Results tagged “Ireland” from Boom Bang a Blog

"Welcome one, welcome all. To paraphrase a football song, Eurovision's coming home." So began Terry Wogan's commentary for the first British Eurovision in 16 years. It doesn't make sense of course. Eurovision's home is Lugano in Switzerland, where it all began in 1956 - or Geneva, the headquarters of the European Broadcasting Union - or even Dublin, the city which had hosted six of the 43 Eurovisions prior to this point. But not really anywhere in the UK. However, there was no denying that the events which took place inside Birmingham's National Indoor Arena on May 9, 1998, constituted the most anticipated Contest of recent years. Two of the 25 entrants were making headlines across the Continent in the weeks leading up to the event - and one of them would go on to win the competition.

It also marked the end of the United Kingdom's run as one of the most successful countries taking part in the competition. After 1998, there were very few glimmers of hope to be found as Blighty sank further and further down the scoreboard. But we won't worry about that here. Come with us now on a trip to the Midlands, where the British Broadcasting Corporation decided to be as non-jingoistic as possible and employ an Irishman and a Swede to host its last Eurovision to date, the winning singer won a unique glass bowl by Susan Nixon, the postcard films were a work of quiet genius and everybody laughed at a middle-aged Dutch lady.

He really does sound genuine. Hmm...

A big thank you to Anita Kinky for this tip off; Hirsute Bristolian Justin Lee Collins appeared on the legendary Irish programme The Late Late Show last week to discuss his (serious) quest to represent said nation at this year's Eurovision Song Contest.

This has been mentioned on Boom Bang a Blog before - Justin is working on a documentary for channel Five in the UK about representing a country at Eurovision and in a real case of hedging his bets he's been all over the place trying to ease his way onto the shortlist for a national final. Estonia and Andorra were two of the countries he visited - but Estonia has published its final shortlist of songs and it is definitely a Lee Collins-free zone, while Andorra won't even be in Oslo due to monetary concerns.

What do you think? Would you give Justin a go? I'd especially like to know what readers in Ireland think...

I will never forget watching the 1997 Eurovision Song Contest. I was in my second year at Glasgow University, staying in a tenement flat not too far from the Botanic Gardens or the famous Byres Road (you really should try and do the pub crawl) which had rooms as big as ballrooms that were just as difficult to heat. Two days before the Contest was screened, Labour had swept to power after 18 years in the shadows and Tony Blair looked like the sort of bloke who could make Britannia cool again. With such a momentous seachange for Britain, it's understandable that the goings on between acts from 25 nations across the Irish Sea in Dublin's Point Theatre weren't going to register much on neither media radar nor national consciousness. But somehow, it did.

Topping off a week when, for Britain's non-Tory populous, things really could only get better - they only went and did. As though it was written fresh on the statute book in the burgeoning daylight of May 2, as though everyone had decreed it so to welcome in a new age, as though the rest of Europe suddenly realised we weren't so bad after all on this sceptred isle. On May 3, 1997, the United Kingdom won the Eurovision Song Contest.

And it's still the only one I've ever watched on my own.

Eurovision was getting a popular thing to be part of in 1996. So much so, there simply wasn't enough room to accommodate the 29 nations wishing to participate in Olso. With that in mind, the organisers staged a preliminary round in the months leading up to the show where a group of juries sat and listened to studio recordings of every song (bar hosts Norway, the only country sure of a spot on the big night) and voted on them as though it were a rather sterile version of Big Eurovision. This sorted everyone out, with Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Israel, FYR Macedonia, Romania and Russia all missing out on a place in Norway. By dumping Germany (whose Kraftwerk-ish song was tipped for great things beforehand), those juries had rather foolishly removed one of the largest potential audiences for the show before it had even begun and the 1996 Contest remains the only one so far not to have an entry from Deutschland.

