Swiss starlet and media darling Gunvor won a comfortable victory in the national final, the first public selection organised in Switzerland for many years. She went to Birmingham with a song she had written herself, backed by former entrant Egon Egemann (Switzerland 1990) and four backing singer, attracting notable media attention from her domestic press.
What she didn't know was that the Swiss press was about to go all dirty on her and disclose spectacular details of her private life during eurovision week. The details, far too many and un-appetising to be re-told here, as well as the entire passage of events can be found in the excellent Tim Moore book "Nul Points".
Given the pressure suddenly put on her, Gunvor stepped out in style and gave a brave, almost heroic, performance of her entry. In this year, the first with full televoting, she however failed to make it into top ten in any country.
Which means nul points in the end.
Nul points?
Even without the story of how viciously Gunvor was treated by the Alpine tabloids and gossip mags, I always found this nul-pointer particularly inexplicable.1998 had its fair share of odd and underwhelming entries (Greece, Spain, Turkey, the list goes on) and I never understood quite why Switzerland would deserve the nul points.
It does prove a point of mine, though. If your entry is horrible or bad in an outstanding way, it will appeal to at least a certain number of people for its entertainment value. If your entry is nice, people will nod their heads, smile and think to themselves "That's nice", but nobody is going to vote for it.
In the world of televoting, "nice" means "bad". Tough luck for Gunvor.
Gunvor - Lass' ihn (Switzerland 1998)
