Eurovision 1990: Italy win in the year they host the World Cup, Ireland and France tie for silver and the UK takes the eco message a tad too far

Zagreb (now the Croatian capital) was selected as host city, with 22 nations and a smaller-than-usual audience cramped into the Vatroslav Lisinki Hall, a rare return to teeny venues for a 1990s Contest. This was also the first Contest with an official mascot (although Luxembourg sort of had one in 1984, but it was only fleetingly glimpsed at the very start of the show). Bugs Bunny looks more feline than Eurocat ever did, but this mauve bag of snarling mischief was superimposed onto a shot of the stage as the Contest began and proceeded to grumble and growl through a short animation preceding each of the acts.

He seemed to come from the same animation stable as Children's ITV favourite Mr Rossi (remember him?), that fairly bleak style of moving drawings which are a bit too depressing to be described as cartoons but were cheap enough to fill the 20 minute slot before Dramarama. It is not recorded if plush versions of Eurocat were the top of every Yugoslav youngster's Christmas list for 1990, but we're guessing not.

Leaving cats for a moment, we'd love to describe the hosts as young pups, but we can't. Helga Vlahovic and Oliver Mlakar reportedly stormed out of rehearsals early on in Eurovision week because press reports were a tad unkind about their advanced years but they acquiesced in time for the live broadcast. They weren't exactly Yugoslavia's answer to Lill Lindfors and Friend, but they got the job done.

That's the venue, the cat and the presenters sorted. I suppose you'll want to read about some songs?

Your unified federation of 1990 facts and figures (EU Approved):

(a) Italy won Eurovision in 1990, their first victory in 26 years and one of their very last appearances at the event itself. The song Insieme: 1992 roughly translates as 'Altogether in 1992' and was a touching tribute to how all Europeans could hope to feel more unified the year after next. Well, it's a bit different from listing your favourite kinds of everything or telling your little girl to save you a kiss for when you get home from work.

Winner 1990: Toto Cutugno performs Insieme: 1992 for Italy.

If you don't count Johnny Logan twice, Toto Cutugno was only the fifth male soloist to win Eurovision (the sixth and seventh wouldn't come along until 2008 and 2009). His song was not considered a contender at all in the build-up to the Contest and even after it was performed on the night, nobody watching gave it that much hope. But, in jury holding pens across the continent, something about the long-haired crooner and his quietly anthemic offering was striking a chord with the people awarding the scores.

Norway and the UK, two countries which have never been keen to set up its stall in the Common Market, didn't give Toto any points at all, which we're sure is more melodical than political. The only real highspot comes toward the end where Toto really does sound as though he's singing: "Suppress your farty noise." He isn't, by the way.

The irony is, after this plea for European unity, the Italians buggered off from Eurovision in 1993, to only make one fleeting return. So much for altogetherness, then.

(b) France got five douzes in 1990, more than any other country entering - but it wasn't quite enough to win.

For some reason the Eurovision performance is unavailable, so here's Ken Bruce not fancying France's chances in the previews instead.

The song White and Black Blues was one of the most original Eurovision entries for some time, incorporating African sounds and instruments and a very dramatic musical break with much drumming on oil barrels.

Composer Serge Gainsbourg was showing the same sense of originality he had displayed in 1965 when his song for Luxembourg was the first up tempo entry to win the competition. He had composed a Monacan entry in the interim, but 1990 was finally the year he wrote the song for his homeland. With 132 points, Serge and performer Joelle Ursull were 17 points behind Italy at the end of the voting but White and Black Blues would have been a far worthier winner than the song which ultimately took gold.

(c) Finishing with exactly the same score as Serge was Irish performer Liam Reilly.

Liam Reilly. He's been to Europe, you know.

In a 1998 Channel 4 documentary, Graham Norton (quite rightly) pointed out that all Liam does in the song Somewhere In Europe is suck up to all the juries watching. It is basically a list of various (and geographically extensive) European locations Liam remembers being in with a lady who has since walked out on him. It ranges from the Champs Elysee in Paris to the Black Forest in Germany, the Trevi Fountain in Rome, Trafalgar Square in London and those Adriatic days (those what?).

You can see the offending lyrics in full here. Ironically, despite blatantly touting for the Italian vote, Liam didn't get a single point from the jury based in Rome. That'll learn 'im.

(d) Iceland had not made much impact in its first four Contests but that all changed in 1990.

"Just before we begin our song, there's a baby crying in chalet 32."

Eitt Lag En is perhaps the most stereotypically 'Eurovision' Eurovision song there has ever been and it does sound like the sort of stuff they pump out the speakers on a rainy afternoon in Butlins to keep the pre-schoolers entertained.