When 23 nations did assemble in Oslo's Spektrum Centre on May 18, some who did badly in the preliminary round soared up the scoreboard, while others who scored very well when the juries were just listening to the CD version nosedived.

Don't worry, we're going to show you the placing in both rounds for each entry so you can draw your own conclusions...

Loaded magazine once described the result of the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest as having the most blatantly rigged juries since the original Rodney King trial. It's a brilliant analogy, but it is unlikely that the bean counters at Irish telly would have thought a third successive win for the country would be a financial plus.

Although hindsight and hopefully, maturity, has enabled me to see the 1993 Irish victor as a worthy winner, I'm afraid I am still perplexed how the ploddiest-of-plodding songs won in 1994 - and won by such an epic margin.

Not that it really mattered. The bit everyone remembers from 1994 came directly inbetween the entries and the voting.

When Linda Martin won in 1992, it must have been inconceivable that the Contest would be held anywhere other than Dublin in 1993. But an entrepreneurial equestrian centre owner had other ideas. He wrote to RTE, the Irish broadcaster, on the very night Ms Martin took the trophy, suggesting that the Green Glens Arena in the tiny County Cork town of Millstreet would be the ideal setting for the 38th Eurovision Song Contest. The people at the telly admired his brass and so it came to pass that the Contest was heading for its least populous host town ever. Millstreet in 1993 had a population of around 1,500.

And so, this lush speck on the map became the setting for one of the most highly publicised Eurovisions of the decade. Three former Yugoslavian states made their debut. Luxembourg said goodbye for good and Italy sort-of-did too. Switzerland had its last top five showing to date and the stage looked a bit like a paper plane.

But all that was overshadowed by one of the most nailbiting finishes ever, when the UK possibly counted the cost of snubbing the Maltese entry in Malmo.

When hosts Harold Treutiger and Lydia Capolicchio (that doesn't sound very Swedish) introduced the watching world to Eurovision 1992, the former described it as "the greatest gameshow in the world."

Boom Bang a Blog would like to think there's a bit more to the Contest than it being a glorified version of Bullseye - but there is a sense that, from this point on, Eurovision enjoyed a renaissance of popularity where its public appeal had slumped from the late '70s and much of the '80s.

Swedish rules then dictated that, in the event of a Eurovision victory, the city which hosted the national final that produced the champ would then stage the Contest proper. As Sweden's third city of Malmo played host to the 1991 Melodifestivalen, where Carola won the ticket to Rome, the destination of the 37th Eurovision Song Contest was therefore assured the moment Frank Naef announced that Fangad Av En Stormvind had more 10s than the French song with the very long title twelve months earlier.

Eurovision 1990 is the very first one I watched. It was to be another two years before the Contest would become personal appointment TV for one Saturday night a year, but it is certainly the first one I can ever remember the BBC devoting a fair bit of publicity to before the big night - perhaps because it was one year when they were fairly confident of victory. How wrong they were...

But we'll get back to Britain in a bit. The truly chronic Rock Me brought Yugoslavia its first opportunity to host the competition in a year when the staging state - and a few others - were either starting or on the brink of serious upheaval. The Berlin Wall had fallen between Riva's victory and the 35th Eurovision in Zagreb, Yugoslavia itself would only enter another two Contests after this before it split into the separate countries of Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia who entered the Contest in their own right. Serbia & Montenegro made its Eurovision debut as an independent state much later- and not long before it too split into two states. Russia was also soon set to splinter into independent countries which would enter the competition individually.

The change in the air was so obvious that it even affected the themes of the songs Europe's composers were submitting to the Contest, making 1990 the Eurovision which gave a nod to events in the outside world more than any other.

Dervish: Travelling Show (2007)
Ewan Spence continues to look at the discography and music of Eurovision entrants before and after they've appeared on the world's biggest television show.

Every Eurovision entry stands on the shoulders of giants, the artists and myths that have built up over time. Portugal's inability to get any higher than sixth place, the almost pathological gallic need to sing in French, the ability to avoid doing a Jemini...

