Get set for plenty of crazy outfits and cheesy tunes as Eurovision storms back on to our screens this weekend.
On Saturday (May 11), UK’s entry Olly Alexander goes for glory with his track Dizzy. But alongside all the razzmatazz of the contest – this year taking place in Sweden on the 50th anniversary of ABBA’s Waterloo win – its history also has its dark side.
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Here Daily Star looks at some of the most shocking episodes linked to the event from addiction and accidents to tragic death.
Coach crash trauma
(Image: Getty Images)
Bubbly British pop group Bucks Fizz won the 1981 song contest with their upbeat tune Making Your Mind Up, famous for a routine featuring a saucy mini-skirt reveal. But, three years later, the foursome were involved in a terrifying bus crash on their way back from a gig in Newcastle when the vehicle collided with a lorry.
Bobby G suffered whiplash and Jay Aston was hospitalised with back injuries while the other two were thrown through the windscreen. Cheryl Baker broke her spine and Mike Nolan had internal bleeding and facial injuries which left him fighting for his life in a coma.
He recovered but was left with epilepsy and lost 50% of his vision. This week Mike announced he would be quitting performing with Cheryl and Jay under the moniker of The Fizz as travelling was taking its toll. They last released an album, Everything Under The Sun, in 2022.
Sudden stoke
(Image: Mirrorpix via Getty Images)
Lynsey de Paul, who dated the likes of actor Sir Sean Connery, came second representing the UK alongside Mike Moran at Eurovision in 1977 with the song Rock Bottom, but she died suddenly, aged 66, in 2014.
The star suffered a brain haemorrhage at her home in north London. Her niece Olivia Rubin said the death was completely unexpected, saying: “She was in perfect health. “She was a vegetarian, didn’t smoke and didn’t drink.”
Christmas calamity
(Image: AFP/Getty Images)
Known as the Red Army Choir, the Russian Alexandrov Ensemble took part in 2009’s Eurovision, held in Moscow, as part of an interval performance with 2003 entry female pop duo t.A.T.u, who had a UK No 1 with All The Things She Said.
In the early hours of Christmas Day in 2016, a Russian Tupolev Tu-154 military plane, carrying the group to a festive celebration crashed off the coast of Russia, near Sochi. All those aboard, including 64 members of the choir and its director, were killed in the accident, which was put down to pilot error.
Highway horror
(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
Dubbed the Elvis Presley of the Balkans, Tose Proeski sang for Macedonia in 2004 and finished 14th with his song Life, while the winning title went to Ukraine ’s Ruslana. The 26-year-old’s life was cut short when the car he was travelling in collided with a truck on a motorway in Croatia on October 16, 2007.
His neck was crushed, and the singer was killed instantly. A day of mourning was declared in Macedonia – and he was given a state funeral.
Petrifying plunge
(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
Singer Mika, born in Lebanon and known for hits like UK No 1 Grace Kelly, hosted 2022’s Eurovision in Italy. But back in 2010 he had put his career on hold when his sister Paloma, 28, fell 50ft from the window of her fourth floor flat in Kensington, London, after losing her balance.
Her legs were impaled on the spikes of railings below, with one piercing her abdomen. Taken to hospital by helicopter, surgeons operated for 17 hours to save her. She survived but had to learn to walk again. Mika, now 40, said: “It showed me that you could lose everything you take for granted in five seconds.”
Sick stars
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Hungarian lead singer Örs Siklósi, from the heavy metal band AWS, died aged 29 in 2021 after a leukemia battle – the group had finished 21st at Eurovision in 2018.
He is not the only Eurovision star to have died young from illness. Latvia’s Valters Fridenbergs, who finished fifth in 2005 with The War Is Not Over passed away, aged 30, from cancer. Sara Tavares, who represented Portugal at the 1994 contest passed away in 2023, at 45, after a decade-long battle with a brain tumour.
Heart attack
(Image: Universal Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Italian songbird Mia Martini took part in Eurovision twice, representing her homeland with Libera in 1977 and reaching 13th place then finishing fourth with the song Rapsodia in 1992. But the singer and actress died aged 47 in 1995, at her flat in Cardano al Campo, near Milan from a heart attack due to a cocaine overdose.
New Year death
(Image: RTE)
Irish singer Liam Reilly fronted Bagatelle and finished joint second at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1990 in Zagreb, with the song Somewhere In Europe. And in 1991, he composed the song Could It Be That I’m In Love for Kim Jackson’s Irish entry. But he was to pass away “suddenly” on New Year’s Day in 2021 at his home, aged 65.
Addiction drama
(Image: AFP/Getty Images)
Norway’s Alexander Rybak won Eurovision in 2009 with his song Fairytale – with, at that time, a record number of 387 points. He returned to the contest in 2018, that time finishing 15th.
In 2020 the singer, now living in Los Angeles, revealed that he was recovering from an addiction to sleeping pills and antidepressants.
Singer Matt Monro, who finished second for the UK in 1964, died aged 54 from liver cancer after battling alcoholism.
Eurovision is on BBC One on Saturday at 8pm
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