003 - Birmingham 1998

Hello! I’m Steven Perkins, welcoming you to another edition of Douze Points - the still-quite-new podcast that celebrates the sometimes weird but always wonderful world of the Eurovision Song Contest. We’re with you every Monday, taking a look at the latest Eurovision headlines with regular deep dives into the history of the contest. Thank you, listener, for allowing me into your ears once more - and having just said that out loud, I am never saying that again.

Before we get going, a quick reminder that you should definitely follow us at Bingewatch underscore Pod on Twitter, where you can get in contact with us if that’s a thing you would like to do, and you keep up to date not only with Douze Points but also Ian and Hannah over on the mothership.

So, what’s in the headlines right now? Let’s take a quick look…

More exciting news is coming out of Liverpool in terms of the events surrounding this year’s contest - from 1-14 May, the quote-unquote pre-party to end all pre-parties will be held in the city. Described by Culture Liverpool’s Claire McColgan as “a scouse/Ukrainian mash-up of brilliance”, the projects include a mass kite-fly and a three-day “queer fantasia” at Chavasse Park.

In one of the less obvious Eurovision mash-ups, 12 books have been selected for The Big Eurovision Read, in association with BBC Arts, aiming to create a dialogue between book lovers and Eurovision fans. Titles on the list include High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, Soul Music by Terry Pratchett, and The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce.

And finally, the ballot has now opened for displaced Ukrainians to apply for tickets for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. 3000 tickets are available across the three live shows and six rehearsal shows, and if you are Ukrainian and based in the UK via the Homes for Ukraine Scheme, the Ukraine Family Scheme or the Ukraine Extension Scheme, you can apply now at the gov.uk website - but don’t delay, as the application process closes at 4pm on Thursday 6 April

With Liverpool gearing up to be the host city for Eurovision 2023, we thought it would be a good idea to cast a look way, way back into the mists of time to 1998 - the last time that the United Kingdom hosted the Eurovision Song Contest. What happened back then? And what lessons should we take from it? Let’s find out…

Following Katrina and the Waves’ victory in Dublin in 1997, the United Kingdom was set to host for the first time since 1982, where the contest was Harrogate, and a record-breaking eighth time overall. Naturally, lots of cities across the nation expressed an interest in hosting Eurovision, including Aberdeen, Bournemouth, Brighton, Edinburgh, Harrogate again, Inverness, Newcastle and Sheffield, but the production team drew up an eventual shortlist consisting of Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow, London and Manchester - and in August 1997, Birmingham’s National Indoor Arena - that’s right, the home of Gladiators - was chosen as the official venue of Eurovision 1998.

Also, if you’re thinking that Eurovision 1998 was the biggest international event that Birmingham hosted that year - nope. It wasn’t even the biggest international event that Birmingham held that month, as the G8 summit took place there less than a week later. In fact, Terry Wogan mentioned in his opening narration that the hotel room he’d just vacated would next be occupied by Bill Clinton.

Speaking of Terry, he was an obvious choice to host the event, having been the familiar voice of Eurovision on the BBC every year since 1980 (as well as twice in the 70s).. However, since he was still required for commentary duties in 1998 too, a co-host was needed - and who better than Ulrika Jonsson, the Swedish-British presenter of shows like the aforementioned Gladiators, who was not only familiar with the venue but also spoke fluent French? And if you’re wondering how Terry managed to pull double duties on the night - well, for the most part, he didn’t. His commentary booth was built near the stage to allow him to switch between the two easily, but that’s still where he spent the majority of the evening, only emerging for the opening, part of the interval, and for the coronation of the winner, with the rest of the evening’s presenting duties falling entirely on Ulrika’s shoulders.

It’s a bit weird to think about it now when we’re used to massive arenas that house nearly 10,000 Eurofans, but there were 4000 people in attendance - although throughout the show, you could be forgiven for thinking there were significantly more, because it’s a pretty… boisterous crowd. And the BBC wheeled out their concert orchestra for the artists’ disposal.

