Eurovision Song Contest 1982

Harrogate International Centre, Harrogate - host venue of the 1982 contest.

Harrogate is a spa town in North Yorkshire, England. Historically in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the town is a tourist destination and its visitor attractions include its spa waters and RHS Harlow Carr gardens. Nearby is the Yorkshire Dales national park and the Nidderdale AONB. Harrogate grew out of two smaller settlements, High Harrogate and Low Harrogate, in the 17th century. The town became known as 'The English Spa' in the Georgian Era, after its waters were discovered in the 16th century. In the 17th and 18th centuries its 'chalybeate' waters (containing iron) were a popular health treatment, and the influx of wealthy but sickly visitors contributed significantly to the wealth of the town.

The Harrogate International Centre was chosen as the host venue for the contest.[1] The grand convention and exhibition centre opened short time prior to the contest, and was the first big event held in the main 2000-seat auditorium.

The opening of the contest showed a map of Europe, with the translation "Where is Harrogate?" popping up on-screen from the languages of the various countries. The question was always in the language in which the respective country's song was performed, with the exception of Ireland. The Irish entry was sung in English, but the translation of the question in the map was in Irish. Then the map zoomed into Harrogate's location in Yorkshire, followed by an introduction video spotlighting the town.

The tradition of previous year's winners handing over the prize to current winners was not followed by Bucks Fizz, winners in 1981.

Irish band Chips lost out in their national finals, which, had they been successful, would have led to the unique situation of two bands in the same Eurovision with the same name (the other being Sweden).

This year, before the postcard of a specific country (with the exceptions of Israel, who had no commentator, and Yugoslavia, whose commentators were in their own country), the camera would zoom into the commentary box of that country's broadcaster, where the commentator/s would give a hand gesture, e.g. wave. The postcard would start with the country's flag on the screen and an excerpt of the country's national anthem (though in the case of the UK, the song played was "Land of Hope and Glory" instead of "God Save the Queen", while the Israeli postcard began with an excerpt of "Hava Nagila"[2] instead of "Hatikvah"). The postcards themselves, utilizing state-of-the-art video technology (for its time) were a montage of footage of the artist in Harrogate town or at the International Flower Festival. Some of the postcards also incorporated footage from the preview videos submitted by each organization, the first time the contest had utilised the clips in the broadcast. Only the preview videos were used where it was not a performance of the song from the national final. After the conclusion of the video clip, Jan Leeming introduced the conductor and then the artist for each nation.[3]

There were 18 participating countries this year. No year since has had this few participants in the final of the competition.

Greece was due to participate in the contest with the song "Sarantapente kopelies" performed by Themis Adamantidis. Although drawn to perform in second place, ERT withdrew the entry a few weeks before the contest.

In November 1981, France's national broadcaster, TF1, declined to enter the Eurovision Song Contest for 1982, with the head of entertainment, Pierre Bouteiller, saying, "The absence of talent and the mediocrity of the songs is where annoyance sets in. [Eurovision is] a monument to insanity [sometimes translated as "drivel"]."[4] Antenne 2 became the new broadcaster for Eurovision after public outcry, returning the country to the contest in 1983.

Germany had the advantage of performing last. After coming second in The Hague in 1980 and second in Dublin in 1981, Ralph Siegel and Bernd Meinunger took the first win for Germany. The winner, Nicole, beat the nearest competition by 61 points and over 13 million West Germans watched her victory on television. Germany was the commanding leader for nearly the entire voting process.

Nicole went on to sing the reprise of her song in English, French and Dutch, as well as German, to the delight of the invited audience in Harrogate Conference Centre who stood up to applaud her. The English version (also produced by Siegel and Robert Jung) of her Eurovision winner, A Little Peace, subsequently shot to No. 1 in the UK Singles Chart.[5][6]

Returning artists

Artist	Country	Previous year(s)
Stella Maessen	Belgium	1970 (for  Netherlands, as part of Hearts of Soul), 1977 (as part of Dream Express)
Anita Skorgan	Norway	1977, 1979
Jahn Teigen	Norway	1978
Fatima Padinha (as part of Doce)	Portugal	1978 (as part of Gemini)
Teresa Miguel (as part of Doce)	Portugal	1978 (as part of Gemini)
Olcayto Ahmet Tuğsuz (as backing singer for Neco)	Turkey	1978 (as part of Nazar)
Anna Vissi	Cyprus	1980 (for  Greece, along with the Epikouri)
Sally Ann Triplett (as part of Bardo)	United Kingdom	1980 (as part of Prima Donna)

