| It's a welcome return this year
for Roland de Groot and his
magnificent modular back-drops, this year's seemingly inspired by the
Channel 4 ident.
Particularly beautiful is the end of transmission, the set
deconstructing itself in perfect time with the roll of the credits as a
medley of Luxembourg winners plays over. It brings a tear to the eye,
not least at the very end when we're met with an especially bombastic
explosion of Charpentier. Our host, 19-year-old polyglot prodigy Désirée Nosbusch, takes a relaxed and informal approach as she slips effortlessly between languages (a welcome change of competence from last year but a bad example to future contest organizers). It being 1984, a significant proportion of female entries (though none of the ones in our top five) make timely quote of Orwell in their dress by wearing the red sash of the anti-sex league. Sweden won on the night with golden-booted dream-boys The Herreys and their charmingly up-beat, nonsense-titled "Diggi-loo diggi-ley": worth it for the musical upward curve in the middle of each chorus. Some of their arm actions are pretty fun too; it's a well choreographed piece of camp. The UK seemingly embraced its Danelaw heritage by entering something genuinely a bit weird and interesting: Belle & The Devotions were a curious girl-group cross between Vivienne Westwood, Marina from Last of the Summer Wine, and some kind of alien jellyfish. Dressed in fluorescent greens and yellows theirs was a most un-British entry: the Supremes taking it both ways. Curiously they made a big thing of taking off their jackets (presumably they missed 1981), which seems an odd gimmick. It's a slightly shambolic but somewhat endearing performance and it's hard to go too wrong doing the Supremes. Belgium, fed up of their cutting edge constantly being blunted by an uncaring Europe, returned to their chanson heritage, albeit with a sinister and slightly electropop undertone; Jacques Zegers tightly surrounded by female backing singers all staring at us a little too intently. Turkey also made a move towards convention (as much as Turkey can ever be conventional in a European sense), putting on nice blue sweaters and adopting a wholesome '50s Americana look. The verse has hints of eastern promise (not least Israel's "Khay" from last year) while the chorus is just "Voulez Vous". When we hear the name "Noel Kelehan", our first emotion is one of deep sympathy for a man who has to constantly conduct crap. Then we brace ourselves. When we hear the name "Johnny Logan" we cry a little inside. Johnny Logan wrote this year's Irish entry, though fortunately he let someone else perform it. The astonishing thing is that it is not dreadful. Now and again Ireland confound our expectations, even Mr Logan. Here he tries his hand at updating Abba, throwing in some Bonnie Tyler rawk for good measure. The result, "Terminal 3" is a little cracker. By no means is it a great song or a classic of our age, but it does enough to win this year in a field of interesting but middling songs. 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 Spain third, Italy joint-fifth, France eighth, Portugal eleventh, Germany joint-13th, Cyprus 15th, Norway 17th, Yugoslavia 18th and Austria last. On a statistical analysis, this year shows the greatest agreement between ourselves and Europe, with an average deviation of only 3.6 points per entry. |
 "Diggi-loo diggi-ley!": Europe's winners.  Jacques Zegers and his zombie harem.  Our
winner, "Terminal 3". Johnny Loganis better when he's performing in drag.  Beş Yıl Önce, On Yıl Sonra.  Belle & The Devotions.
⇦1983 / HOME / 1985 ⇨ |
