| With Monaco unable to cobble
together sufficient resources for a song contest, the UK took up its
familiar role as broadcaster of last resort and staged the thing at
Edinburgh. Moira Shearer (of The Red
Shoes fame) was the curiously cast host, sat, Miss
Haversham-like, in her arm-chair, script open on her knees, and dwarfed
by the scoreboard. Spain gave us another man in a blue suit singing another rousing, rip-roaring ballad in the way that Spain does best. But they were trumped by their Iberian neighbours in the form of Portugal's Carlos Mendes (making his second appearance in the contest). His song is a frenetic, pacy, minor-keyed spiral, building and building to reach wilder and wilder heights like a short-circuited Pulp number. It is, for us, a Eurovision classic and the worthy winner of 1972. For their entry, Norway successfully recaptured the folksy sleigh-bell sound of the early Scandinavian entries and distilled it into the beautiful "Småting" sung by a duo looking indistinguishable from Jenny Agutter (as Hedda Gabler) and Jim Broadbent. It probably helps that "Småting" sounds like it might be a bit rude, but there can be no denying that this sweet little snowball will stay with you wherever you go and that you won't really mind that it does. Elsewhere, Germany's entry was a typically schlagerish anthem with lots of clippy-cloppy percussion. The winning song on the night was another power-ballad, this time by Luxembourg. It had definite overtones of "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" and "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" but thankfully was superior to both, with a worryingly familiar sort of chorus that tends to garner votes. It was sung by Vicky Leandros who'd represented Luxembourg in 1967 with "L'amour est bleu". The lyricist Yves Dessca also wrote last year's winner and became the first winner under two different flags. 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, Austria in fifth, Italy sixth, Sweden 13th, Ireland 15th, Monaco 16th, Belgium 17th and Malta 18th.
|
 "Småting": Scandinavia distilled.  Our winner, Portugal's Carlos Mendes.  Spain's Jaime Morey.  Europe's winner: Vicky Leandros.  Moira Shearer reads us all a bedtime story. |