Results

Draw	Country	Artist	Song	Language[9][10]	Place[11]	Points
01	Portugal	Doce	"Bem bom"	Portuguese	13	32
02	Luxembourg	Svetlana	"Cours après le temps"	French	6	78
03	Norway	Jahn Teigen and Anita Skorgan	"Adieu"	Norwegian	12	40
04	United Kingdom	Bardo	"One Step Further"	English	7	76
05	Turkey	Neco	"Hani?"	Turkish	15	20
06	Finland	Kojo	"Nuku pommiin"	Finnish	18	0
07	Switzerland	Arlette Zola	"Amour on t'aime"	French	3	97
08	Cyprus	Anna Vissi	"Mono i agapi" (Μόνο η αγάπη)	Greek	5	85
09	Sweden	Chips	"Dag efter dag"	Swedish	8	67
10	Austria	Mess	"Sonntag"	German	9	57
11	Belgium	Stella	"Si tu aimes ma musique"	French	4	96
12	Spain	Lucía	"Él"	Spanish	10	52
13	Denmark	Brixx	"Video-video"	Danish	17	5
14	Yugoslavia	Aska	"Halo, halo" (Хало, хало)	Serbo-Croatian	14	21
15	Israel	Avi Toledano	"Hora" (הורה)	Hebrew	2	100
16	Netherlands	Bill van Dijk	"Jij en ik"	Dutch	16	8
17	Ireland	The Duskeys	"Here Today Gone Tomorrow"	English	11	49
18	Germany	Nicole	"Ein bißchen Frieden"	German	1	161

Each country had a jury who awarded 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 point(s) for their top ten songs.

12 points

Below is a summary of all 12 points in the final:

N.	Contestant	Nation(s) giving 12 points
9	Germany	Cyprus,  Denmark,  Ireland,  Israel,  Portugal,  Spain,   Switzerland,  Turkey,  Yugoslavia
2	Cyprus	Netherlands,  Norway
	Israel	Finland,  Germany
	Switzerland	Belgium,  United Kingdom
	United Kingdom	Austria,  Luxembourg
1	Yugoslavia	Sweden

Each national broadcaster also sent a commentator to the contest, in order to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language.

Broadcasters and commentators in participating countries

Country	Broadcaster(s)	Commentator(s)	Ref(s)
Austria	FS2	Ernst Grissemann	[21]
	Hitradio Ö3	Walter Richard Langer
Belgium	RTBF1	French: Jacques Mercier	[22]
	BRT TV1	Dutch: Luc Appermont	[23]
	RTBF La Première	French: Marc Danval
	BRT Radio 1	Dutch: Herwig Haes
Cyprus	RIK	Fryni Papadopoulou	[17]
	RIK Deftero	Neophytos Taliotis
Denmark	DR TV	Jørgen de Mylius	[24]
	DR P3	Karen Thisted
Finland	YLE TV1	Erkki Toivanen	[25]
	YLE Rinnakkaisohjelma	TBC
Germany	Deutsches Fernsehen	Ado Schlier	[26]
	Deutschlandfunk/hr3	Roger Horné
Ireland	RTÉ 1	Larry Gogan
	RTÉ Radio 1	Pat Kenny
Israel	Israeli Television	No commentator
	Reshet Gimel	Daniel Pe'er
Luxembourg	RTL Télé Luxembourg	Marylène Bergmann	[22]
	RTL	André Torrent
Netherlands	Nederland 2	Pim Jacobs	[27]
Norway	NRK	Bjørn Scheele	[28]
	NRK P1	Erik Heyerdahl
Portugal	RTP1	José Fialho Gouveia	[29]
	RDP Programa 2	TBC
Spain	TVE1	Miguel de los Santos	[30]
Sweden	SVT TV1	Ulf Elfving	[18]
	SR P3	Kent Finell	[18]
Switzerland	TV DRS	German: Theodor Haller	[31]
	TSR	French: Georges Hardy	[32]
	TSI	Italian: Giovanni Bertini
Turkey	Ankara Television	Ümit Tunçağ
United Kingdom	BBC1	Terry Wogan	[8]
	BBC Radio 2	Ray Moore	[8]
Yugoslavia	TVB 2	Serbo-Croatian: Mladen Popović
	TVZ 1	Serbo-Croatian: Oliver Mlakar
	TVL 1	Slovene: Tomaž Terček

Broadcasters and commentators in non-participating countries

Country	Broadcaster(s)	Commentator(s)	Ref(s)
France	RTL	André Torrent
Greece	ERT	Mako Georgiadou

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