The History of Switzerland at Eurovision - Part 1: From Lys Assia to Céline Dion

Hello, London, we are ready for your vote. Hello, I'm Stephen Perkins and this is douzepois, the Eurovision podcast from the team behind Binge watch. It is Monday 13th of January 2025, which means we are officially four months away from semi final number one. Well, four months and one day anyway.

Coming up, we'll be taking an in depth look at this year's host country and their history in the contest so far. But let's start, as always, with with a look at the latest headlines. There's big drama in Germany already as it emerges that they are going all out to win the contest this year. As we reported a few months back, Germany has taken the slightly unusual step of uniting public broadcaster ARD with commercial broadcaster RTL for their selection process.

Scheffsacke ase Zweithhausen von van Schwanzisch. We are synced for Deutschland, but ARD programme director Christina Strobel has said it will be a one and done offering if Germany doesn't win the contest this year. Strobel, our goal is and remains victory. We are not thinking about what will happen if it doesn't work out. I am confident that the partnership will work. Nothing less than victory justifies such a collaboration.

This suggests that if we aren't heading to Germany for Eurovision 2026, they will be revamping their selection process completely next year. Meanwhile, Greece has revealed the 12 songs which will be competing to represent them in Basel in May. Their national final, Etnikos Tilikos, is scheduled for 30 January and the current fan favourites seem to be Evangelia with Wale and Klavd with Astaromata.

The decision will be determined 50% by public voting, 25% by a Greek jury and 25% by an international jury. So watch this space for the results later on this month. Finally, former X Factor runner up Rebecca Ferguson has hinted on TikTok that she's been approached to sing in Eurovision, but not by the United Kingdom.

She was asked by a fan if she'd ever considered taking part in the contest and stated that she has had offers from other countries to perform, but as part of a duo rather than a solo artist. She didn't specify which countries and she said that it was a tricky decision because, and I quote, I'm patriotic to me own country, but me own country hasn't asked me. So there you go, BBC, you know where to find her if you're interested.

We thought it would be fitting for our first deep dive feature of the year to take a Closer look at Switzerland in their position as the reigning champs of Eurovision and this year's host nation. But they have been at this business for quite some time and it is far too much to cover properly in one episode. So we're making this a two parter.

And as it happens, their previous victory prior to this One was in 1988, which isn't quite the halfway point between the start of Eurovision and the present day, but it is close enough to be a fitting cutting off point. So today's episode will be the journey from Lys Assia to Celine Dion. Why don't we start with a few stats? Switzerland has been part of Eurovision since the very beginning, hosting and indeed winning the very first Eurovision in 1956 in Lugano.

In total, they have competed at Eurovision 64 times, only missing four contests as a result of the relegation system in the 1990s and early 2000s. They have won a total of three times in 1956, 1988 and 2024. And those three wins put them in joint eighth place in the winners league table alongside Norway, Denmark, Italy and Ukraine.

Because Switzerland has four official languages, French, German, Italian and Romansh, they've had a bit more linguistic diversity at the contest than a lot of other countries have. Over the years, Switzerland has submitted 25 entries in French, 18 in English, 1212 in German, 11 in Italian and just one in Romansh.

Now, if you've just done some mental arithmetic and you've worked out that that actually comes to a total of 67, which is three more than the number of times I said Switzerland had competed at Eurovision at the beginning. Well spotted. The reason for that is that like all countries taking part in 1956, Switzerland submitted two entries in that year. And then in 1958 their entry was a combination of German and Italian.

And of course in 2020 they intended to submit a song in French before the contest was cancelled. Drilling down a bit further, they have finished last in the grand final five times and finished last in a semi final four times. They have received zero points on three 1964, 1967 and 1998. They also had a particularly grim period from 2007 to 2018 in which they achieved two sets of four consecutive non qualifying gears and only made it to the final twice in that entire period.

But since 2019, things have looked a lot better for Switzerland at Eurovision, with an unbroken qualifying streak, three top five finishes and of course that all important win in 2024.

To look at their first 32 years at Eurovision, I thought I would try something A little bit different. We could attempt it chronologically, like I normally would do, but when I was researching, I found some quite interesting patterns and a lot of repetition in terms of artists. So I thought it made more sense to try and group together particular years that have a given connection, and then we can fill in the gaps in between where necessary.

