The first Eurovision Song Contest since Terry Wogan's death airs tonight on BBC One at 8pm. The renowned Eurovision commentator stepped down in 2008, and the annual extravaganza has been narrated by Graham Norton ever since.
Norton explained again this morning that he will be paying tribute to Wogan in a time honored way – and letting audiences know when he's doing it, too:
Terry always told me not to open a bottle until song nine. And so when we get to it, I’ll be mentioning him and encouraging everyone to raise a glass.
His whole approach was to be relaxed and that is what I try to do – although it’s hard when you are doing it for three and a half hours!
And, in case you need reminding of the wonders of Wogan's near-four decades of Eurovision commentating, here's why he defined the show forever:
1. He taught us the importance of being well-refreshed during the show
One of the great pleasures of watching Eurovision during "the Wogan years" was imagining Sir Terry cooped up in his little booth in a far-flung European stadium, a bottle of wine in one hand and a list of strange facts about various acts in the other. His well-known fondness for enjoying a drink as the show's wonders unfolded inspired a nation to host their own Eurovision parties and develop complicated drinking competitions in order to last through the night with their sanity intact.
After Wogan retired and Graham Norton took over his Eurovision commentary duties, Norton said the only piece of advice Wogan gave him was "not to start drinking before song nine". Paying his respects on Twitter after Wogan's death was announced, Norton said: "RIP Sir Terry Wogan. I'll raise a glass during song nine."
2. Just like the acts themselves, he went slightly too far
In 2001, Wogan referred to the two Danish Eurovision hosts as "Doctor Death and the Tooth Fairy", to the delight of British viewers. It did not go down well in Denmark, however. He later joked that Danish people had been so upset that Wogan had been banned from the country for life.
3. He told everyone not to take it too seriously
In the 2007 BBC show Making Your Mind Up, where British viewers had the chance to choose which act would represent them in the contest, Wogan accidentally read out the wrong name of the act that had been successful, and had to be corrected by co-presenter Fearne Cotton. There was momentary uproar, but Wogan didn't see what all the fuss was about. "Nobody died, it's a TV programme," he said later. "It wasn't the general election. People got a bit confused."
Speaking about the Eurovision song contest itself, he said in 2008: "I don't make the mistake of thinking it's a major musical event. I love the Eurovision Song Contest and it will continue long after I'm gone. Just please don't ask me to take it seriously."
4. But really he took it more seriously than anyone
When Andy Abraham came last for the UK in 2008, Wogan seemed genuinely upset that other countries' songs, which he considered vastly inferior, had done better in the voting. "It's no longer a music contest," he said at the time, and eventually resigned as commentator over the issue (although also partly, he said, to give viewers a break after his 35 years of service).
"I don't want to be presiding over yet another debacle," he claimed. Nobody gets in that much of a huff over something they don't care about deeply. It was always clear that he wanted the show to be of as high a musical quality as possible – an admirable aim, but perhaps an impossible one.
5. He knew that, deep down, commentating on Eurovision was one of the greatest privileges in TV history
"Every presenter and stand-up comedian in the country would have killed for the gig," he wrote in the Irish Times in 2014.
6. He didn't even try to prepare for the madness of the evening
"I don't prepare anything other than the opening spiel," he said of his commentary techniques. "It's all spontaneous reaction." Wise, given that Eurovision is a night where anything could happen.
7. He convinced everyone it was all about politics
"There's a definite Baltic bloc and a Balkan bloc and they've been joined in recent years by a Russian bloc," he said in 2007. "I've said it so many times it has become a cliché. We won the Cold War but we lost the Eurovision." Whether or not politics was influencing the voting was almost impossible to tell for certain, but the disgruntlement spread by Wogan at the perceived unfairness led to a change in the rules in 2009.
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Now the points awarded are derived 50/50 from televotes and music industry juries, an innovation for which Wogan can claim partial credit (though neither the UK nor his native Ireland have yet won any of the contests adjudicated under the new system).
8. He nurtured our great sense of the absurd
"Every year I expect it to be less foolish and every year it is more so," he said with an affectionate sigh after Finnish heavy metal act Lordi won in 2006. It was always evident that he loved the show's relentless weirdness, despite describing it as "magnificently awful".
9. He made it into a surreal, pessimistic metaphor for life and death
"Who knows what hellish future lies ahead?" Wogan famously said during the opening of the 2007 show. "Actually, I do. I've seen the rehearsals."
If there's ever been a better summary of the human experience, I'd like to hear it.
10. He turned it into one of life's great constants
Like death and taxes, there will always be Eurovision, and for a long time it felt as though, for British viewers at least, Eurovision would always mean Sir Terry Wogan. He'd been presenting it, as he said, "since God was a boy" (in fact it was the Seventies), before he retired in 2008. When Graham Norton took over the following year, he began by saying, "I know, I miss Terry too."
For millions of Eurovision fans, a world without Terry is a world where Eurovision makes even less sense, and it'll never quite be the same again.
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