But representing Ireland comes with enough baggage to fill Terminal 5 at Heathrow. This is the most successful country in the contest; the western country that people can vote for without having any political qualms; this is the country that managed to contribute to the greatest Father Ted episode of all time.

If Bruce Forsyth was peeved at the Yugoslav jury denying his daughter and the UK a Eurovision victory in 1988, let's hope he wasn't watching when Switzerland hosted the return leg the following year. In 1989, Yugoslavia actually won the Eurovision Song Contest - and a narrow victory over the United Kingdom at that. What's more, the winning song was not the sort of stuff you'd imagine Tanita Tikaram covering for the B-side of Twist In My Sobriety.

However, considering Yugoslavia wouldn't exist in the same form for very much longer, it would be very mean of Britain to deny the Slavs their delight at winning the trophy and hosting the show for the very first time as the '90s dawned. And the imminent new decade would see massive changes in Europe, changes that would also be reflected on the Eurovision scoreboard.

But we can get to the '90s and the slightly serious stuff next time. Let's cling to the eighties while we still can...

That looks suspiciously like the rocket from Tintin's Destination Moon...

The home of the European Parliament finally became the home of the Eurovision Song Contest, the event had enjoyed 31 previous editions before it reached Belgium and the organisers were keen to show the millions of viewers what they'd been missing out on all this time. One thing they'd clearly been missing out on a woman called Viktor Lazlo (also the name of a character in Casablanca, curiously) with huge ear-rings hosting the show, so they hired her for the night.

It was arguably the most impressive and contemporary-looking production yet with some very late '80s dayglo pink contrasted with the pale grey used in both the stage and the suits of the orchestra members. There was also some flashy lasers zinging out from behind a big sphere at the whim of the director and the whole Contest did look as if it was finally being dragged towards a style that would sit more comfortably with the MTV generation. It has to be said, though, that the atmosphere and acoustics in Brussels' Palais du Centenaire (built for the 1935 Expo and in the shadow of the Atomium) was as flat as a crepe. At times, the performers sound as though they're belting a song out in a deserted out-of-town cash-and-carry in the hope that a passing sympathetic motorist will nip in and offer a round of applause.

Still, Eurovision wasn't remade in a day and the massive effort put in by Belgian telly to liven proceedings up would be built on over the coming years.

But sets don't sing and juries don't vote on the colour of the woodwind section's lapels - shall we have a shufty at the songs?

It was confirmed today that, despite its monetary problems, Ireland will definitely be entering Eurovision 2010 in Oslo, although no news yet on how they'll be choosing a song.

The bookies are already having a go at predicting who will jet off to Norway for Eire, and the surprise second favourite at the moment is the talent-free zone of X-Factor siblings John and Edward. Fast becoming known as Jedward, if this pair do go on to sing for Ireland, at least Dustin the Turkey can forsake his crown of being the most unsuitable act to ever represent the Emerald Isle on the Eurovision stage.

Or am I just being mean?

Although Norway's victory in 1985 caused ripples of excitement over the spiritual home of no-points and the hosting of the 1986 Contest was a source of huge national pride, broadcaster NRK made the unusual move of not staging the event in one of the larger arenas available in the capital Oslo, but the tiny 1,500-seater Grieg Hall in the northerly second city of Bergen, birthplace of composer Edvard Grieg, whom the venue was named after. This did mean that the audience was even smaller than that in attendance in Harrogate four years earlier but, despite that difference, there was still a sense of scale and atmosphere to the event which put the BBC's shoddy 1982 production to shame.

Long-term fans of the Contest tend not to be enamoured with Eurovision '86, with its ice palace-style staging (reflecting the fact it was the most northerly Eurovision there's ever been) leading to comparisons with a panto. A very glitzy, hi-tech panto, but a panto nevertheless. Opinion-wise, that's all well and good, but if Norway really were going for that sort of thigh-slapping show, they'd have invited someone a bit more fun and frothy to present the thing...

