Morten Thomassen from Norway decided to write about some of his memories of Eurovision and the Norwegian Eurovision selection. ESC Covers again will publish it after google translating it from Norwegian to English.
Well, we’re going to the year where I myself got my MGP and ESC debut, for this gentleman’s year I was going to be in the audience both at MGP and ESC, and what an experience it was.
Yes, I can agree that MGP/ESC is perhaps experienced from its best side when you watch it on TV and it is from that angle that those who vote evaluate the songs and give their precious votes.
However, the atmosphere in the hall never comes across properly on TV and fortunately I have had my dose of experiencing our beloved competition live and am probably one of those in Norway who has the most such experiences under his belt.
It was probably the fact that the Norwegian final was held in Oslo Spektrum and thus there was easy access to tickets which meant that you finally got your finger out and finally got to see the final live.
Many nice songs this year, my favorite was probably “Hjembygd” performed by Toril Nigar, but as usual I was not quite on the same wavelength as the rest of Norway since it only came in 7th place out of 10 songs.
Everything was set for this to finally be Tor Endresen’s year with the song “Radio Luxembourg” which became this final’s biggest hit in retrospect and which may well have made it sharper in Malmö than the song that eventually won did.
Because when the last jury from Oslo had said its trick, a Trøn girl named Merethe Trøan with only a 25-point margin ahead of her and slightly surprised she had to state that the song “Visjoner” was this year’s MGP winner.
As a result, the planned trip to Tor Endresen to congratulate him on the victory had to be changed to the stage instead.
Then it was young Miss Trøan, I and some others in the MGP club went to Malmö to cheer for when the competition was back in Sweden they opened for public sale of tickets and we got hold of some, admittedly 3 rows from the back of the hall and if I remember correctly they cost SEK 1,100 so quite a lot of money at the time, quite a price to pay to display from the MGP club’s now quite famous banner:
This was actually the first time someone brought a banner to the ESC and Terry Wogan himself noticed it when it was shown on the screen after Merethe had performed and he must have remarked: “Victory For Norway, don’t think so…”.
The rules for who got accreditation were a little simpler then and they actually had a guest accreditation which you were lucky enough to get on the day of the final itself, so already early in the afternoon on the final Saturday we were within the holiest of holies.
The official program had already been bought in advance and you arrived at the same time as the artists arrived for the last dress rehearsal and then actually started a never-so-small gathering of signatures from those who took part.
Many artists came at the same time and when I saw my favorite Mia Martini on the other side of the venue I found the page with her picture on it and strode over to get an autograph, but on the way there was none other than Linda Martin and in my bewilderment asked so I could get her autograph on the picture of Mia Martini.
“That’s not me” she said and hit me, not very hard and the blow was probably mostly of the joking kind, I got the page to the right picture and got her signature and can boast of having been subjected to physical violence by an ESC- winner, that’s something.
The very best thing about this accreditation was that we got to watch the dress rehearsal from the third row in the hall and thus got to see the show from a more excellent angle than the one you had at the live show later in the evening.
Still remember that when it was only a few minutes before the show started, I had to pinch myself in the arm to fully believe that I was actually going to see an ESC final present in the hall.
The show was great, the winner was absolutely fine and with this guest accreditation we actually got access to the after party where I got to chat a bit with Mia Martini and said how much I liked her song, one of the better memories I have, got a good benefit of this accreditation given.
Well, experiencing MGP/ESC live became a bacillus that I was heavily infected with and it would be close to 30 years before I saw it on TV again.
Now for Roy’s memories of 1992.
It is not good memories. I had a horrible trip to Europe in 1991, so many things went wrong, and most involved Malmo in Sweden, So when Sweden the 1991 Eurovision song contest and Malmo was chosen as the host city, it was clear I won’t travel to Europe in 1992. I did find some way to watch Eurovision. M-net had a Portuguese channel at the time and although I had M-net, I did not have the Portuguese channel. But M-net said I could subscribe just for the month which I did and was able to watch it. It featured the whole show, but not the whole voting. Being Portuguese, they focused just on Portugal voting.
The songs of 1992 were not really my taste and I only love the host entry from Sweden, I MORGON AR EN ANNAN DAG by CHRISTER BJORKMAN. In 2013 when Malmo hosted again, I did attend and this time I had someone recorded an English version of the song and handed Christer a promo copy of it in Malmo.
Featured image source – NRK Norway