The 8th episode started at 18.10 on Sunday 20 August. Elsje van Jaarsveld presented it while Ilse Schurmann wrote the text and produced the show. Technical production is by Wihan Nel.
This episode again ended after 20 minutes at 6.30 pm. During that time, 5 songs were played.
SONG 1 was OOH AAH … JUST A LITTLE BIT by GINA G. She represented the United Kingdom in 1996. Gina is an Australian and was one of the favourites to win. In the end she only finished in 8th place. The song, however, went on to become a worldwide hit, especially in the United States where she won a grammy for the song. Elsje mentioned that the dress Gina wore was made for Cher who did not like it and then Gina grabbed it for her. This song is probably the only Eurovision entry that was released as a CD single in South Africa. Tusk music released it. Roy from ESC Covers attended the 1996 contest in Oslo, Norway and met up with Gina who signed a folder for him.
SONG 2 was L’ AMOUR CA FAIT CHANTER LA VIE by JEAN VALLEE. This was the entry for BELGIUM in 1978. This was the second time Jean appeared at the Eurovision song contest, his first being in 1970. The 1978 song did quite well and ended in second place. Something very interesting happened that year. One of the Arab countries, Lebanon, broadcasted the competition on TV. The moment they realized Israel was about to win with A-BA-NI-BI, they cut the broadcast and went over to advertisements, only to return a little later simply to announce Belgium had won. At that time, they were not allowed to mention anything about Israel. DANA WINNER from Belgium, who had covered many Eurovision songs, also covered this one, both in the original French and German. Sunette Bridges from South Africa also covered it, but in French.
SONG 3 was DSCHINGHIS KHAN by DSCHINGHIS KHAN. The group had six members, one of them a South African LOUIS HENDRIK POTGIETER, who matriculated from Helpmekaar high school in Johannesburg. Dschinghis khan represented Germany in 1979 and ended in 4th place. RALPH SIEGEL composed the song and BERND MEINUNGER wrote the lyrics. These two teamed up many times to write Eurovision entries. Dschinghis khan also had many hits outside of Eurovision with songs composed by Ralph and Bernd. Their song ROME was a hit South Africa and they also had a highly successful song called MOSCOW which was written for the 1980 Olympic games in Moscow.
SONG 4 was THEATER by KATJA EBSTEIN. She represented Germany at the 1980 Eurovision song contest and got second place. This song was also composed by RALPH SIEGEL with lyrics by BERND MEINUNGER. The 4 years 1979 to 1982 were a very successful period for Ralph & Bernd, writing all 4 the German entries and getting positions 4-2-2-1. Katja herself represented Germany no less than three times in Eurovision, 1970, 1971 and 1980. She reached positions 3, 3 and 2.
SONG 5 was HALLELUJAH by GALI ATARI & MILK AND HONEY. They represented ISRAEL at the 1979 Eurovision song contest in Jerusalem. It was Israel’s second victory, having also won the previous year. The song became a hit and was covered in several languages like Swedish, Finnish, and Danish. In South Africa the brothers INNES & FRANNA BENADE covered it in Afrikaans as GEE MY VREDE. A video of the song is available on Youtube.
The 8th episode was again very entertaining and we are looking forward to the remaining 5 episodes.
Featured image source – EuroVisionary