73 year-old Patricia Bredin, United Kingdom�s first representative in the Eurovision Song Contest 50 years ago in Frankfurt, Germany, performed in Halifax, Canada yesterday, at 3 p.m local time at the Music Room aiming to help raising funds for the Scotia Festival of Music, event which takes place in late May and early June each year in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Patricia Bredin, born in Swansea, Wales, in 1934, was the first United Kingdom representative in the Eurovision Song Contest. It happened in 1957, in Frankfurt, Germany,where she finished seventh with the song All, the first ever song sung in English at the Eurovision Song Contest. According to John Kennedy O'Connor, The Eurovision Song Contest-The Official History author, this is the shortest performance in the history of the contest, lasting 1’52’’. Commenting on that performanceBredin wrote in an article for the October 2007 Vision magazine "It was very surreal to me, I felt like an appendage with an entourage of very important BBC officials. All the other performers had their makeup artists and hairdressers with them. I had me! But that was OK; I didn’t know any better. The orchestra was huge and the strings glorious and wildly exciting."
Bredin starred in some movies and later gave up her successful career singing lead roles in musical theatre in England and the United States to marry the Canadian businessman Charles MacCulloch. Tragically, MacCulloch died on their honeymoon. Bredin after 15 years off the stage she was asked to perform at the Music Room in Halifax, Canada, to help raising funds for the Scotia Festival, an annual local event. “I still can’t believe it, I am getting too old for this stuff,” Patricia Bredin commented. “They asked me to sing, and I am always a soft touch for a sob story”. Yesterday Bredin performed show tunes accompanied on a Bosendorfer piano, which she donated to the festival, by Peter Allen.