And that brings us to an interesting point - the 1998 Eurovision Song Contest was a landmark for a few different reasons. For one, this was the final year where a live orchestra was made available, as the idea was ditched from 1999 onwards as a cost-cutting measure, and presumably also because there was a lot more electronic music being entered for the competition, as evidenced by Gina G’s Apple Macs in the background at Oslo in 1996.

This was also the final year where the rule was in place forcing countries to submit their entries one of their native languages - and indeed, in 1999 Charlotte Nilsson would win for Sweden with the English-language Take Me To Your Heaven.

1998 was just a year of endings though, it was also a beginning of sorts: the first Eurovision Song Contest were the preference was for televoting. The scheme had been trialled in 1997 in Dublin, with five countries being able to cast their votes by phone - and the successful beta led to the widespread adoption of the process this time around, with exceptions only for countries where logistical reasons meant a televote was likely to be problematic - in this case, Hungary, Romania and Turkey. So this is a really interesting instalment to go back and watch through modern eyes as a transitional time at Eurovision, a time when several modern elements of the competition were just beginning to emerge.

Now, if we can take Terry Wogan’s word as gospel - and I would recommend as a general rule that we don’t, but on this occasion I’ll make an exception - the majority of the pre-contest publicity centred around two countries: Israel and Germany. Israel had hit the headlines by their selection of Dana International as their entrant, the first openly transgender contestant at Eurovision, which caused a significant amount of protest in her native Israel from the Orthodox Jewish community - and, I seem to recall at the time, a fair bit of pointing and laughing from the rest of the world, because as much as we would like to think that the late 90s were an enlightened time, they were not. Germany, meanwhile, were notorious for an entirely different reason: sending Schlager singer Guildo Horn, whose flamboyant clothes and balding mullet were catnip to commentators, and his knowing parody - but still faintly creepy - ‘Guildo hat euch lieb!’, or ‘Guildo loves you’, was seen as a major contender for the win.

There were also some amusing pre-contest controversies - apparently the Greek entry composer Yiannis Valvis was behaving aggressively backstage, leading to his accreditation for the day being withdrawn, and Greece themselves briefly withdrawing from the event on the day of the contest, before changing their minds. There was also a lot of tension involving the Turkish entry, as in rehearsals their conductor was leading the orchestra at too slow a tempo and breaking the strict three-minute time limit, which would have led to Turkey’s disqualification - but on the night he brought it in at a swift two minutes and 59 seconds. Phew!,

Watching the contest back now, it’s fascinating to see how much has changed in the course of 25 years. These days, stage presentation is considered a key determining factor in your chances of success at Eurovision - and the UK’s absolute inability to cotton on to this was part of the reason we did so badly for such a long time - but back in 1998, it was basically expected that everyone would turn up in their smartest outfit and sing politely into the camera, in what was basically a two-hour edition of Top Of The Pops. It’s quite jarring to watch it now, because it does feel quite monotonous - but I have such vivid memories of watching Eurovision in the 90s and it feeling like this hugely glamorous and exotic international treat, so I suppose that just goes to show how much higher our expectations are nowadays.

So, what of the contest itself? Well, the BBC came up with a stage that was fairly adaptable for the performers, with lots of deep hues of blues and purples and recessed lights, and some standalone one-sided curved arches that look a bit like brontosauruses from a distance.

The introductory videos created for the occasion were meant to show the changing face of the United Kingdom, showing a primitive, sepia-toned portrayal of live in the UK - football, for example, or a day at the seaside - before transitioning into a full-colour, modern, New Labour-ised rendition. Not all of these were completely successful - one seemed to suggest that the modern equivalent of the Roman Baths was Alton Towers. Each one was soundtracked by instrumental versions of hot British music from the likes of the Bluetones, the Manic Street Preachers, Catatonia and even Duran Duran.

