Who are we sending to Eurovision? Nicky Byrne has been selected to represent Ireland in Stockholm in May. He has written Ireland's entry, Sunlight, with his fellow songwriters Wayne Hector and Ronan Hardiman.
Nicky Byrne, like, Nicky Byrne? Yeah, that guy. One-fifth of the original Westlife, Bertie Ahern's son-in-law, RTÉ 2FM presenter, Strictly Come Dancing hoofer.
Don't we send nobodies to Eurovision? Sometimes, yes. Of late Ireland has been represented by professionally untried talent chosen through a national vote on The Late Late Show. That clearly wasn't working – for the past two years Ireland didn't qualify for the final, and in 2013 Ryan Dolan qualified but came last.
So RTÉ's Eurovision team persuaded Byrne to compete? Actually, he approached them. "Nicky came to us and said, 'I've written a song with Wayne Hector and Ronan Hardiman, and I would love to represent Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest,' " says Michael Kealy, head of RTÉ's delegation. "I heard the song and I thought it was very good. It'll do well for us, and the goal of the thing is to do really well."
What's in it for Byrne? He's launching a solo musical career (an album is in the works), Eurovision is a great platform for international visibility, and Westlife were huge in Sweden, where this year's competition takes place between May 10th and 14th. Hector is a big pop-music player; he wrote seven of Westlife's number-one hits and has also written for Nicki Minaj and One Direction. Hardiman is the veteran Irish composer who scored Michael Flatley's Lord of the Dance and Feet of Flames. This is a shrewd move by Byrne to put himself on the European pop map as a solo artist.
So it's all just cynical careerism? Byrne seems to love the contest. He has presented Ireland's Eurovision votes for the past three years because, according to Kealy, "he's a fan and a patriotic guy".
Right then. What are our chances? Sunlight is an upbeat pop ditty with a bit of an ear worm in the chorus. The problem is that it doesn't grow: there's no key change, no switch-up halfway through. But this is where staging comes in. Eurovision has long ceased being just a song contest; you've got to bring the spectacle.
So what's our spectacle game plan? Unclear as of yet, but, again, Byrne was on top of this. He brought to the table not just Hector and Hardiman but also two US-based Britons, Tim Byrne, former creative director of Simon Cowell's company Syco Music (which represented Westlife), and Lee Lodge, coproducer of Oscar telecasts and an executive producer of the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards. Kealy says they are coming on board "to help stage the act".
What does the internet say? Commentators on many Eurovision fan sites are saying that this is a sure qualifier – not a winner but potentially a return to form from the country that bossed the contest in the 1990s.
What's at stake? Everything, people, everything. After Måns Zelmerlöw's victory last year, with Heroes, Sweden is now at six wins – only one away from Ireland's record seven. We don't know what Sweden is putting forward this year; that will be revealed in February. But we have a reputation to defend. Grit your teeth, put on that factor 50 and bask in the Sunlight, people of Ireland. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
