Eurovision 1995: Dublin

No country has hosted three contests in a row except Ireland, and by the third, Irish television was looking for a way out.

RTÉ looked at Galway and Limerick, and went back to the Point Theatre in Dublin because it was cheaper. The BBC offered to take the contest off its hands, or to stage it jointly in Belfast. RTÉ said no to both and produced it alone, at a reported cost of 2.3 million Irish pounds.

But it did ask the EBU for one thing: a change to the rules, so that if Ireland won a fourth time running, it would not have to host again. The EBU agreed.

Twenty-three

The field was cut from 25 to 23, to keep the show under three hours.

Seven countries were relegated on the previous year’s scores, among them four of 1994’s newcomers. Five that had been sent down the year before came back. Italy and Luxembourg were invited and declined, and that reprieved two countries which should have been relegated: Austria and Spain.

Spain made the most of it.

Lottery tickets

About a thousand of the seats in the hall were not sold at all. The National Lottery was one of the sponsors, and the places went to people who had won them on scratchcards.

Mary Kennedy presented. She had been the stand-by host in 1981 and had waited fourteen years for the real thing.

It was the fortieth contest, and the show opened with four minutes of clips from the other thirty-nine. The interval act, “Lumen”, mixed Gregorian chant and traditional Irish singing with new music, and its cast included the Benedictine monks of Glenstal Abbey.

Nocturne

Norway won with a piece that was barely a song at all. “Nocturne”, by Secret Garden, was almost entirely instrumental. It has 24 words, sung briefly at the beginning and again at the end.

It finished on 148 points, 29 ahead of Spain.

Its composer, Rolf Løvland, had done this before: he wrote “La det swinge”, Norway’s winner of 1985.

And Ireland had a hand in it after all. Secret Garden was a partnership between Løvland and an Irish violinist, Fionnuala Sherry. They had met at the previous year’s contest in the same building, where she was playing in the orchestra and he was there as the writer of Norway’s entry.

The rest

Spain’s second place, for Anabel Conde, was its best result since 1979. Sweden was third. Croatia and Slovenia, sixth and seventh, both did better than they ever had.

Ireland’s own entry was fourteenth, and RTÉ’s new rule was not needed.

Germany finished last, with a single point.