I count myself fortunate that I was able to go to the 1972 Eurovision Song Contest when it was held in Edinburgh’s Usher Hall. A school friend and I took the train from Glasgow to Edinburgh – in itself a big adventure for us! – and had one of the most exciting nights of our young lives. And while the staging back then may not have had the extravagant and explosive pyrotechnics of today’s event, it was still a big deal.
Those who founded the song contest in 1956 hoped it would be a way to bring European nations together after the ravages of the Second World War. But not only was it a way to promote European cooperation and new song writing, it was also an experiment in Europe-wide live broadcasting. No mean feat!
The 1972 show was hosted by celebrated Scottish actress and ballet dancer, Moira Shearer. Born in Dunfermline in 1926, she rose to fame in Powell and Pressburger’s films The Red Shoes (1948) and The Tales of Hoffman (1951). But she also appeared in Powell’s 1960 chilling, and controversial, psychological horror-thriller, Peeping Tom, a film in which she came to a very sticky end.
The New Seekers © National Archives, the Hague
Although I wasn’t aware of it then, The New Seekers had a very strong Scottish connection. One of the two female singers in the group, Eve Graham, came from Auchterarder. Born in 1943, Eve is a beautiful singer, with an enviable three-octave range. While Beg, Steal or Borrow was a success in the charts, it’s fair to say that the group’s best-known hit was I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing, a song that may have started life as a Coca-Cola advert, but went on to become a chart-topping hit around the world in 1971.
Scottish connections aside, the Eurovision Song Contest is still going strong, with the motto for its 70th anniversary being United by Music. And, despite increasing political tensions, it’s been surprisingly successful at doing what it set out to do all those years ago. It’s one of the longest running international song contests ever and possibly the world’s biggest ever musical celebration. One that may at times seem to be over-the-top and awash with pyrotechnics, but anything that continues to keep us together in a fractious world has to be worth holding on to!
The full article appears in issue 118, June/July 2026, of iScot Magazine.