On Saturday night Jade Ewen will need a Eurovision miracle to avoid finishing at the bottom of the voting chart. Steve Pratt reports.

THE UK’s Eurovision hopeful Jade Ewen isn’t going to let our country’s previous history in the contest put her off. The homegrown entries have been sinking down the chart year by year until reaching rock bottom.

Ewen can’t help but think about past failures. “That’s always at the back of your mind, but this year definitely feels like a year of change, especially with Andrew’s involvement,” she says.

“Even if we don’t win, I feel like we will do a lot better than we have done recently”.

That Andrew is, of course, Andrew Lloyd Webber, composer on many a hit musical. He agreed to write the UK Eurovision entry in a bid to improve our chances after several disastrous performances.

He led the nationwide search on BBC1 to find a singer to perform the song – It’s My Time – at the contest this weekend.

Jade, whose mother is partially blind and deaf and whose father is blind, grew up in East London with younger sister, Shereen, and brother, Kiel. She’s hardly had time to catch her breath since winning the chance to sing at Eurovision.

“I woke up the other day and couldn’t believe that this is my life now. It’s a really weird feeling. I love it and am so happy, but sometimes I have to pinch myself because I’m just so caught up with everything. And it’s only when I sit down and have time to think about it that it really starts to sink in.”

She showed her mettle when she had to perform in front of Lloyd Webber every week on the TV show to choose the Eurovision song. “To begin with, it was more nerveracking and definitely challenging, because Andrew is so good at what he does,” says Ewen, who was once a member of girl band, Trinity Stone.

“But he was so supportive, so encouraging and so involved – not only in the shows, but throughout the rehearsal stages too. And, by the end of it, it felt like a comfort to see him on stage.”

Appearing on Your Country Needs You was good training for the song contest itself. It was like a mini version of what Eurovision’s going to be like, she imagines.

All the same, waiting for the result seemed like a lifetime even though it was only a matter of seconds. “My stomach was doing somersaults and I remember feeling like I couldn’t stop shaking,” she says.

“It was completely out of my control at that stage and I just had to stand there and wait to heart what the verdict was going to be. I wanted to tell Graham (Norton) to hurry up.”

This year Norton takes over as the UK’s commentator from Terry Wogan, who first commentated on the contest in 1971. “Graham is so funny,” says Ewen. “He’s such a lovely guy and I think it’s going to be fun. He’s going to be great.”

One thing’s for sure the Eurovision audience will be the biggest that she’s ever performed in front of. It’s almost so big that you can’t imagine it, she says.

“The audience I’ll be able to see on the night will be about 15,000 but then there will be about 100m viewers too, which is just mindblowing.

“I’m going to try in those three minutes to forget everything and just sing the song and worry about it afterwards, because if you start panicking about those things you get distracted from what you’re actually meant to be doing.”

She relates to the lyrics of It’s My Time, written by US Grammy award-winning songwriter Diane Warren, which should make it easier to sing. “Any time you’re singing a song, you’re telling a story. So it definitely helps if you can relate to what you’re singing because then it becomes believable to the audience. I really enjoy singing the song because I personally think back to my own experiences and my journey and what’s happened.

“I’m hoping that Eurovision will be my time to show everyone what I can do. I was completely overwhelmed and excited when I won Your Country Needs You and I’m still running on adrenaline.”

She’s been on a promotional tour of Europe in the run-up to the contest, so it’s been good to see the other countries’ responses and get their feedback. She’s had sneak previews of some of the other entries, saying there are some strong contenders.

“I’m quite nervous, though, because when I first won I felt like I had months to prepare before Eurovision, but the big day is dawning and there’s hardly any time left,” she adds.

A Eurovision fan, she cites Gina G’s Ooh Aah... Just A Little Bit as the UK entry she loved most, while Celine Dion is another Eurovision favourite. “She’s a huge inspiration and, hopefully, someone I can aspire to be like,” she says.