However, this got the UK douze (yes, the country which produced Elvis Costello, The Beatles, Mick Jagger and Button Moon thought this song was better than the French one) and, with 124 points, wasn't that far off snatching silver from France and Ireland.

(e) The most contemporary-sounding song of the night came, surprisingly, from Spain. It also came up with a stock moment for Eurovision clip programmes aimed at showcasing all that is wrong about the event.

Spain 1990, all one-and-a-half performances of it.

The first song out on the night, thus, the first Eurovision song of the '90s, the studio version of Azucar Moreno's Bandido includes a spoken word intro from a DJ welcoming listeners to Harlem's Apollo Theatre and the hottest act in show business (he's talking about James Brown, not Azucar Moreno). Wisely, Spanish telly omitted that bit for Yugoslavia, but they also omitted to do something else as well.

After the conductor leads the song in, it is quite clear that the two ladies on stage have absolutely no idea what is going on or if they can hear any of the backing track at all. There is much dramatic displays of Gallic shrugs before the pair walk off stage and into the wings, demanding to know what is going on. There was a hasty remount and Bandido was performed in full, minus hitches, a few minutes later. It remains the only time a performer had to start a song again, but the juries weren't in too harsh a mood and Azucar Moreno finished fifth with 96 points. It was a good song and very of its time but you can't help wondering if sympathy votes played their part in such a high placing.

(f) Thanks to the kiddish antics of Israel and France's entrants in 1989, a strict no under-16s rule was brought in by the Eurovision bosses in time for Zagreb. This could have caused a problem for the BBC and the UK as their singer, Wales' Emma Booth, was only 15.

If you bought this single, don't forget to recycle it into a frisbee.

However, as long as an entrant turned 16 in the year of the Contest, all was well and, as Emma's 16th birthday was due later on in 1990, she was able to take eco-friendly anthem Give A Little Love Back to the World to Yugoslavia with a clear conscience.

After two silver medals on the trot, there was high hopes that the UK could start the new decade by finishing one place higher. I can certainly remember this song and the singer herself (with particular emphasis on her age) being publicised all over the place after it won A Song For Europe and the UK were indeed big favourites with the bookies before the night. Looking back with the benefit of 19 years' hindsight, the whole package of GALLBTTW is preachy, naïve, patronising, mawkish and nauseating all at the same time, which is quite an achievement for a song that's only two minutes and 55 seconds long.

Emma finished a respectable sixth (she got the full 12 from Belgium). The composer, Paul Curtis, had already written the British entries in 1975 and 1984 and would be back the following year, with a song which made GALLBTTW seem positively venomous in comparison.

(g) Hosts Yugoslavia saved their best Eurovision entry ever for the year they hosted the thing, but got a very average score for it.

We like this too much to be mean about it.

Tacji looked a little bit like Marilyn Monroe and her song Hajde Da Ludujemo was extremely quirky, a bit toe-curling in places (especially the moves by the guitarists), but still brilliant. Definitely among Boom Bang a Blog's favourite Eurovision songs ever, it is a hard heart which cannot warm to the moment Tacji accompanies the line "Tvoje su usne kao čokolada" with an arm movement best described as 'the reverse ski slope'.

This should have finished higher, but in a year full of European messages, a song which simply translates as 'Let's Go Crazy', just wasn't European enough.

(h) Another more Eurovision/less European moment came from Denmark.

I have never associated cows with Denmark. What's Eurocat on about?

We think this song is about telephones.

(i) Norway tried to geg in on the European peace theme with a song called Brandenburger Tor.

What marvellous pants

The juries soon cottoned on to Ketil Stokkan's mercenary tactics and he finished joint last with Finland, earning only eight points.

(j) Austria also joined in with the song Keine Mauern Mehr which translates as No More Walls (the studio version is rather stirring, by the way).

What is Eurocat doing here that's so Austrian? Answers on a postcard.

Sadly, performer Simone may just as well have changed the title to No More Bras as topless photos she thought the world had long forgotten about resurfaced in the weeks running up to the event. She still managed to finish tenth, though.

Eurovision 1990 is no classic, but it's not a complete shambles either. It was one of the last Contests where countries such as Yugoslavia, Italy and Luxembourg would appear on the scoreboard and there is a sense of the outside music world finally managing to creep in. For the first Contest to be staged in Italy since 1965, the organisers decided it would be a wizard wheeze to ask reigning champ Toto Cutugno to co-host the event in Rome with the nation's only other Contest winner, 1964 champ Gigliola Cinquetti.

And what a wizard wheeze that would turn out to be. Ahem.