Morten Thomassen is looking at 1984 and who came second that year, someone who later on went to win the contest. ESC Covers google translated it from Norwegian to English.

Now that we have entered the Christmas month, the entries that lacked only a generous score to win will be presented.

Then it is appropriate to start with a lady who has red hair for the occasion.

We are of course talking about Linda Martin’s participation in 1984, that time she was barely 8 points short of beating three brothers from Sweden who won.

Down to the Spanish contribution, which came in third place, there were a total of 31 points, so a fairly safe silver place.

“Terminal 3” is actually the least successful contribution of the composer Sean Sherrard and if you don’t quite know who that is, the answer to that could possibly be that he calls himself Johnny Logan as an artist.

Linda is part of a fairly exclusive group of people who can boast both second and first place this spring, it only consists of five people.

Madam Martin has actually participated in the Irish final 9 times and is, in a sense, the Irish answer to Jahn Teigen, albeit with better results internationally.

She was to try out as her country’s representative 8 years after her first participation and then we all remember that her song went to the top.

For numbers nerds, I can inform you that she herself won by twice as many points as she lost by in 1984.

As an artist, this lady has been going since 1969 and it was as a vocalist in a group called Chips that she spent the first ten years as artist.

Later, she was also a presenter on TV and also involved in various Irish finals, where she is possibly best remembered for a rather heated exchange.

Perhaps it is not so surprising then that she has been given the role of evil stepmother in Cinderella and evil queen in Snow White.

I myself was attacked by the lady when I asked for an autograph from her in 1992 when, by mistake, I asked for it on a picture of Mia Martini and not herself.

So not really sure if that lady should come back to our beloved circus actually.