In the latest national final for the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest to be held before 2012 even ends (and the very last before the predicted end of the world), Lithuania tonight selected Andrius Pojavis to represent the Baltic nation in Malmö with the song “Something”.

A lengthy and colourful show very nearly lasted into the early hours of Friday morning local time despite featuring just seven songs – the scheduled eighth performer, Monika (“Baby Boy)”, having to withdraw at short notice due to a case of laryngitis that she evidently didn’t want to try and sing through, Karma-style.

With a sign-language mime accompanying Ieva and Gabrielius’ duet, eventual winner Pojavis turning up in top hat and tails, a Beth Ditto lookalike singing about a “warderobe” (sic) and whatever message Linas was trying to convey with his steering wheel, at least there was plenty of visual entertainment to keep viewers engaged during the proceedings.

Eventually, a 50/50 jury/televote selected a superfinal consisting of Gerai Gerai & Miss Sheep, Girmantė Vaitkutė and Andrius Pojavis. These three finalists were then voted on solely by the expert jury – and having been announced as the jury’s favourite in the first phase, it was hardly a great surprise when Pojavis got the nod. The Killers-esque song “Something” duly goes forward as Lithuania’s 14th ESC entry.

As last year, Lithuanian TV kept us entertained throughout the show with the live updating results from a special smartphone app that allowed viewers to give each song a thumbs-up or thumbs-down as it happened. The results were extreme, to say the least – the triumphant Pojavis came out with a positive score of around 100,000, while poor DAR had to face the ignominy of a negative net rating of some -126,000.

The other important unofficial vote of the night – the #esc chat vote – had “War In The Warderobe” as its favourite with an average score of 6.64 out of 10, followed by “Something” (5.59) and “Happy And Free” (5.15). Thanks to Holger and TommyE for counting the votes!

So now Andrius Pojavis has more than four months to get his suit dry-cleaned before the semi-finals of the Eurovision Song Contest. Last year, blindfolded Donny Montell gave perennial underachievers Lithuania one of their best-ever results with “Love Is Blind”. Can “Something” do even better and take the country into the top ten for only the second time in its ESC history? Time will tell!