Eurovision 1968: How do you make Cliff Richard think horrible thoughts? Just ask a certain Spanish lady and some German jurors.

Winner 1968: Massiel performs the abysmal La, La, La for Spain

Hefty chunks of Eurovision 1968 for your delectation.

(a) The 1968 Eurovision Song Contest was won by Spain. Although popular myth would have you believe that the song contains nothing but the word 'la', there are actually verses - with a variety of Spanish nouns, verbs and adjectives sprinkled liberally within - appearing at regular intervals throughout the song. Massiel was not even the original choice to sing La, La, La.

Spanish telly first chose the heavily respected vocalist Joan Manuel Serrat (I heard him being mentioned in reverential tones by a tour guide on an open-top bus in Barcelona as we passed the Olympic Stadium), but the Franco regime would not allow Serrat to sing those aforementioned nouns and verbs in his Catalan tongue. He flatly refused to sing it in Spanish (good on yer, Joan) and the authorities instantly had his records banned and burned.

To ensure Spain still had an entrant at the Albert Hall, Spanish-speaking Massiel was contacted while on tour in Mexico. She came home, learned the words (it can't have taken her long) and was duly dispatched to London.

Germany was the 16th of 17 juries to vote at the Albert Hall. Before they announced their scores, Cliff Richard was in the lead with 26 votes, Massiel was second with 23 - but had never looked close to gaining the lead as the scoring had progressed - while France was third with 20. Germany gave Cliff two points - and the UK a now surely unassailable 28 points - five points ahead of its nearest rival with only one country left to call.

The German jury then gave Spain six of its 10 votes.

It was Massiel: 29; Cliff: 28. Then Yugoslavia, the final country to vote, decided to buck the trend of all the previous juries and not give Spain or the UK any points at all.

The result? Massiel won by one point. Katie Boyle and the vast majority of the Royal Albert Hall audience were not best pleased.

As time passed - and a theory that indirectly led to the creation of this very blog you're now reading - wild accusations were spread about that the Spanish win had in fact been bought by Franco and his cohorts. Allegedly, they were so desperate for Spain to host the Contest and show the watching world what a glorious nation it was, that various TV companies were buttered up by Spanish executives willing to buy programmes off them and make all manner of deals if it would mean the votes going Massiel's way.

This is where the theory, in Boom Bang a Blog's opinion, comes unstuck. Would these crooked juries really have let Spain win by just one point? To be sure of these deals coming off, Spain would have been getting seven or eight of the 10 votes available from each 'bent' nation. We just have to put our upper lips in extra stiff mode. We were beaten. Maybe by a truly dreadful song, but beaten fairly and squarely. And the UK has gone on to have a far more prolific Eurovision record than Spain - so let's not dwell on the more unpleasant results.

(b) As if you needed telling, the song Cliff Richard performed for the UK in 1968 was Congratulations. Written by the same pair who penned Puppet on a String for Sandie Shaw the year before, it won A Song For Europe by a landslide. That year's UK final was hosted by Liverpool's very own Cilla Black. Legend has it Cilla was the BBC's first choice to sing for the UK at the Albert Hall, but Ms Black turned them down - rather presciently predicting it would be impossible for Britain to win the event two years on the trot.

Whoever told Cliff he could dance, stop. Stop now.

The song which finished third in the UK heat, Wonderful World, never made it to the Royal Albert Hall, but it was recorded by Elvis Presley for his film Live a Little, Love a Little, a movie which also featured the song that gave him a posthumous 21st Century UK number one hit, A Little Less Conversation. However, we don't think Elvis knew what the Eurovision Song Contest was.

As the dummy voting went on at the dress rehearsal, Cliff noticed that the scoreboard didn't have the UK in the lead. This sent him into a blind panic and made him determined not to follow the scoring on the big night. He was true to his word and locked himself in the Albert Hall gents loos as soon as his performance was over. His manager had to find him afterwards to deliver the bad news.

Although Cliff is keen to portray himself as a God-fearing, clean-living, pure of thought gentleman, he did say at a concert later that year that he sought Massiel out soon after leaving his lavatorial cell and "shook her warmly by the throat". Now, now, Cliff...

(c) Ireland did well again in 1968. The song Chance of a Lifetime was performed by Pat McGeegan and came fourth, scoring six of the 10 points from Cliff-frustrating Yugoslavia in the final vote of the night.

You might know his son. He's a boxer. Goes by the name of Barry McGuigan.

(d) The French entry was sung by the 1962 winner Isabelle Aubret. It took bronze.

Called La Source, it had the incredibly dark theme - not just for a Eurovision song but for any song in any genre - of sexual assault, but performed in a beguilingly sweet, typically French chanson style. It surged into the lead in the early stages of the vote, but hardly picked up any points at all in the latter half.

(e) And this is the Italian entry, Marianne, performed by Sergio Endrigo directly before Cliff's Congratulations The UK entrant liked what he heard as he waited in the wings and went on to record an English language version of it.

In the English version, Marianne wore wrinkled stockings, lived in Yorkshire, and said more or less the same thing every week.

And, in possibly our favourite piece of Eurovision trivia *ever*, the English lyrics to Marianne were written by a man called Bill Owen. Five years later he became known in households throughout the land for playing Compo in Last of the Summer Wine.

So, if you want to be a pub genius at some point in the near future, watch your friends' jaws drop in awe and admiration as you effortlessly link the Eurovision Song Contest to Last of the Summer Wine in one easy move. And then probably start looking for new friends to go to the pub with.

(f) So, that was it. Eurovision was off to Spain for the first time - which would please Franco. And if you thought the result of the 1968 Contest upset a few people - wait until you see what happened in Madrid in the final Eurovision of the 1960s.