The Eurovision Song Contest 1963 was the eighth annual Eurovision Song Contest, held in London, United Kingdom, after the British broadcaster BBC stepped in to organise the event. France had won the 1962 edition with the right to host this following one but were unable to, due to financial shortcomings. No country debuted, returned or withdrew.
It was won by Denmark with the song "Dansevise", performed by husband and wife duo Grethe & Jørgen Ingmann, giving the country its first victory. Four countries got nul points, with Finland, Norway and Sweden failing to score any points for the first time and The Netherlands for the second time, becoming the first country to go two years in a row without scoring a single point.
Location[]
The BBC was willing to host the contest instead of the previous year's winner France, as was the case in 1960, 1972 and 1974 with previous winning broadcasters that could not afford to organise a contest.
The host venue was the BBC Television Centre, White City, London, which opened in 1960. It is one of the most readily recognisable facilities of its type having appeared as the backdrop for many BBC programmes. It remained to be one of the largest such facilities in the world until it closed in March 2013.
Incidents[]
Voting controversy[]
One controversy this year was during the voting. When it was Norway's turn to announce their votes, the spokesman in Oslo did not use the correct procedure in that the song number, followed by the name of the country, should have been announced before awarding the points. Katie Boyle asked Norway to repeat their results, but the Norwegian spokesman asked Katie to return to them after all the other results were in. When Katie went back to Norway again the votes had mysteriously altered, thus changing the outcome of the contest and giving the victory to Norway's neighbours Denmark at Switzerland's expense. In fact, the Norwegian spokesman had not given the correct votes on the first occasion. Monaco was also asked to do their voting a second time as initially Monaco give one point to both the United Kingdom and Luxembourg. However, when Katie Boyle went back to Monaco to receive the votes again Monaco's one vote to Luxembourg was efficiently discarded (although this did not have any effect on the positions of the countries). It has also been speculated as to whether the juries were indeed on the end of a telephone line or in the actual studio given how clearly their voices could be heard as opposed to sounding as though they were being redirected through a telephone line.
Participants[]
Returning artists[]
Artist | Note |
---|---|
Ronnie Carroll | Represented the United Kingdom at the Eurovision Song Contest 1962 in Luxembourg City with the song "Ring-A-Ding Girl", finishing in joint 4th place with 10 points. |
Results[]
Draw | Country | Performer(s) | Song | Language | Translation | Place | Points |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
01 | United Kingdom | Ronnie Carroll | "Say Wonderful Things" | English | - | 4 | 28 |
02 | The Netherlands | Annie Palmen | "Een speeldoos" | Dutch | A musical box | 13 | 0 |
03 | Germany | Heidi Brühl | "Marcel" | German | - | 9 | 5 |
04 | Austria | Carmela Corren | "Vielleicht geschieht ein Wunder" | German, English | Maybe a Miracle Will Happen | 7 | 16 |
05 | Norway | Anita Thallaug | "Solhverv" | Norwegian | Solstice | 13 | 0 |
06 | Italy | Emilio Pericoli | "Uno per tutte" | Italian | One For All | 3 | 37 |
07 | Finland | Laila Halme | "Muistojeni laulu" | Finnish | The song of my memories | 13 | 0 |
08 | Denmark | Grethe & Jørgen Ingmann | "Dansevise" | Danish | Dance Song | 1 | 42 |
09 | Yugoslavia | Vice Vukov | "Brodovi" | Croatian | Ships | 11 | 3 |
10 | Switzerland | Esther Ofarim | "T'en va pas" | French | Don't Go | 2 | 40 |
11 | France | Alain Barrière | "Elle était si jolie" | French | She Was So Pretty | 5 | 25 |
12 | Spain | José Guardiola | "Algo prodigioso" | Spanish | Something Marvellous | 12 | 2 |
13 | Sweden | Monica Zetterlund | "En gång i Stockholm" | Swedish | Once Upon a Time in Stockholm | 13 | 0 |
14 | Belgium | Jacques Raymond | "Waarom?" | Dutch | Why? | 10 | 4 |
15 | Monaco | Françoise Hardy | "L'amour s'en va" | French | Love goes away | 5 | 25 |
16 | Luxembourg | Nana Mouskouri | "À force de prier" | French | By Persistently Praying | 8 | 13 |