Seventeen-year-old trainee hairdresser Sieneke will represent the Netherlands at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Norway. In a live TV broadcast, she beat four other candidates with her version of the song Ik ben verliefd (Sha-la-lie) - or 'I’m in love (Sha-la-lee)'.

A vote of four experts and the studio audience at the song contest ended in a draw, and the final decision was handed to the song’s composer, Pierre Kartner. Reluctant to choose, he eventually rejected a more up-to-date version of the number by the group Loekz and opted for Sieneke’s rendition, featuring the sound of the traditional Dutch barrel organ.

Kartner is better known in his persona of Father Abraham, the bowler-hatted and bearded singer of The Smurf Song. The TV organisation behind the Dutch entry, TROS, has come in for a storm of criticism for its choice of the 74-year-old Kartner, who is hardly renowned for writing fashionable contemporary pop music. Kartner was obliged to change one line in the song which referred to Leningrad – he apparently wasn’t aware the Russian city’s name was changed to St Petersburg in 1991.

However, the composer has vehemently defended his song, with its typical Eurovision nonsense chorus. He points out he has had a string of million-selling international hits, and claims that musical colleagues have compared him to Haydn. It remains to be seen if Sieneke will succeed in taking a Dutch entry through to the final for the first time since 2004.

The winning version of the Dutch Eurovision entry sung by Sieneke: