For Eurovision Song Contest Fans:

[Buenchico]

A reminder that this coming Saturday is Eurovision day, even if the actual contest itself is cancelled this year.

It all kicks off on Friday evening actually, with a repeat of 'Eurovision at 60' (from 2015) on BBC4:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05vsm0d

Then, as a warm-up for the main event on Saturday evening, there's 'Eurovision: Come Together' on BBC1 at 1825:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jbr0

That's followed by the contest itself but without any actual contest! (i.e. all this year's songs are there but just without any voting):
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jbr8

If you've still not had your full fix of Eurovision on Saturday, then switch over to BBC2 at 2200 for 'The A to Z of Eurovision':
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jbbk

Don't turn off when it ends though, or you'll miss the repeat of a TOTP2 Eurovision Special:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007hbk8

Yippee!

[shoota]

O Death, where is thy sting...

[Toorak]

Just when you thought that things were bad enough :-(

[Ellipsis]

[gness]

Well thank god it’s not competitive, Chris. We really don’t want to be winning yet again! ;-)

[Buenchico]

Nice but predictable, Ellipsis ;-)

Let's have a fantastic runner-up:

[Ellipsis]

[Buenchico]

I just knew that was coming, Ellipsis!

[Ellipsis]

So predictable ...

[jno]

I remember the old days

[Buenchico]

Ah, the good old days, Jno, when the competition really was about the songs and not about the staging, the special effects, the personalities of the singers or whatever!

"Non ho l'età" remains a great song and, yes, I'm old enough to remember it too! (I'd have been a month short of my 11th birthday when it won).

The pop revolution of the 1960s didn't really seem to infiltrate the Eurovision Song Contest until the following year, when Luxembourg won with this somewhat less than memorable number:

[jno]

I remember when Sandie Shaw was chosen she had about five songs to pick from, so she sang one on the Rolf Harris Show each week. She made a mess of Puppet on a String, got off on the wrong beat and had to stop after a couple of bars and start over again. (The perils of live broadcasting perhaps - at any rate, if they had the ability to edit out the false start, they didn't.) Didn't do her any harm - I think there was some sort of public vote and it was the one she took to the contest.

[Buenchico]

From Sandie Shaw's autobiography about that song:
"I hated it from the very first oompah to the final bang on the big bass drum. I was instinctively repelled by its sexist drivel and cuckoo-clock tune."

;-)