Slovenia's entrant Klemen Slakonja failed to make it to the final of the 69th Eurovision song contest with How Much Time Do We Have Left, an ode to his life companion, who joined him on stage in Basel in the first semi-final on 13 May.

"We gave gave it our best, but obviously it wasn't enough," the 39-year-old singer, actor and impersonator, who performed under the stage name Klemen, told TV Slovenija after the first ten songs picked by televoters to qualify for the final were declared.

"It's still a competition and the nature of it is that you want as much as possible," he said, with his fiancee Mojca Fatur adding that this was a competition "but not the end of career".

Fatur, an actress and a mother of three, inspired Klemen in writing the song for her bravery after she was diagnosed with a myelodysplastic syndrome, a group of blood cancers. The pair have two children together.

The song was picked in the national selection EMA in February which combined a joury vote and televoting. Slakonja, who hosted EMA in the past, then released a video in which he impersonated all Eurovision winners since 2000.

He removed a segment of the video featuring Estonian singer Dave Benton after some saw his portrayal as offensive blackface.

Of the 15 contestants who competed in the first semi-final the ten tickets for the 17 May Grand Final went to Albania, Estonia, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, San Marino, Sweden and Ukraine.

Apart from Slovenia's, the entrants of Croatia, Cyprus, Azerbaijan and Belgium failed to qualify.