Lasting over two and a half hours, Congratulations! looked back over the first half century of the contest, to which acts like ABBA, Cliff Richard, Johnny Logan and Nicole - all former winners - owed much of their success, and viewers were invited to phone in their choice for the best song in the Eurovision's 50 year history from a shortlist of 14, not all of which actually won the competition the year they were entered. The winner by a large margin was ABBA's Waterloo, written Benny Andersson (who admitted to having voted personally for the second placed song, Volare) and Björn Ulvaeus.
Based in the Danish city of Løsning, Nordic Rentals was the sound company entrusted with responsibility for the prestigious event, and when it came to electing their own winner, "the sound system of sound systems", Nordic's engineers split the honours between the XLC and X-Line Very Compact (XLD) - both systems from Electro-Voice.
(Lee Baldock)
