Charlotte's Moscow dream is over

17 January 2009 at 21:43 CET

Following on from Damien's departure last week, five hopefuls remained battling it out to win the honour of representing the United Kingdom in Moscow in the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest.

Media interest is at an all time high in the United Kingdom with the appointment of Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber as project manager and composer for the 2009 entry, and a Saturday evening prime time slot commissioned every weekend throughout January for the selection shows.

Tonight, the second show was opened by the five acts all singing a rendition together of the United Kingdom winning song from the 1976 contest, Brotherhood of Man's Save your kisses for me. Immediately following that it was time for the live performances, with all performers trying their best to impress selection manager Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber and his assistants, 1969 Eurovision Song Contest winner Lulu, and Duncan James from boyband Blue, not to mention of course the televoting audiences at home. The viewing audience indeed would have the final say as to which two acts ended up in the so called Danger Zone this week, these being the two with the least number of televotes.

After the five individual performances from The Twins, Emperors of Soul, Jade, Charlotte and Mark the performers were then split in to boys together and girls together like last week to perform another song.

Performers meet lyricist Diane Warren

On the back of last weeks announcement that the United Kingdom's entry will have lyrics written by arguably the worlds most prolific and internationally successful songwriter, the lady who has had more than 100 top ten hits in her career, Diane Warren. The challenge was set to perform one of Diane's previously penned hits. The girls gave a rendition of the De Barge classic "Rhythm of the night" and the boys performed Starship's "Nothing's gonna stop us now".

All of the competitors had the opportunity to meet Diane this week as she flew in to London to begin the collaboration with Andrew Lloyd Webber on the United Kingdom's entry. Both Andrew and Diane seemed genuinely excited to be working together and clearly had a lot of respect and admiration for each other. Andrew paid tribute to Diane's past successes by introducing her as "The lady who has had more hits than YouTube!".

Following on from that, new girl group The Saturdays performed as the final televotes were being checked and confirmed. Then came the announcements. Jade, Mark and The Twins were declared as safe for another week and will return next Saturday. This left Emperors of Soul and Charlotte facing an anxious wait to hear who Andrew Lloyd Webber had chosen to save. After deliberating Andrew decided to save Emperors of Soul, thus spelling the end for Charlotte's Eurovision Song Contest dream.

Next week Jade, Mark, The Twins and Emperors of Soul will return to perform once again and continue their dream to represent the United Kingdom in Moscow in Europe's favourite television show.