Nuno Guilherme De Figueiredo Resende, to give him his full name, is representing Belgium with the song Le grand soir started his press conference last night by explaining that he is 31 years old and had lived in Belgium for twenty years. He is of Portuguese origin, and added that he has recorded a Portuguese version of his entry, which may be released in due course.

He had previously competed in the Belgian final about five years ago with a band and came sixth in the contest. He explained that this year there had been about 170 artists involved in the selection process, this was reduced to about five, who were chosen to perform in front of a jury, and then two were put forward to face a televote by the Belgian audience.

Had the song achieved any chart success since it was released? He admitted that it had done well in the first two weeks, and joked that maybe all his friends had went out and bought copies. It was also receiving a good amount of airplay on the radio. Leslie Cable the Head of Delegation thought it was currently around tenth place in the Belgian charts and was selling well.

When asked about his all time favourite Eurovision song, without hesitation he said Hold me now the 1987 winner from Ireland, when the contest was held in Belgium. He then gave a brief rendition of the song. It encourages him to know that a ballad can win the contest, which he is optimistic will happen again of course!

As someone who is born in Portugal, living in Belgium, singing in French, he was asked about his linguistic abilities. He can speak Portuguese, French, English, Dutch, Spanish and Italian..and has even tried his hand at Ukrainian! Though it is the first time in his life that he has been in a country, where he can't understand a single word! So did he have a favourite language? Probably Italian was the language which best reflects his personality, as it can be so expressive.

He received quite a few compliments on his performance from the journalists, and one of them wondered how difficult it was to find good songs for an album? It is hard in this era of talent shows and pop idols, you need a good team, but if you have that team behind you then the rest should follow was his reply.

Was the song then autobiographical and written specially for the contest? Yes was the answer to both questions. It was the composer Alec Mansion who had suggested that he would find a lyric writer, Frederic Zeitoun, and compose a song for the contest just for Nuno.

He drew a small comparisonn with the theme of the song to the Dutch entry and My impossible dream, with him its, like a dream come true.

The penultimate question concerned the demand he is in for roles in musical comedies. He had done a Belgian production of Beauty and the beast, which was not connected to the Disney version, and a version of Romeo and Juliet in Paris where he had to sing, dance and act, which he enjoyed the challenge, the production then transferred to England, but unfortunately it wasn't very successful there.

The final question was about the handstand he had done prior to going on stage this afternoon. This was a technique he had done to help him relax and take out the tension he sometimes feels prior to a performance, and found that it works for him.

Whether we will see him perform any handstands prior to the semifinal remains to be seen. As usual the conference ended with a photo session.

Belgium are next scheduled to rehearse on Saturday 14th May at 18.15 local time.