dora The Explorer hybrid. In English, La Noche Es Para Mi means ‘the night is for me’, from which we can presume that Soraya Arnelas is either a drug addict, a burglar or a Slow Loris. Any of these things would be more interesting than the song itself, mind you, which appears to go on for several decades without ever really doing anything.

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Ready for some more Eurovision betting odds? Of course you are. Don’t try to kid yourself, it makes you look fat.

Since this is the first week of Eurovision rehearsals – of which we’ve been meticulously watching for your benefit – we thought we’d fill you in on some of the more recent developments we’ve noticed. The Latvians do a dance that looks like swordfighting and the Swiss bloke’s routine involves standing quite still. You’re welcome.

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

Slovenia (pop. 2,011,070; a coastal sub-alpine country in southern central Europe) Rebeka Dremelj, Vrag Naj Vzame

Nice try, Slovenia, nice try. You almost won us over by entering a beauty queen with her own underwear range into Eurovision, but we won’t have the wool pulled over our eyes that easily. Because, having done these Eurovision betting odds for four years, we know when a song sounds identical to every other song ever recorded, and that’s the case with Vraj Naj Vzame. Although Rebeka Dremelj is undoubtedly very pretty – and the lyrics (“Heavy weather is all we had together/ No more time to waste my tears to you”) appear to chronicle a hopeless romance founded on a shared appreciation of meteorology, the music is such a jumble piss-weak Europop that you could listen to it a thousand times and still not really remember how it went. That’s not really a good thing for Eurovision. Current Eurovision betting odds – 50/1

Tomorrow: Spain! 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.