My Lovely Horse: Real Gone’s Eurovision Gold

It’s Eurovision time again! With the 56th contest and Graham Norton’s enthusiastic commentary looming on the horizon, it seemed like a good time to celebrate Eurovision’s “unique brilliance” with a few clips. Here are Real Gone’s favourite ever moments.

In reverse order:

Odd Børre – Stress (Norway 1968)

With a brilliantly orchestrated arrangement, occasionally lapsing into sub-par Burt Bacharach-isms, this could have been superb. It’s still kind of enjoyable, though we’re not sure why…

Guildo Horn – Guildo Hat Euch Lieb (Germany 1998)

An ageing rocker treating Eurovision with the tongue-in-cheek approach it really deserves: singing a song about himself, served up with ridiculously brilliant theatrics. Of particular note are his attempts at embarrassing male members of the audience, some cowbells and an impressive leap on to a high platform in huge platform shoes. Fabulous.

Jahn Teigen – Mil Etter Mil (Norway 1978)

This is the gold standard of how not to do it. So bad, in fact, Norway scored the famous nul points for Teigen’s performance. It was the cause of their being associated with nul points for several years afterwards. Bizarrely though, Teigen was invited back to represent Norway in 1982, where he finished in 9th position.
The golden moment here is the huge wail at 1:30, which appears to be followed by similar over-the-top wailing and a cockney knees-up. Allegedly Jahn Teigen hated ‘Mil Etter Mil’ and sabotaged his own performance in protest. We’re not sure we believe him, since a clip of him singing the song during the pre-contest heats is only slightly more restrained at the end.

May 2011