Eurovision 1983: Munich

Germany had never hosted as the reigning winner before, and it built big. The 1983 contest was held in the Rudi-Sedlmayer-Halle in Munich, put up for the basketball at the 1972 Olympics. Even with its 5,500 seats cut to 3,200 it was the largest arena the contest had been in.

Only 1,200 of those seats were sold to the public, at between 20 and 50 marks. The rest went to delegations and the press.

Sixty-three thousand bulbs

The backdrop was a steel structure of 33 frames that resembled giant electric heaters. They carried 63,000 light bulbs between them, which could be played by hand or set to flash with the music.

Who came

France, Greece and Italy all returned, making twenty. Ireland was missing for the first time since it joined in 1965: its broadcaster was short of money and in the middle of an industrial dispute.

Far away, the contest found a new audience. It was shown in Australia for the first time, in Sydney and Melbourne.

No postcards

The producers decided, for technical reasons, to do without films between the songs. The presenter, Marlene Charell, would introduce every entry herself, standing beside a flower arrangement in that country’s national colours.

After the first rehearsals the Austrian and British commentators complained that this left them no time to tell their own viewers about the next song. They threatened to pull out. The compromise was to hold each country’s name on screen a little longer.

Three languages, thirteen mistakes

Charell did everything in German, then again in French, then again in English: country, title, singer, lyricist, composer, conductor, twenty times over.

It was too much. Over the evening she made thirteen language slips. Some were small, like using one language’s word for “points” in another. One nearly mattered: she almost gave Sweden — “Schweden” — points that belonged to Switzerland, “Schweiz”.

Names went too. Finland’s Ami Aspelund became “Aspesund”. Spain’s Remedios Amaya became “Ramedios”, and Portugal’s Armando Gama “Armendo”. The Norwegian and Yugoslav conductors were both introduced under names that were not theirs.

The voting alone lasted almost an hour, and the show ran past three hours, only the second time that had happened.

She also danced. Charell led the interval act herself, with twenty dancers from her own company, to a medley of German tunes that had become hits abroad.

The favourite nobody in the hall wanted

The press had made Luxembourg’s entry the favourite. The local audience thought it was a joke, and said so.

Corinne Hermès sang last of the twenty. During her song, a good part of the audience got up and left. During the voting there was laughter each time a spokesperson named Luxembourg, and booing when the big scores came in.

The show’s own director, Rainer Bertram, and his opposite number at Luxembourg’s broadcaster both criticised the mocking tone of the Munich public and media.

The result

She won anyway. “Si la vie est cadeau” finished on 142 points, six ahead of Israel’s Ofra Haza. Israel had now been runner-up two years running. Sweden’s Carola Häggkvist was third, a single point ahead of Yugoslavia.

It was Luxembourg’s fifth victory, equal with France at the top of the all-time list.

When Hermès came back to sing her winning song again, much of the hall was already on its way out.

At the bottom, Spain and Turkey both scored nothing. It was the third year in a row that someone had.