Haldor Lægreid was the last Norwegian participant in the Eurovision Song Contest. Because of him, Norway was relegated for the first time in the contest's history and had to wait until this year to participate again. In an interview with the leading tabloid paper VG today, Haldor reveals that the bad result and the comments which followed it, made him mentally ill.

Haldor talks about the days, weeks and months after his Eurovision participation in Copenhagen: “At that time I felt miserable. I was immensely sad, disappointed and scared. Not afraid of people, I've never experienced anything negatively in relation to people. But I was still uncertain. It was very difficult to face for me. I felt somewhat sorry for myself. Felt I had let myself down. Family and friends meant very much at that time.”

The interest from record companies and the music scene almost disappeared entirely after his musical inspired ballad On my own only managed to receive three points and ended in the equal last place in the Danish capital. Nobody thought he had commercial potential or wanted to release a record with him. “Everyone wants to be around a winner, noone wants to have anything to do with a loser”, Haldor says. Luckily for him, his self esteem is back and finally there are producers willing to work with him again. He has now made a deal with one of them, after meetings in several European capitals. The songs included on the upcoming CD will be a mixture of ballads and up-tempo tunes. At the moment he also plays a leading role in Jesus Christ Superstar. After all, the musicals were where it all began.