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Much as we would hate to say we told you so, our tip for the top Javine romped to victory on Saturday night’s Making Your Mind Up show on BBC One. The former Popstars hopeful triumphed over nearest rival Katie Price (aka Jordan) with her Bollywood-inspired dance number Touch My Fire. As such, she’ll now represent the UK at this year’s contest, which takes place on May 21st in Kiev.

It was pretty obvious from the start of the show who the front-runners were going to be – Javine, wearing an orange frock that didn’t leave too much to the imagination, kicked things off with a cracking performance that showed she meant business. Operatic trio Tricolore and balladeer Andy Scott-Lee were solid if unremarkable, while Gina G did little to impress voters despite an energetic routine. As for Katie Price – well, her skintight pink catsuit was memorable, which is more than can be said for her performance.

Despite all the pre-contest banter about how this year’s Eurovision would see appearances from Israel, Lebanon and, er, Jordan, UK viewers ultimately went for the strongest song rather than allowing themselves to be influenced by the cult of celebrity and the all-too-obvious hype. Had Katie had the best song then there would have been no question of her winning, irrespective of who she was. Ultimately though she was outclassed on the night.

But now that Javine has triumphed, can she go one better and win the contest itself? Well since we haven’t actually heard any of the other entries yet (we’ll be listening to them all over the coming weeks and will of course be posting our opinions on them) we don’t have anything to judge her against. What we do know is that she’s had plenty of experience in singing live, which should help a lot come the big night – and given it’s one of the stronger entries we’ve had for a while, there’s no reason why she shouldn’t do very well indeed.

Mind you, that’s what we said last year….