Eurovision 1995: Ireland’s secret win | Super-cut with animated scoreboard

An edited down version of the 1995 Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin (once again) with a scoreboard using today’s technology. Nothing but a fun lockdown project.

This edit will give a flavour of the evening (13th May) with Terry Wogan’s commentary. Mostly.

In life, sometimes there’s things that you just have to ‘get through’, and for me, 1995 was one. It’s probably a reflection on how busy I am at the minute, and the challenging branding for this contest which made this one a bit of a slog. That’s not to say that 1995 is a bad show, although, judging by the quality of recordings on YouTube I am guessing this isn’t much a fan favourite either.

I always thought that this was another landslide, but actually the points allocation is tighter than I had imagined – with the result being sealed up much later than 1994, but not as late at 1993 (which is hard to beat!) – I guess you could judge it as an average Contest in that sense.

Two favourites for the Contest, Spain and Sweden were up there, but the controversially lyric-light Norwegian entry, which contained largely Irish violin playing won the day. Note the lack of support from other Nordic countries – Sweden wanted the song pulled! Rolf Løvland, the producer had sat in The Point a year earlier, watched Riverdance and knew exactly how to bring about Norway’s second victory: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

My favourite story though, is that the Russian ‘edit’ of the show put their entry last in the running order and then they didn’t show the voting, giving the impression that they had won. Luckily for the Russian’s, the relegation zone had been suspended for a new way of picking the songs for 96. Let’s hope they do better there. Eek.

Elsewhere in Europe, the Bosnian war took a darker step than anyone had imagined, with conditions in Srebrenica and Sarajevo worsening. In July, mass murder would take place in one, and the siege of the other would lead to an international response with NATO planes in the sky. It would be in this year that the conflict would end. Nearer to The Point – agreements and progress were taking shape in relation to peace in Northern Ireland, mentioned by Mary Kennedy to heartfelt applause. With the Schengen Agreement coming into force in Europe too, the run up to the Contest wasn’t all bad news.

DESIGN AND THE BOARD
The 95 logo is a great piece of design that furthers the theme of the mid-90s Eurovision…a sort of neo-Celticism, if that’s a thing. What’s clear though, is that the logo designers didn’t talk to the rest of the production. We’re back to 1980s level of mismatch between the logo and the rest of the show. I tried to align them better, but the result started to look a bit like something from The Simpsons. The answer? Do exactly what the set and graphic designers did, make it dark and green and go back to water, like 94. I’ve attempted to add some more logo type elements, but I’m not sure how successful they are.

When picking typefaces, I have to have a full slate of diacritics (the little bits added to letters), and so that limits me from picking many display typefaces that mimicked the ‘eurovision’ in the logo – (which looks hand drawn). Whilst looking for Celtic alternatives, I found K-Type’s Irish Penny (www.k-type.com/fonts/irish-penny/), based on Irish pre-decimal coinage. Excuse the insular G, but the free version didn’t appear to have a latinised G available! The floating ‘E’s are from Karroo Small Caps on dafont.com but it couldn’t do the complex names in this show. I think Irish Penny gives it a romantically Irish look, which the use of Helvetica misses out.

I did use Helvetica Now for numbers etc – it’s a Monotype reworking of the 1957 classic– plenty already said about that typeface elsewhere!

TRANSFER NEWS (source: Wiki)
How did we get to 23? Well:
Only 6 were relegated from 93 as Italy pulled out of 94, giving Cyprus a reprieve. Those 6 were invited back, but Luxembourg also pulled out making:
BACK: 5 (BEL, DEN, ISR, SLO, TUR – all of whom returned strong!)
RELEGATED IN 94: EST, FIN, LIT, NED, ROM, SLO, SUI.

So (25 – 7) +5 = 23.

INTERVAL ACT
As good as Riverdance – there, I said it.

CREDITS
Another ‘Go raibh maith agat’ to Brendan M for helping with the Irish!
@Mosè Michielin for higher quality version
@Lucas ESC Archive for Wogan
@Eirchive for RTÉ News recording
Flags: countryflags.com (Cyprus altered), Bosnia: Wikipedia.
Satellite: flaticon.com
The green sea photo: Elion Jashari on Unsplash
All Copyright goes to BBC for Wogan, and to RTÉ.

00:00 RTÉ News preview
03:18 Intro
11:06 Song super-cut
35:23 Interval act
39:26 Voting intro
40:38 The reorder board 95
1:19:03 Recap & reprise