Eurovision 1972: Edinburgh

Monaco had won, and Monaco had nowhere to put the contest.

Its broadcaster wanted to host all the same. With no studio or hall big enough, it proposed holding the show outdoors in June 1972, and talked of hurrying along an indoor venue that was already being built. The EBU ruled that the contest had to happen in March or April. By July 1971 Télé Monte-Carlo gave up, blaming the venue, the cost and the technical limits.

Looking for a volunteer

The EBU went down the scoreboard. Spain, second, said it had only just hosted in 1969. Germany, third, was busy with the Munich Olympics. The BBC helpfully suggested France, which had lost the draw to host in 1970.

Nobody made a firm offer. The EBU was reduced to appealing openly for volunteers, and for a while it looked quite possible that there would be no contest in 1972 at all.

In the end the BBC stepped in. Its head of light entertainment, Bill Cotton, announced in September 1971 that Britain would stage the show if no one else did, and that for once it would not be in London. Blackpool was considered. Edinburgh got it: the Usher Hall, a concert hall from 1914, in front of about 1,500 people.

It remains the only contest held in Scotland, and the only British one held outside England.

The same eighteen

Every country from 1971 came back. Vicky Leandros returned for Luxembourg, five years after “L’amour est bleu”. Tereza Kesovija, who had sung for Monaco in 1966, now sang for Yugoslavia. Sweden sent the Family Four for the second year running, and Portugal brought back Carlos Mendes.

The United Kingdom entered a group for the first time, and not an obscure one: the New Seekers had already had a worldwide hit with “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing”.

Ireland’s Sandie Jones sang “Ceol an Ghrá”. It is still the only song ever performed at the contest in Irish.

Jurors in a castle

The two-jurors-a-country system from Dublin stayed, with one change of scenery. The jurors were kept away from the hall, in the Great Hall of Edinburgh Castle, watching on television and writing down their scores after every song. When the voting came they appeared on screen and flipped up little numbered boards, one to five, three countries at a time.

So that the audience could follow, the voting was projected in black and white onto a big screen in the hall. The same screen showed each act’s name and song title before they sang — the first time anything like a video wall was used at the contest.

The show

The presenter was Moira Shearer, the Scottish ballet dancer and actor. She walked on to a fanfare by the musical director, Malcolm Lockyer, who had not written it for the occasion: it was his title music from the film “Dr. Who and the Daleks”.

The interval was four minutes of film from the 1968 Edinburgh Military Tattoo, with the pipes and drums of eight Scottish regiments.

One camera shot became notorious. Just before Monaco’s song the director cut, as planned, to the reigning winner in the audience. Séverine was looking at her watch.

Two disturbances

Before the broadcast started, a BBC producer was welcoming the audience when a local headmaster began shouting at him from the seats. Local schoolchildren had not been able to get in, he complained, and they would have appreciated it more than a hall full of invited guests.

The second was more alarming. During the Irish and Spanish songs a man scattered some substance among the audience near the Irish delegation, as a protest against the commercialisation of the music industry. It set off a series of small explosions. Police and soldiers briefly cleared part of the hall.

The result

Vicky Leandros won for Luxembourg with “Après toi”, on 128 votes. Two countries gave her the maximum ten. It was a family affair: her father, Leo Leandros, co-wrote the music — credited under a pseudonym, Mario Panas — and the words.

His co-lyricist, Yves Dessca, had also written the words to Monaco’s winner the year before. That made him the first person to win the contest two years running, and the first to win it for two different countries.

It was Luxembourg’s third victory. The New Seekers were second, the eighth time the United Kingdom had finished there. Germany was third for the third year in a row.

Portugal’s seventh place was its best yet. Malta, for the second year, was last.