Today, it’s 1983, an over-eulogised year (by idiots moaning about Steven Frost or something) that saw Roland Rat at the height of his fame, and the UK represented by one of a long line of ill-advised attempts to recapture the magic Eurovision-winning formula of Bucks Fizz by deploying a bunch of Bucks Fizz look-and-sound-alikes, Sweet Dreams, and their ill-fated entry I’m Never Giving Up.
- I’m Never Giving Up could only manage a paltry sixth place, with the top slot going to Luxembourg’s Corrinne Hermes with Si La Vie Est Cadeau (That Just Raises Further Questions). Experts believe that the UK might have fared better if less successful contenders Lionel Morton, The Alfrescos, or ‘Belouis’ ‘Some’ (who was told to “come back in three years with a can of Citrus Spring”) had represented their home nation instead.
- the 1983 Eurovision Song Contest was notoriously subject to massive technical delays, due to a subsequently abandoned experiment to relay the voting in three languages instead of the traditional two. This held up the final verdict for so long that producer Charles McHaltenwood attempted to cue in an emergency broadcast tape of Doctor Who And The Space Pirates Episode 5, which unfortunately became jammed in the playback heads and was subsequently wiped.
- one of the three co-writers of I’m Never Giving Up was Ron Roker, whose other credits include songs for Tina Charles, Lynsey De Paul, Barry Blue and Tony Head (no, really), as well as the theme songs for The Adventures Of Rupert Bear and Pipkins. Sadly, this was one of the years when Ronnie Hazlehurst failed to pick up the conductor’s baton, having instead to urgently attend to un-writing his original Only Fools And Horses signature tune, Here Come The Zanies! (Del Boy Theme)
- Carrie Gray, one third of Sweet Dreams, would transmogrify, courtesy of marriage and industrial strength hair dye, into Carrie Grant off of Celebrity Fame Academy On Ice and the fantastically migrane-inducing Carrie And David’s Pop Shop. ‘David’ of course being David Grant, whose own early eighties pop career with finest purveyors of ‘Pigeon Street Soul’ Linx was chronicled in this post here. Yes, Pigeon Street Soul. It’s a good name. Shhh.
