Earlier today, Irish tabloids Irish Mirror and Irish Daily Mail were revealing that the act representing Ireland at the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest in Ukraine is most likely set to be announced tonight by RTÉ at their well-known TV chat show “The Late Late Show”, hosted by Ryan Tubridy. The show is running from 21:35 (local time) onwards.
This means broadcaster RTÉ has left apart the idea of opting for a public national selection system as they did in previous years at the very same TV show which saw acts such as Niahm Kavanagh, Jedward or Ryan Dolan taking the right to represent the country after an open voting. After some unfortunate and disappointing results in the past few years, Jedward being the last act entering the top 10 in Eurovision, it looks like Walsh has been asked to solve the case and save the country.
Both journals also reported that X Factor and popular pop manager Louis Walsh, who has been given his view on the Irish contenders and the contest at the chat show for several years, was approached by RTÉ to select both the singer and the song that will be flying the Irish colours in Kiev in full control.
A source told the paper: “Louis was approached several months ago by RTE and asked would he be interested in guiding Ireland through next year’s song contest. Obviously he has a huge wealth of knowledge and experience. It was a no-brainer to see if he would do it and when he said yes it was a big boost for Team Ireland”.
“Everyone was extremely disappointed with the result in Stockholm. But Louis has picked someone with a big voice who can hit all the ranges and he has all the contacts to get a winning song. It won’t be Johnny Logan, it will be someone a lot more current”, the source added.
We must remember everyone, if there’s a need to, that Ireland is the country with the most wins at the contest, a total of 7 times Europe saw them taking the lead. Johnny Logan got two of them as a soloist and the other one writing Linda Martin’s winning song “Why Me?”. Last year, Nicky Byrne’s from Westlife was also internally selected to represent Ireland but could not make it to the grand final coming 15th in the second semifinal.
So, might we have anyone from The X Factor following Nicky’s footsteps at the contest in May? The answer could see the light tonight, stay tuned!