After last night's Eurovision semi-final sufficiently whetted the public's appetite for another incarnation of the world's largest Battle of the Bands competition, we figured it wise to do open the history books to find you, dear reader, ten random facts about the song contest throughout its long and storied history.

Honestly, this list could have been a hell of a lot longer but in the interest of brevity...
 

10. Over 1,200 songs have so far been performed at the Eurovision Song Contest, since its debut more than 50 years ago.

9.   A figure in excess of 125 million people watch the live Eurovision broadcast every year. That's almost one out of every seven of us in Europe.

8.   Each song has a maximum duration of three minutes and no more than six people are allowed on stage from any one country.

7.   Famous alumni from Eurovisions past include Celine Dion, Abba, Cliff Richard, Julio Iglesias and, er, Bruce Forsyth's daughter Julie.

6.   If you liked the song about cake in the semi finals this week, you might also like the Norway's 1980 offering about the construction of a hydro electric station.

5.   Or Spain's 'La La La', which featured more than 130 separate utterings of 'La'.

4.   Ireland has won seven times to date. To be perfectly blunt, we don't look like adding to our tally anytime soon either.

3.   For reasons that we can't quite explain, Morocco took part in the Eurovision song contest in 1980 and haven't been back since. Perhaps they realised that they're a part of North Africa?

2.   Poor old Norway have come last eleven times.

1.   That's not as bad as Portugal though, who've never once finished in the Top Five since their Eurovision debut in 1964.