| This was the first time the UK
hosted the contest in victory. More importantly it was the first
contest filmed in colour (with the BBC2 colour recording being
broadcast the day after the live black and white broadcast in the UK).
Again, presentational duties went to the divine Katie Boyle. The
scoreboard was a fetching wood and gold number, and we also raided the
wood-shed for our entry: Cliff Richard, the Michael McIntyre of music,
performing the sickening "Congratulations". It does at least have a
Greek sirtaki-style slow stompy bit and Cliff for his part busts the
odd move or two (testing a recently applied dancing embargo) in what is
a considerably more animated performance
than most of the night. Visually rather similar but easily superior were Sweden who employed a cracking, groovy little hip-swinging schlager jive, with Claes-Göran Hederström on the mouth. Yugoslavia gave their greatest performance yet with a pair of medieval minstrels, a flute, and a bespectacled mandolin player conducting one of the greatest key-changes ever attempted. A truly beautiful marching rouse; it pains me to have to reduce it to a single screen-grab for the side images. Universal nonsense sing-along reached its zenith this year with the winning Spanish entry, the excellent "La, la, la" with its moody minor verse and its joyous, tear-jerking exclamation of a chorus. These were to us the three stand-out acts of the night, with the rest of the bunch being all much of a muchness. For each year's songs we apply our points in the 12-10-8 style of the modern contest, irrespective of how the voting functioned at the time. In brackets is the position the song came on the night:
Europe had the UK in second place, Germany in sixth, Belgium joint-seventh, Italy tenth, Portugal and Luxembourg joint-eleventh, and the Netherlands joint-last. |
 Massiel forgets the words.  Yugoslavia's entry: "Jedan dan".  "It's beginning to look like love, damn it!" Claes-Göran Hederström.  This year's scoreboard awaits the first votes.
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