Dress rehearsals to take place ahead of Eurovision final in Liverpool

It's not long to go before Liverpool throws one of Europe's biggest parties, and Eurovision acts are making final preparations.

Dress rehearsals for the Grand Final of the song contest take place at the M&S Bank Arena on Friday - one behind-closed-doors this afternoon, and another featuring an audience this evening.

Another 10 countries made it through to the semi-final of the competition last night - they'll join the 10 nations who qualified on Tuesday night's semi-final.

The UK - which is part of 'The Big Five' - has automatically qualified for the grand final, along with last year's winner Ukraine.

Mae Muller, the UK's entry for 2023, said she was "overwhelmed" by the support shown by fans ahead of Saturday's final.

The singer is representing the country with the track 'I Wrote A Song'.

Mae said: "Honestly I thought I was excited before but now I'm here I'm even more excited and I feel like I'm just ready to go now.

"It's been so much build up and now I'm like 'it's basically here'".

Months of work has gone into preparing Liverpool for the iconic contest, and one person who's been part of that process is Tim Routledge, Eurovision's lighting director.

He said: "We really are into detail and we're looking frame by frame of the TV pictures to try and polish lighting and the back of shot, trying to make people look as gorgeous as possible, and really just getting to the final detail of how Eurovision should look"

Asked how much of a big job organising the lighting for the contest is, Tim said:

"It's insanely complicated. Camera direction, pyrotechnics, lighting, video, staging, the whole thing.

"This is the most important three minutes of these performers' lives and the delegations really want to win".

The Grand Final of the competition will be broadcast at 8pm on Saturday 13th May.

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