Eurovision 1977: London

The 1977 contest was supposed to happen on 2 April. It happened on 7 May.

The BBC’s cameramen and technicians were on strike. The corporation looked at moving the show into Television Centre, where outside-broadcast crews were not needed, but that depended on a guarantee from the broadcasting union, and the guarantee never came. Three other countries offered to take the contest off Britain’s hands, the Netherlands among them. In the end it was simply put back five weeks.

That made it the first contest held in May since the very first one.

The venue

It was staged at the Wembley Conference Centre in London, the first purpose-built conference centre in the country, which had opened only that January. Two thousand people were in the audience, and Angela Rippon presented. Glasgow had been the first city to bid.

Eighteen, and a country that never arrived

Sweden returned after its year of staying away. Yugoslavia left, discouraged by a run of bad results, and did not come back until 1981.

Tunisia was going to take part. It had even been drawn to sing fourth. Then it withdrew.

A good many of the singers had been here before. Portugal’s group, Os Amigos, included Paulo de Carvalho — the man whose 1974 entry had been used as a signal for a revolution. The three sisters in Belgium’s Dream Express had sung for the Netherlands in 1970, and Monaco’s Michèle Torr had sung for Luxembourg in 1966.

The language rule comes back

In 1973 countries had been freed to sing in any language. Four years on, the rule was reversed: songs had to be in a national language again.

Germany and Belgium sang in English anyway. They had already chosen their songs before the rule was reinstated, and were let off.

The postcards nobody saw

There were no films between the songs this year, and the strike was only part of the reason.

The BBC had made its postcards from footage of the artists at a party it threw for them in a London nightclub. The delegations saw the result for the first time at the dress rehearsal on the Friday, the day before the final. Norway’s objected to the way its singer came across.

There was no time to re-edit one film, so the BBC dropped all of them. During the breaks viewers were shown the audience instead, while their commentators filled in.

The party footage was not wasted entirely. It was used as the interval act.

The result

France won. Marie Myriam sang “L’Oiseau et l’Enfant” last of the eighteen and finished on 136 points, fifteen ahead of the United Kingdom’s Lynsey de Paul and Mike Moran. Ireland was two points further back in third.

It was France’s fifth victory, more than any other country, and France kept that record to itself for six years.

Greece came fifth, its best result so far. Sweden’s comeback went badly: last place, with two points.

The arithmetic

Not all the numbers read out on the night were right. The Greek and French spokespeople both gave the same score to more than one country. When the votes were checked after the broadcast, four countries lost a point from the Greek jury and five lost a point from the French.

None of it changed where anybody finished.