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Gay people love Eurovision. All Greeks are gay. Therefore all Greeks love Eurovision. It's a logic that's certainly helped Greece out in recent years... What homosexual can resist the lure of enormous stationery, for instance? Greece are not one of the Big Five; they have to get to the final the hard way. And they do, almost-consistently. Glamour, camp, and a strategic Mediterranean location at the crossroads of old and new Europe have kept Greece as regulars in the contest proper. It wasn't quite ever thus. Greece didn't take part in 1975 in protest against the arrival of Turkey. They were excluded from the 1982 contest after too-overtly appropriating a folk-song for their entry. Failure to find a song of sufficient quality was the excuse for missing 1984, and a clash with Orthodox Easter put the mockers on a 1986 showing (with a song called "Wagon-lit"). They missed 1999 due to relegation, and financial reasons were cited for their lack of participation in 2000. They then went on to give us six of their best ten entries. Their other golden patch came at the end of the '70s when they were considerably less glitzy: all earth, wind and Greek fire. One wonders what they would have made of  the '60s had they not been too busy playing doctors against the red terror. Their participation in '74 was part of a campaign of liberalization by the ruling junta who were keen to reingratiate themselves with the European community. Ironically, the regime had swung back to full-on state-terror dictatorship by the time the contest was held, and their 11th place finish that year is respectable in the circumstances and testament to the quality of their entry. The Greece that returned in 1976 came unburdened of military rule, which may explain why it entered a folksy, hippy protest song (albeit one about the Turks in Cyprus...). And there's perhaps a sense that the variation in style that can be seen in Greek entries of the late '70s and early '80s is representative of a newly freed nation finding its voice. Or maybe that's just bullshit and Greece merely enjoyed demonstrating their ability (in part consequent of their geography) to purvey a range of styles.

	1pt	2012	AV: 3rd Eur: 17th
	Eleftheria Eleftheriou - "Aphrodisiac"
	Greece's 2012 entry harked back to the happier days of 2008 (qv), with a strong and saucy number delivered on a half-shell by a woman in a very short skirt. She even finds time to do a jig or two like some kind of maniac.
	2pts	1991	AV: 2nd Eur: 13th
	Sophia Vossou - "I Anixi (Η άνοιξη)"
	This one starts off with the sort of music you get in a news bulletin before Sophia Vossou enters with her haunted strains, reminiscent of '90s gothic 6th-form pop but with the intensity of a Eurovision power-ballad. An old man on a sax, possibly pissing himself with laughter, possibly just choking on his own saliva, delivers an incomparable solo that was surely not as-written. It's emotional stuff, with breathtaking string arrangement, and then she starts skatting (maybe there was supposed to be another sax solo but she made an editorial decision). It's a powerful and moving performance.
	3pts	2008	AV: 4th Eur: 10th
	Kalomira - "Secret Combination"
	Greece went to the Beyoncé bottle again for their 2008 entry, and poured out the rather impressive "Secret Combination" (cf. their 2002 offering, below). It's not entirely dissimilar to their 2005 effort (also below), only a lot better. A costume change and the introduction of a giant Triffid-like pop-up heart to the set half-way through adds a vague suggestion that when Kalomira sings about the centre of her heart, she may actually be thinking of some other part of her anatomy.
	4pts	2005	AV: 5th Eur: 1st
	Elena Paparizou - "My Number One"
	Rhyming "delicious" with "capricious" is the 2005 contest winner: a Destiny's Child -style number draped in Mediterranean sauce. Towards the end of the performance (entitled "My Number One") our singer uses a bow to play the underwear of one of her backing dancers, before waving her implement about while the dancers form the figure "1" on the floor.
	5pts	2002	AV: 1st Eur: 17th
	Michalis Rakintzis - "S.A.G.A.P.O."
	Greece came to 2002 dressed as robot delivery-men from the future enjoying a game of laser-quest. It looks, on the face of it, like more or less the worst thing in the universe: part Boyzone, part Burzum, part Kraftwerk, part Galactic Symposium: one wonders if the main singer was drafted in from the pub at the last minute; his embarrassed grins and winks not really fitting in with the robot-soldier imagery. The most astonishing thing of all is that this is a Greek entry (not Finland... Greece!). The more you watch, the more the Kraftwerk electro-pop image crumbles into a gang of blokes struggling to keep a straight face while stomping and miming with keytars and generally feeling a bit self-conscious about it. Amazing.
	6pts	1977	AV: unplaced Eur: 5th
	Pascalis, Marianna, Robert & Bessy - "Mathema solfege"
	1977 was such a great year that there was no room on the scoreboard for something as good as this. It was performed a little lacklusterly on the night compared to the promo version (which is helped to some extent by the furious Sesame Street / Brady Bunch video effects as well as by the studio production), so loses out against uncharacteristically high levels of competition. In any other year this would be a strong finisher with its wistful verse and joyously cheesy do-re-mi chorus.
	7pts	2009	AV: 3rd Eur: 7th
	Sakis Rouvas - "This Is Our Night"
	Ever-macho Greece led the high-camp stakes in 2009: Eurovision veteran Sakis Rouvas riding atop a travellator and gyrating to the first song of the night that's really any good: a relentlessly uplifting club anthem. "This is our night", he tells us through his head-set mic. He's wrong, but it's not a bad effort all the same. The travellator stuff is great, especially at the end when it opens up, stapler-like, raising our singer and revealing the Greek flag beneath.
	8pts	1980	AV: 7th Eur:  13th
	Anna Vissi and the Epikouri - "Autostop (Ωτοστόπ)"
	This is a particularly twee little number with very '60s orchestration, and some heart-warming choreography, plus the almost obligatory sirtaki moment. Anna Vissi shows plenty of leg to tempt passing drivers into stopping for her and her hitchhiking epicures. Knees bend, arms stretch, plates smash and everyone has a lovely time.
	10pts	1979	AV: 1st Eur: 8th
	Elpida - "Sokrati (Σωκράτη)"
	For 1979, the Greeks had obviously seen Jesus Christ Superstar and thought, "how can we do that, but more Greek?". The result was "Sokrati" (example lyric: "Pure and good, the first Christ / Socrates, you superstar!"). A fantastic, powerful chorus opens the song; the singer, Elpida, with her back to us; the backdrop adopting a suitably cruciform arrangement. It's an epic start. In flowing Greek robes, Elpida and her chorus shamble angularly towards us like a zombie attack, occasionally stopping to cry the word "Superstar!" to the heavens. It's hard not to be a little terrified by the lurching amble and the earnest caterwauling of these Socratean zealots.
	12pts	2010	AV: 1st Eur: 8th
	Giorgos Alkaios and Friends - "OPA (ΟΠΑ)"
	In 2010 Greece took inspiration from the previous year's Ukrainian entry. They are sexy hairy bum bum. Or shaved... perhaps shaved. They're certainly very Greek, in every way one can conceive. The rave-folk chorus owes less to Svetlana than the profoundly grunty verse. The whole thing sweats testosterone. There's a break in play three quarters in, with some light-box drums armed with fireworks. It helps keep things interesting in what for us was the best song of the night.