Above you'll find a performance of the song Balalaika, ably belted out by Israeli singer Ilanit, who had already represented her country at Eurovision in 1973 and 1977. This would have been the song which bore the Israeli flag at the 29th Eurovision Song Contest in Luxembourg. However - and it was a habit those pesky organisers kept on making - the date for the 1984 Contest clashed with an important festival in Israel's calendar. Therefore, just as an awkward date saw the land of Milk and Honey miss the Contest following its two successive wins, another balls-up in the date stakes saw them sit out the event which followed its two successive silvers.

Balalika did go on to be one of the biggest selling singles of 1984 in Israel. What do you think? Would it have been a winner had it made it to Luxembourg City?

As you may have already read, Israel had won both the 1978 and 1979 Contests, but when the Netherlands stepped in to host as a favour to the cash-strapped Israeli Broadcasting Authority, they inadvertently scheduled Eurovision for a date when the trophy holders remembered their fallen and couldn't possibly take part.

With the country who had had a stranglehold on the results at the end of the '70s now absent, there was a clear run for everyone else involved. Although, 'I' would continue to be a lucky initial for Eurovision's winner for the third year running.

With stepping in at relatively short notice, the Dutch production was nowehere near as grand as it had been in 1976. With The Hague's Congresgebouw (pictured, above) being used once more, part of the opening travelogue film from four years previous - featuring beckoning hands welcoming allcomers to Den Haag - was recycled to save a few gelder. While only those with long-term photographic memories would have made the connection in 1980, it's a bit easier to spot in the era of videos, DVD and a certain file-sharing website.

Winner 1979: Milk & Honey featuring Gali Atari perform Hallelujah for Israel

Let's get the negative stuff out the way first. Boom Bang a Blog has never really enjoyed the 1979 Contest. It has a very dreary atmosphere, too much of the action is in long shot and, at times, feels like the inspiration for The Fast Show's Channel 9 series of sketches. However, when it comes to the mysterious twilight world of Eurovision fandom, I'm very much in the minority with that opinion. The general concensus is one of a marvellous, groundbreaking production packed with memorable songs. That said, the idea of only dressing the stage with a really big gyroscope was an inspired one. It's just a shame it doesn't get to do very much gyroscoping as the show progresses.

One thing 1979 does have in its favour, though, is a very close, exciting voting sequence and a winner which many people remember today. It also has - arguably - the worst song the UK ever sent to the Eurovision Song Contest, but we'll get to that in a bit.

A member of Ireland's Eurovision selection panel, left, out in Dublin last night with a mystery companion

Bags-of-fun former Eurovision winner, Johnny Logan, has been speaking to the Irish Times about his disappointment in the way the country he has thrice earned the Eurovision trophy for has become rather rubbish at Eurovision, likening those behind the national selection process to "headless chickens".

The 10 songs which competed in the 1974 Swedish Eurovision heats. Can you spot a winner?

The 1973 heats to select Sweden's entry for that year's Eurovision Song Contest do not appear to exist in the archives of Sveriges Television. That's a real shame as, among the line-up bidding for the chance to fly the flag in Luxembourg, was a quartet made up of one married couple and one that was engaged to be wed.

Going by the unwieldy name of Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny and Anni-Frid, the first A of the line-up was eight-and-a-half months pregnant on the night the show was broadcast live to the nation. Their performance of Ring, Ring (the English lyrics to which came from none other than Neil Sedaka and Phil Cody) brought the house down - but didn't convince the so-called music professionals on the jury, who placed it third.

This audio recording is all that exists of that historic evening. The night of the first official performance by the group which went on to be known as ABBA.

If you want to know what Sweden *did* wind up sending to Luxembourg instead of one of the most accomplished groups of all time - and the adventures acts from various other countries had while they were in the Grand Duchy as well, you'd better come this way.