Bucks Fizz perform ‘Making Your Mind Up’ on Eurovision 1981
The Eurovision Song Contest is back in business with Mae Muller going for the trophy for the UK – and hopefully continuing the winning streak laid out by Sam Ryder.
Since 2010, the United Kingdom has found itself fighting a losing battle at the annual event, landing at the bottom of the leaderboard five times, second from the bottom three times, and even scoring the dreaded nil points once.
Thankfully, it seemed the streak was broken last year thanks to Sam Ryder’s Space Man, with the singer securing a second place victory after being narrowly beaten by Ukraine.
Due to the ongoing war in the winning country, Eurovision bosses determined to move the competition to the UK – with the show being held in Liverpool this year.
But according to Bucks Fizz star Cheryl Baker, there’s reasons behind the decisions – and it’s not always political like many fans would like to believe, and more to do with the “barbed commentary” delivered by the commentators.
Speaking exclusively to Express.co.uk, in association with Ice36, Baker – who won Eurovision in 1981 for the UK – explained: “I think there are a lot of elements to it, really. We didn’t take it seriously enough. Even our commentators took the mickey and still do, and the rest of Europe don’t.
“The rest of Europe, this is really important to them. You ask any Swede, you ask anyone from what used to be the old Eastern Bloc countries you know, it’s really important to them. We’re old school, you know?”
Baker continued that, as a country, the UK stopped considering important in the 80s, relying more on joke acts as the years went on.
“Come the 90s, we were making fun of it, and the rest of Europe were aware of that,” she said. “So they showed their distaste of us with their votes – or their lack of votes, I should say.”
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However, she concedes there is some level of political and state-of-the-world input that would impact the show, particularly when it comes to the audience vote.
“Certainly things like Brexit. We wanted out of Europe – whether we individually did or not doesn’t matter – but the fact that the country came out of Europe, well the rest of Europe stuck two fingers up at us didn’t they? and went “alright then we will show what we think of you and we’re not gonna vote for you”.”
“Proof of that is that we’ve seen the votes come in from the juries and we’ve done all right, and we’ve gone up the board a bit, and then the public vote comes in and we go all the way right down to the bottom,” she added.
“That’s the man on the street saying, ‘We don’t like you’.”
However, thankfully it seems times have changed, and with Sam Ryder embracing Eurovision for the UK, we found ourselves back in the game.
“He’s got such a glow of positivity about him, and that really, really did shine through and the fact that he was so great at promoting Eurovision and making it okay again to like Eurovision,” she said.
“You know Sam’s shown us that actually it’s okay to like Eurovision again and let’s get behind Mae and let’s enjoy the fact that is coming to the UK and as he’s just turned it around.
“He’s my new God of Eurovision.”
The Eurovision Song Contest Grand Final airs Saturday on BBC One.
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