A report from the GMTV breakfast programme about the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest of 1993.
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Below are some stills from the video:
Noel C Duggan
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Audio transcribed:
They called it a one horse town, they even said it was a national disgrace, but on Saturday, all eyes in Europe will be on the small town of Millstreet in County Cork, population 1,500.
Because, against all the odds, this quiet backwater in the South of Ireland will host the 1993 Eurovision Song Contest. Everyone sneers at the Eurovision, but not Millstreet. People here welcomed it with open arms, every shop and every home along the main street is decorated. And this will be the venue, the town’s international show-jumping arena which has been transformed for the occasion, and they’re taking no chances. The show-ring has been specially fumigated. The man with the plan to take the Eurovision to its smallest ever venue is Millstreet native and millionaire businessman Noel C. Duggan.
“I wrote my letter when Linda Martin … when the voting was going on. There were two more countries to vote and I decided she couldn’t be beaten. So, I pulled out my bit of paper and wrote my letter to the Irish authorities, and I didn’t hear for two months. Now, some wise craic suggested, at least quoted me as saying, which is not true, that the reason they didn’t reply for two months was that it probably took them that length of time to stop laughing.”
With 25 countries, including for the first time, Bosnia and Croatia, it’s the biggest ever contest, and it goes live to a worldwide audience of more than 500 million! Britain are putting their hopes on Sonia:
“Yeah, I’m getting more excited by the day, you know it’s, I just can’t wait really. The atmosphere is just amazing, it’s fabulous”
So, come Sunday it will all be over, and if Millstreet knew it’s place, it would go back to being a quiet little County Cork town, but somehow, you get the feeling that’s just not in Noel C Duggan’s grand plan
