...

rank Naef Host broadcaster: RTL Télévision (RTL) Opening act: In an introductory video, Pierre Cao and the RTL orchestra performed instrumental versions of all the past Eurovision winners from Luxembourg and L'amour est bleu, one of Luxembourg's most popular entries. Interval act: Prague Theatre of Illuminated Drawings Number of entries: 19 Debuting countries: None Returning countries: Ireland The Eurovision Song Contest 1984, the 29th event of its kind, was held on 5 May 1984 in Luxembourg. The presenter, Désirée Nosbusch, only 19 years old at the time, hosted the show in a lax manner, which was quite unusual for the show at the time. She manifested her fluency in four languages by switching between a strong transatlantic English, French, German and Luxembourgish in the course of talking, often in the same sentence. Sweden's the Herreys were the winners of this contest with the song, "Diggi-Loo Diggi-Ley". This was the Nordic country's second win, and the first one in Swedish, as ABBA performed Waterloo in English when they won in 1974. Richard and Louis Herrey became the first teenage males to win Eurovision and remain the youngest ever male winners, being 19 years and 260 days and 18 years and 184 days of age respectively. Israel did not enter due to it conflicting with the country's Yom HaZikaron holiday. Iceland was going to participate but withdrew due to lack of financial support.[2] 1984 is also notable for the audible booing that could be heard from the audience, particularly at the end of the UK's performance. It was said that the booing was due to English football hooligans having rioted in Luxembourg in November 1983 after being knocked out of the UEFA European Football Championship. Before the contest, Sweden was not expected to win or even achieve a high placing. In the run-up to the Contest, bookmakers Ladbrokes had the lowest odds on songs from Ireland, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Sweden was considered a "dark horse" entry with high odds. Each country had a jury that awarded one to eight, 10 and 12 points for their top ten songs. At the close of the penultimate jury's votes, there was only a difference of six points between Sweden and Ireland, at 141 and 135 respectively. However, Yugoslavia was the only country who had not given any points to Ireland, and Portugal, the last jury, gave that western country only two points, crushing their chances. Portugal's voting also cost Denmark, who had been holding at a strong third position, even leading the scoreboard for a short time, in that place, when Portugal's 12 lifted Spain from 94 to 106 points. Portugal at the same time had only given Denmark one point making Denmark's total 101 points. Despite this, this was the latter country's best position in over 20 years. Halfway through the voting, the scoreboard turned blue and remained so until the end of the voting. This was visible only to television viewers.