Recently in Eurovision Classics Category

When Eurovision returned to Israel, 20 years after it had last been held there, the Contest had swelled to unrecognisable proportions in the interim. Arenas, not theatres, now welcomed the competition and it was relatively straightforward for dedicated fans to bag themselves one of thousands of tickets for the event. Strange then, that the Israeli organisers of the final Contest of the century opted to stage the show in the same tiny hall in Jerusalem the 1979 Contest was broadcast from. It was an invite-only crowd, although there was a smattering of fans dotted here and there adding to the raucous factor.

To add to the old-school look and feel of the 44th Eurovision Song Contest, there was a revival of a rule which had been abolished just before the 1977 event. For the first time in 22 years, each participating country could perform in whatever language it liked (ie. English). Arguably, it was the relaxation of the 'only singing in one of your official languages' rules which encouraged more mainstream pop composers (although not in the UK, obviously) to take part in Eurovision and from this point onwards, whether you're too cool for school to admit it or not, the standard of the songs taking part rocketed dramatically.

"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.

This is the logo of the 1959 Eurovision Song Contest when the event was held in Cannes, France.

It's all very simple and straightforward and does the job it needs to do, but one thing has always bugged me. What on earth is that pencil sketch to the right of the writing supposed to represent? Is it a cross-section of a lady wearing a strapless evening gown, beginning just below her chin and ending just below her bust? Is it an open handbag with something off plonked upright in it? Or is it something so simple that I've been trying to heard to tell what it is? If you know, or have any theories yourself, please enlighten us all by leaving a comment.

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.

The film celebrating 40 Eurovision Song Contests which opened the 1995 event. Think of it as reminder of most of your Bluffer's Guides so far...

I wasn't impressed when Ireland won Eurovision for the third successive year in 1994. I therefore refused point blank to support the Irish squad who got to the World Cup in the USA that year (despite it being the tournament Graham Taylor couldn't lead England into) and, being young, naive and foolish, refused to like anything remotely linked with Ireland for the next 12 months. As I say, I certainly was young, naive and foolish as I have an Irish surname for a start.

Anyway, I'm sure you can imagine my reaction when smiley host Mary Kennedy appeared on stage at The Point - the only time the same venue has been used in two successive years - and welcomed viewers to "What has almost become the annual Eurovision Song Contest from Ireland."

I booed. Loudly. But the slightly smug tone Mary used when introducing everyone back to Ireland (again) would soon backfire on her. This was the year when some canny countries realised it was time to play the Irish at their own game. And win.

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.