Liz McClarnon, the original Atomic Kitten and budding solo singer, appears to have made a grave mistake in putting herself and a song forward as the UK's Eurovision: Making Your Mind Up entry on Saturday.

Whatever can she be thinking? Anyone who watches the amateurish UK event and the following over-hyped final (this year in Helsinki on May 12) knows that our song can't win. Nobody votes for us for some strange reason which is particularly harsh as the BBC helps to finance an event derided by Terry Wogan year after year for the countries which only vote for each other.

Then again our main rivals in world influence like France, Germany, Holland, Italy and Spain fare little better and even the neutrals like Malta and Cyprus have now been ditched in favour of Baltic states with dubious pop pedigrees.

Liz seemed genuinely shocked that Ladbrokes and William Hill have put Justin Hawkins and Brian Harvey higher in the betting than her song Happy!

She should be happy. Being humiliated in Helsinki by time-honoured voting conventions is not a career high point.

Whoever wins the UK vote will have to come up with a novelty dance and wear as little clothing as possible to avoid being placed above 'nul point' status. And if I was a betting man I'd put money on the UK once again being given no maximum point awards by other countries.

There are two solutions here. Bring in a neutral panel of judges from outside Europe. A few Argentinians, Iranians, Syrians and North Koreans would do.

Alternatively, have a selection system by lot which allocates a song written by one country to be performed by another. Thus the UK could have got Lordi's effort from Finland to be performed last year by Daz Sampson and his rap song might have gone to France who never vote for us anyway.

To be really honest, we'll need to persuade someone like Sir Elton to compose and perform a Eurovision Song Contest entry if we're serious about ever winning again. He ticks every box, if you'll pardon the expression.