The second part of the UK Eurovision winner's interviews to Outnorthwest magazine includes the opinions of the first ever UK winner in 1967, Sandie Shaw, and the last to-date winner, Katrina Leskanich of Katrina and the waves who won in 1997. The two ladies spoke about their fondest memories from their participation and offered their opinion on what the UK has to fill in the blank in “The winner is ……”.
Sandie Shaw did not want to enter Eurovision in the first place, only managed to start liking Puppet on a string lately but nevertheless went on to become the first artist to win the contest for the United Kingdom. What she did love back then, though, was her her frilly, shiny outfit which she lent and never got back: "I loved my Eurovision frock. I designed it myself and it was made by some fantastic seamstresses in Covent Garden. I still have the black and white frilly cover. Unfortunately I lent the dress to Danny La Rue so he could copy it for his take-off of me in his drag act – and he never returned it. So it is out there in there somewhere." Sandie says.
How can the United Kingdom be saved from embarrassment and fly up to the top of the Eurovision scoreboard now, LGF asked Sandie: " Stop living in the past." she says "Stop being so stuck up about Europe. Present the songs to be chosen in a more contemporary format with someone fresher than our lovely Terry. Take a leaf out of the Saturday night TV wannabe shows. Ask me to be on the production team!"
And what does Sandie do with her time now that the popular singer has reached the age of sixty? "Oh, I am designing a house to build, living in France, studying regional wine, and doing forestry. Developing download facilities on my website. Creating marketing ideas for my recording back catalogue. Working with my old school to develop an award for making a difference in the community. Teaching Nichiren Buddhism every first Wednesday in the month. Traveling around Europe with my husband in our little plane, painting furniture and boxes and playing with my grandchildren. Supporting my younger friends in their endeavours to get the life they desire together. Encouraging my older friends to pass on their expertise to their younger friends, and to listen to their ideas and dreams. Telling everyone that the purpose of being alive is to be truly happy and to fulfil all your potential as a human being."
Sandie Shaw's news and rare videos can be found on her official website here.
American born, Katrina Leskanich won the Eurovision Song Contest thirty years after Sandie and she has an interesting story to tell of how this all came about to happen: "I had a call from Jonathan King who was trying to turn the contest around, he'd brought Gina G to the contest the year before with Oooh aah just a little bit which I still think is the best song ever entered into Eurovision. He asked us if we had a song that we could put forward and we did have this song which was originally going to be used by the Salvation Army as their anthem. We thought it was just too cheesy to release ourselves but it was perfect for Eurovision!
Everyone loved it and I fully expected them to take the song and get some blonde little tweetie bird to sing it but a big Eurovision fan at Warner Brothers said: 'Look, you guys have a name, all you need is a hit song and if you do it we'll give you a record deal.' So we couldn't say no as we hadn't had a hit record in 12 years. It was such a feel-good song, It had 'I am a winner' written all over it and by that time Ireland were winning every year and they really couldn't afford to host the contest anymore so it would have been embarrassing for it not to win!"
Love shine a light took the contest by a storm, receiving a record of 227 points. So what will it take to repeat the triumph? :"Last year both Morrissey and Jarvis Cocker expressed an interest in Eurovision- in the end nothing came of it – but I think they would have had a great impact on the UK's choice of performer and song. There were also established performers in the line up but in the end the public choose a nostalgic Eurovision track which wasn't really a song that could compete with the event that Eurovision is in the 21st century." Katrina says.
Katrina’s recently released They don’t know together with the Sleazesisters featured last week in the New Music Week Charts’ Pop Chart this week at No.21, and also at No.4 in the Club Chart Breakers. 19th May will see six new remixes of the song available for download from iTunes and other digital stores worldwide.
Katrina- Love shine a light (xenomania remix)
