Thea's confidence grows as Google places her third

Brimming with confidence, Thea rehearsed on the Oslo stage for the second time yesterday where the performance was perfected.

The issues with the artificial fog that hampered her first rehearsal were resolved and the only glitch was that one of the cameras was defective, but it will be fixed by today.

"It's a great feeling here, people are always praising me so I'm becoming more and more confident on stage," she said.

Thea has also made friends with many of the singers, but particularly those with similar rehearsal time slots, including the performers from Poland, Greece and Germany, whose singer Lena is a hot favourite to win the contest.

Thea's voice remained strong throughout both rehearsals and with a simple performance, very little can go wrong.

The only surprise that remains now is Thea's dress, since for rehearsals she has been wearing the same dress she wore during the local contest.

Her next rehearsal will be held on Monday, the day before her big night in the first semi-final, which she needs to pass to take part in the final night on May 29.

Last night, she attended two parties and will be spending more time letting her hair down over the weekend, particularly at the Euroclub, a special nightclub specifically for those with Eurovision accreditation.

"The parties are quite fun but sometimes it has to be us Maltese to get things going. Even the deejay told us that."

Head of delegation Joe Dimech praised Thea and said the team was extremely happy with how the rehearsals went.

Meanwhile, although most bookmakers are largely ignoring Thea's song, suggesting that she will find it difficult to qualify for the final, an online gadget created by Google to predict the Eurovision winner has sparked new hope since it indicated that Thea might place third.

The Google Eurovision predictor tracks the interest each act is generating online, to gauge the popularity of the songs. It excludes internet interest coming from one's own country since countries cannot vote for themselves.

Last year, it was accurate in predicting the Norwegian winner but so were most bookmakers.

This year, it tips one of the bookies' favourites, Germany's Lena, to win the contest, but then places Georgia's entry at second and Malta's in third place - both songs that have not made the top 10 of most betting firms.

However, online interest will not necessarily translate into votes.

Another reason Thea may be gaining more coverage is because of the legal action being taken against her by music manager Grace Borg.

Ms Borg on Wednesday said she had no choice but to sue Thea's parents for lying about her and claiming that she was only interested in money.

Ms Borg had initially said that she was ready to go to Oslo as part of the team to support the song through her contacts and expertise. She has now confirmed, however, that she will not be going because the Public Broadcasting Services did not accept her offer to work as part of the team.

A former Eurosong chairman, Ms Borg took legal action against Thea, her family and PBS because of an alleged breach of the contract that Thea had signed before she took part in the local contest.