After Eurovision’s Greatest Hits debuted in the UK on Friday, it was Sweden’s turn to screen the concert on Saturday. And Sweden being Sweden, they sent their own team of Melodifestivalen boss Christer Björkman and Melfest star Sarah Dawn Finer to interview the stars of the show. EBU spokesperson Lynda Woodruff was also there to get acquainted with London and provide red carpet coverage of the event. These were the highlights from the show.
Lynda Woodruff’s segments had the theme tune of “Congratulations”, Cliff Richard’s second-placed song from 1968, and she even had a few jokes at his ageless appearance. We wonder if news of the recent events surrounding Cliff hasn’t made it to Sweden yet. Or maybe it has…
There was a slightly awkward moment when Anne-Marie David claimed that “Tu te reconnaîtras” was “the song that got the highest score in voting” and that she’d “never been beaten – even by the new generation.” A strange claim, considering that while her 129 points was the highest ever score in 1973, it has been beaten by almost every winner since. And even if you take the number of countries competing into consideration, the winner is still “Fairytale”, with Alexander Rybak’s mighty 387 points averaging out to 9.2 points per country, compared with Anne-Marie getting only 7.5 points per country in her year. Sarah Dawn and Christer kindly smiled and nodded, though the next segment in the show had Lynda Woodruff reminding Loreen that “you won with a record-breaking 12 points from basically everyone”. So there.
Lynda’s pronunciation skills were still in need of work. She called Conchita “Coconut Waterworst”, 1985 Melfest star Pernilla Wahlgren became “Pernolia Wallgroin” and even after a lesson from Loreen, Lynda still could not get to grips with “Azerbaijan”.
Sarah Dawn and Christer had a chat with Johnny Logan, wondering if he’d ever been asked to represent Ireland in Eurovision. He said he had – multiple times – and wouldn’t do it, but he would consider writing a song.
He praised the staging of “Heroes” (he’d previously met Måns on an episode of Allsång på Skansen) and was impressed by the amount of money that went into the show. He was less impressed with Ireland’s Eurosong, accurately describing it as “a chat show with six songs on it”. But he praised Molly Sterling and “Playing with Numbers” as “a fairly decent artist and a fairly decent song”.
Lynda also rendered the handsome Herreys brothers speechless when, after reminding them of their nicknames as “the singing deodorants” (on account of how bland they were), she noted that they actually left her feeling “not dry when I heard your song”. #DILF
Lynda also asked Dana International for her best tip on being a diva. Dana’s advice: “Don’t eat! Stay hungry all day long!” Don’t listen to her, Lynda! Let Eurovision feed you its love. Perhaps some tasty Belarusian cheesecake, or some fresh baked Russian bread?
Watch the show here on SVT. It’s in Swedish, but there’s a lot of spoken English.
@dave. i was aware of this but find it inaccurate. In 1973 Two members of each jury awarded between 1 and 5 points to each song. Minimum from a country was therefore 2 and maximum 10. Looking at it this way, you could say that only 8 points could be awarded from each country since 2 were already guaranteed. Maximum score would then be 16*8 which is 128. AMD was awarded 97 points. 97/128 is 75,7. Less than BOM and i think Also less than Alex and Nicole though not sure about this. You can tell JKOC next time you… Read more »
I am worried … people want Lynda to be eternally linked to Eurovision/MF-universe … but I wonder: do people even bother to remember that Lynda is Sarah Dawn Finer, an actual talented singer songwriter? Should I presume that trying to have Sarah representing Sweden would be boring … as opposite to have Lynda doing some sort of interval act? And they still call this Eurovision SONG contest …
Lynda is annoying loser bring on Philipa Bark:-)
Lynda Woodruff is the best thing ever happend to Eurovision!
@Dave – if it’s so, then the fault isn’t Wiwi’s, but AMD’s, cause she was the one who didn’t put it specifically. I didn’t hear the word “percentage” coming outta her mouth.
Guys, i’m afraid you are very wrong about AMD’s claim. She has in fact the record for the highest percentage of votes available. Its about 80%. It is narrowly ahead of Save your kisses for me, by about 0.2 % . If you had read the excellent full history by John Kennedy Oconnor you would know this!
Greatest Hits was good, but you can’t beat good old Lynda Woodruff. If Sweden win again (its possible) this year, then I want her and Petra Mede to return and host again.
Malmö was my favourite contest (Copenhagen and Moscow coming a close second) in the last 20 years or so, and I know they could kick ass again.
I still remember and can’t forget her hilarious show with her famous funny bubbling in the Vision of Malmo in 2013! <3 😀
That certain part when she was describing us how friendly the Swedes people are and we saw some obnoxious ones instead was just priceless!
A clown but a so beautiful & charming one! <3 🙂
Well what really happens when the so called Lynda Woodruff is unleashed to the streets of London…?? Just pandemonium! <3 😀 Alert! : A crazy nuts lunatic lady here and she really needs to get taken back to her mental clinic! She IS dangerous! 😀 😉 <3 She can take Philipa Bark as her assistant servant and have these 2 uniting their crazyness 4 the best possible outcome! <3 😀 I really love Lynda and im huge fan of hers! <3 😀 Her delirium show should be tradition and get done every single year with every Vision! <3 😀 She… Read more »
Absolutely everything about this swedish pre-show was better than the actual anniversary celebration … plus everything my Sarah Dawn Finer does turns into gold, either it’s music or her acting skills. Plus, this is was the only time I had a laugh with Dana International considering she can’t bring in her questionable music talents .. at least she knows how to be funny.