Edinburgh - Eurovision ’72 On March 25th 1972, the Eurovision Song Contest was held at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh. The then sixteen-year-old international competition was hosted by Dunfermline born Moira Shearer, the dancing queen from Powell and Pressburger’s ballet based 1948 blockbuster, The Red Shoes. The Eurovision Song Contest was founded in 1956 by the alliance of public service broadcasters that made up the European Broadcasting Union, and was based on the Sanremo Music festival, which had been running in Italy since 1951. The first Eurovision saw fourteen countries showing off their wares in Lugano, Switzerland. There was no entry from the UK, who wouldn’t join in until the following year. The Edinburgh event was the fourth time the contest had been held in the UK since it was first hosted at London’s Royal Festival Hall in 1960. The 1972 event was also the first in the UK to be programmed outside London, and, to date, the only Eurovision held in Sco...
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.