| 1969 was the year of the great
cock-up. Nobody, in 14 years of the Eurovision Song Contest, had ever
considered the possibility of a tie, and so there was no formal rule
for breaking one should it emerge. As a consequence, fate, in
particularly playful mood, conspired to have not just two nations tied
at the top but four. If one applies the contest's subsequently developed tie-break of the nation with the most awarding juries, then France comes out top. If one uses the AView tie-break of the highest points garnered from an individual jury then the Netherlands won (as a consequence of which, they get the 12pts in our various tables). But as it was, no tie-break rule existed and consequently all four (France, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK) won. Of the four winners, it is our view that the UK's entry was the worst. Noticing the recent trend, it was entitled "Boom Bang-a-Bang". Lulu, the poor man's Cilla Black, put on a decent show despite having forgotten to take her Strepsils (that hoarse Alma Cogan thing works pretty well in the chorus especially), but the sub-Eartha Kitt / "How Much Is That Doggy in the Window" song makes "Puppet on a String" look like the work of a genius. Also undeserving of the win was France's entry, "Un jour, un enfant". That is not to say it is a bad song; it has some rather pleasingly creepy organwork (distantly set somewhere between Blackpool and Heaven) like something from Blake's 7, and it builds really very nicely up until the point that it all goes a bit "Ave Maria on the Busses". At the other end of the scale, Spain's entry was pure brilliance: delivered by the constantly shimmying Salomé in her distinctive (and apparently rather heavy) blue porcelain-tasseled jump-suit, the song starts inauspiciously before taking a chunk of 1965's entry "¡Qué bueno, qué bueno!", shaking it about a bit, and then repeating it with increasing vigour and speed until poor Salomé can shake no more. Possibly influenced by the success of Luxembourg's Renaissance-inflected "L'amour est bleu" a couple of years earlier, the Netherlands brought out Lenny Kuhr and her guitar for their winner: a decidedly Moorish and undoubtedly charming chanson with hints of Greensleeves and the Rhineland. It came out as our favourite on what turned out to be a rather crowded night. Away from the winning field, Finland made a full on attack on any dancing embargo that might exist with a cane-swinging, leg-swaying instrumental break for the charismatic ragtime duet of Jarkko (or is it Beck?) & Laura. Determined to recapture old form, Germany got the magnificent Siw Malmkvist on a free transfer from Sweden, dressed her as a shrimp, and gave her an unforgettable slab of mind-scarringly repetitive schlager kitsch entitled "Primaballerina". Portugal went back to their 1965 entrant, Simone de Oliveira, for a powerful, passionate and at times histrionic Mediterranean-inflected slab of patriotic chanson. 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 also had the UK in joint first place, with Monaco in sixth, Ireland joint-seventh, Sweden joint-ninth, Luxembourg eleventh, and Yugoslavia joint-13th. |
 One of the winners: Lenny Kuhr.  Another winner: Salomé: "Vivo cantando".  Not a winner: Portugal's Simone de Oliveira.  "Primaballerina": Siw Malmkvist.  Two more winners: France's Frida Boccara and Lulu of the UK.
|
Let's now take a snapshot of how the various nations did over the course of the 1960s. For the sake of comparison, the top ten places in the final official standings for each contest are assigned 12-10-8 style points. In the case of a tie for place, the nation that received the highest individual score from a single jury takes the place, and if no resolution is forthcoming from this method then the benefit goes to that nation which our own jury scored the higher. Any ties in the final tally are broken by average performance, and where that is the same they are broken by highest annual placing.
Alongside the '60s snapshot, we'll also take a look at the running total since 1957. Change since the '50s tally is given in brackets.
| 1960s
PERFORMANCE |
1957-1969
PERFORMANCE |
|||||||||
| AVIEW
JURY |
EUROPE | AVIEW JURY | EUROPE | |||||||
| 79pts NEW |
 ESP |
1 |
 GBR |
87pts ▲5 |
79pts NEW |
ESP |
1 |
 FRA |
105pts = |
|
| 54pts ▲3 |
 NED |
2 |
FRA |
75pts ▼1 |
77pts ▼1 |
 GER |
2 |
GBR |
101pts ▲4 |
|
| 47pts NEW |
 FIN |
3 |
 LUX |
50pts ▲7 |
69pts ▲2 |
NED |
3 |
LUX |
58pts ▲7 |
|
| 47pts ▼3 |
GER |
4 |
 MON |
46pts ▲8 |
60pts ▼1 |
 ITA |
4 |
ITA |
56pts = |
|
| 44pts ▲4 |
 SWE |
5 |
ITA |
38pts ▼1 |
57pts ▼3 |
GBR |
5 |
 SUI |
53pts ▼2 |
|
| 39pts ▼3 |
ITA |
6 |
SUI |
34pts ▼3 |
53pts ▲3 |
SWE |
6 |
MON |
46pts ▲6 |
|
| 36pts ▲5 |
LUX |
7 |
 IRL |
32pts NEW |
48pts ▼3 |
 DEN |
7 |
DEN |
42pts ▼2 |
|
| 35pts ▼6 |
GBR |
8 |
 AUT |
32pts ▲3 |
47pts NEW |
FIN |
8 |
AUT |
39pts ▲3 |
|
| 31pts ▲2 |
MON |
9 |
ESP |
30pts NEW |
43pts ▲3 |
LUX |
9 |
NED |
38pts ▼7 |
|
| 31pts NEW |
 NOR |
10 |
DEN |
25pts ▼5 |
38pts ▲1 |
MON |
10 |
 BEL |
36pts ▼2 |
|
| 29pts ▼7 |
DEN |
11 |
SWE |
25pts ▼2 |
36pts ▼1 |
FRA |
11 |
SWE |
34pts ▼2 |
|
| 27pts ▼2 |
FRA |
12 |
BEL |
23pts ▼4 |
34pts ▼4 |
AUT |
12 |
GER |
34pts ▼5 |
|
| 23pts ▼5 |
AUT |
13 |
NOR |
22pts NEW |
31pts NEW |
NOR |
13 |
IRL |
32pts NEW |
|
| 22pts NEW |
 YUG |
14 |
GER |
20pts ▼7 |
22pts NEW |
YUG |
14 |
ESP |
30pts NEW |
|
| 16pts NEW |
 POR |
15 |
YUG |
19pts NEW |
21pts ▼8 |
BEL |
15 | NOR |
22pts NEW |
|
| 9pts ▼8 |
SUI |
16 |
NED |
13pts ▼14 |
20pts ▼8 |
SUI |
16 |
YUG |
19pts NEW |
|
| 8pts ▼10 |
BEL |
17 |
FIN |
9pts NEW |
16pts NEW |
POR |
17 |
FIN |
9pts NEW |
|
| 3pts NEW |
IRL |
18 |
POR |
0pts NEW |
3pts NEW |
IRL |
18 |
POR |
0pts NEW |
|
Rather neatly, all of Europe's new entries are concentrated at the bottom of their chart, with Ireland topping the list of debutants. By extreme contrast, Spain have leapt straight in a number one in our tally of things and Ireland are our least favourite of the newcomers. Six second-place finishes have helped the UK to the top spot in Europe's '60s leaderboard (posessing a clear lead in excess of one win), while four wins have earned an even greater lead (in excess of two wins) for Spain in our '60s chart. But in both versions of the overall chart, the top two places are very closely contested (albeit in the real world of the European chart very much isolated). In that chart, France, we feel, are the nation most over-rated by Europe (with the UK being the most over-rated in the '60s alone), and Spain the most under-rated. In our eyes they deserved a massive four wins during the course of the 1960s. France and Luxembourg got two wins each in the real world.