VENUE Binyaney Ha'ouma Centre, Jerusalem		ENTRIES 23
HOSTS Dafna Dekel, Sigal Sachmon, Yigal Ravid		DEBUTS None

Another Eurovision in Jerusalem, twenty years after the last one, and a nice mix of the traditional and modern. A long march around the historic sites to open the show and Dana International climaxing a rather preposterously OTT interval presentation. Israel's first win had coincided with the advent of a double-handed presentation in 1978, and this year we were regaled with three presenters!. It all seemed a bit too much, maybe it was an excuse for the "march" into the arena and the rather bizarre ad-break interval routine of the two ladies toasting "life" with glasses of red wine covered in cellophane to protect their frocks.

At long last, the EBU bowed to the inevitable and for the first time since 1977, any language could be used. On the whole it was the countries of Northern Europe, Scandinavia, Baltic and the Benelux who took advantage of this. Surpriz, Surpriz, the contest ended up being a two-way fight between two of these, Sweden's brazenly retro "Take Me To Your Heaven" and Iceland's more contemporary "All Out Of Luck", which featured two male dancers (a ploy to be copied by Russia the following year, with similar results).

This year also featured a great deal of intrigue (and I must stress we are only talking "alleged" here). There were rumours that one of the Maltese trio mimed her whole performance and that the Lithuanian votes were announced in the wrong order (Ireland 12???). What we do know is that Croatia did infringe the rules with a backing track with some male vocals on. They got their wrists slapped and their point score adjusted (for future calculations on who's in and who's out).

WINNER: Sweden

TAKE ME TO YOUR HEAVEN by Charlotte Nilsson

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