As for the performances themselves - there were some good tunes this year. Obviously Dana International was the standout, but the UK was no slouch either, with Imaani’s R&B-tinged ‘Where Are You?’ making a strong impact - it would probably be remembered a lot more fondly if we hadn’t won the previous year, but I think it tends to get lost in the general Katrinamania of the time. Other creditable entries that year for my money came from Malta, Belgium, Netherlands and Sweden - and if you do fancy going back for a rewatch, there are a couple of familiar face to watch out for - the Dutch entry that year was Edsilia, who’s now perhaps better known as one of the hosts from Rotterdam 2021, and representing Estonia was none other than Koit Toome of Verona fame - looking extremely babyfaced as he was just 19 at the time.

So, what about the hosts? Well, I don’t think it’s any great shock to say that a lot of Terry Wogan’s commentary hasn’t aged especially well. I went in prepared for him to be sarcastic, and to make mean-spirited jokes in the grand tradition of the UK at Eurovision, but what I hadn’t quite steeled myself for was the fact that some of the stuff he says was genuinely gross: for example, his comments about the Swiss entrant Gunvor’s dress and how it “promised more than it delivered” - a reference to the flesh-coloured panels over her breasts, and presumably how he would have liked a look at her actual boobs. Stay classy, Terry.

Ulrika, on the other hand, I think did a phenomenal job on the night. She had by far the harder task - and as she joked just before starting the results that ‘if anything is going to go wrong, it’s going to happen now’, she was clearly nervous, but she had a brilliantly unflappable demeanour. Part of the poisoned chalice of hosting at Eurovision - particularly in this era - was trying to rein in the jury spokespeople from padding out their parts too much, and I thought Ulrika did a great job of being warm and friendly with them, allowing them to have a moment or two in the spotlight but making sure the show kept running to time. There was, of course, the Infamous Incident with Dutch spokesperson Conny Vandenbos, which I must admit I reference with my husband on a near-weekly basis, but which I also think has led to Ulrika being unfairly maligned as a result when it wasn’t her fault at all. If you’re unfamiliar, Conny represented the Netherlands in 1965, and expressed her empathy for the contestants. Ulrika engaged with her, saying “of course, you’ve taken part”, to which Conny responded “long ago”, but her comment came while Ulrika was still talking, and wasn’t heard by the audience in the arena - so when Ulrika replied “a long time ago, was it?”, it sounded like she was just being catty, and the crowd went wild. Ulrika realised what had happened immediately and sounded absolutely mortified but, like I said - genuinely not her fault. Very funny, though.

The voting in 1998 was genuinely thrilling, with four countries in close competition for the win throughout the results - Israel, the United Kingdom, Malta and the Netherlands, with the lead often changing at multiple points within a single country’s results. Incidentally, the scoreboard this year was a mixture of the traditional list of all the countries and their scores (but without the modern touch of them automatically being rearranged in points order), and a map-style version where we saw the points flying across to the various countries. This was nice to look at, but generally pretty unhelpful, as every time they switched to it, you only saw the points being given out in that round and there was no way to look at the overall scores, so unless you were keeping very detailed notes, you couldn’t really see what it meant for everyone else without the input of your commentator.

Anyway, thrillingly, it all came down to the final set of votes - with Israel and Malta tied on 166 and the UK close behind on 157, with just FYR Macedonia left to give their results. Terry Wogan said at this point that “only Israel and Malta can win it”, which was mathematically incorrect, as the UK was only nine points behind both of them. As it happened, Macedonia gave Israel 8 points, 10 to the United Kingdom, and their 12 went to Croatia, while Malta got nothing at all, leaving Israel as the overall winners, the UK in second place, and Malta just one point behind them in third place.

Terry Wogan immediately scarpered out of his commentary booth to join Ulrika on the stage, alongside Katrina Leskanich to present the trophy to the winners - but there was a pretty amusing delay when it turned out they’d actually lost Dana International, who’d popped off to get changed and don a Jean Paul Gaultier outfit for her reprise performance. A true icon.

So that was Eurovision 1998 - despite our general sneering attitude to the contest as a whole, it showed a professionalism and a respect that enabled us to held our heads up high - and I hope we’ll do the same at Liverpool in 2023. The signs look good.

That’s all from me for now. Don’t forget to hit subscribe if you’d like to have future episodes of Douze Points automatically added to your podcast feed! Thanks for listening - and until next time, good night Europe, and good morning Australia.