So let's start with the first ever winner of the Eurovision Song Contest, Lise Assia. We've talked about this before, but in 1956 every country submitted two entries, but not necessarily by the same artist. Lise, however, performed both of Switzerland, Das Alte Carrousel, the Old Carousel in German and Ruffran in French.

Ruffran was the winner of the 1956 contest, and clearly everyone involved was so happy with how it went that Lies returned the competition for the next two years, in 1957 with L'Enfant Goujete, the child that I Was, in French, and in 1958 with Giorgio in German and Italian. A true multilingual queen, having represented her country a total of four times, she was very much the Valentina Moneta of her day, albeit with a much stronger track record.

She might not have been a Johnny Logan or a Lorene, but she did manage to finish in second place in the 1958 contest, in addition to her earlier win. Giorgio, by the way, is a bit of a bop with a cantering rhythm and a really fun talky bit. There's a link to her performance in the episode description, so do check it out later.

To have one actor represent your country four times is impressive, but to have two, that's another feat altogether. I'm talking, of course, about iconic trio Peter, Su and Marc, who not only competed for Switzerland four times between 1971 and 1981, but, get this, sang in a different language every single time.

To date, they are the only act to have entered Eurovision in four different languages, and that isn't a record that is likely to be bettered or even equalled, but to be fair, I would love to see someone try. They started out in 1971 performing in French with Les Illusions du Nord Vingt Homme, or the illusions of our 20s. It gets off to a bit of a slow start, admittedly, but it does really pick up towards the end and is impeccably sung and orchestrated throughout.

I think, on balance, this is my favourite of their four attempts, but to their credit, the songs are all of a pretty high standard. They returned in 1976, singing in English during that brief window in the 1970s when the official language Rules were temporarily relaxed with Jambo Jambo, a song about a clown.

For the performance, Mark. I'm assuming it's Mark because he's the one on the right, but perhaps it's Peter was dressed as a clown of the most unsettling variety, which is enough to rank this as my least favourite of their four entries, even though the song itself is actually pretty decent. And they finished that year in fourth place. Then most chaotically, they came back again in 1979 as part of a Swiss supergroup, Peter sue and Mark Fury, Gorps and Canary with the song Trudler and Company.

This time they were singing in German and Trudler is the German word for a second hand dealer, so they paid homage to that by attempting to play household objects like watering cans as a musical instrument on the stage. It's very odd, but it's still a fun performance, even if it feels more like the theme tune to a sitcom than a Eurovision entry. Their final turn came in 1981, singing in Italian with IO Cenzate or Me without you.

This panpipe tipped ballad was a pre contest favourite to win, but only made it to fourth place again, the highest they ever got at Eurovision. And after this, presumably running out of new languages to sing in, they took a step back. Although Marc made a solo attempt to represent Switzerland one more time in 1987, finishing in second place in their national selection.

Nobody else has managed to display the same level of commitment to representing Switzerland at Eurovision as Lise Assia or Peter Sue Ann Marc. But there have been a few faces who have cropped up more than once.

Anita Traversi first took part in 1960 with Cielo Etera or Heaven and Earth, a fairly nondescript Italian language ballad which finished eighth in a field of 13 and probably wouldn't have merited a mention in my round up had it not been for the fact that she came back four years later in 1964 singing imie pin Sieri or My Thoughts and finished in last place with zero points.

But to be fair to Anita, and to put that into context, this was under a scoring system where each country only had either one, three or five points to award to their top three songs. So it was very easy to score no points in that system, as did three other countries that year, Germany, Portugal and Yugoslavia. Another two time entrant at Eurovision was Paola de Medico, who mostly just went by Paula who who first represented Switzerland in 1969 with Bonjour Bonjour.

And despite the title, the lyrics were actually in German. It's possibly the most Swiss thing ever to happen. The very essence of neutrality. This was a really fun entry and she ended up finishing in fifth place, though if you were paying attention just now you will have noticed that this was 1969, the contest of the infamous four way tie for first place. So in a sense she was the runner up.

She came back again in 1980 to sing cinema, which has vibes to me of something that would fit right into the score of A Chorus Line. And she went either one better than her previous attempt or slightly worse, depending on your perspective, finishing in fourth place that time. But here's the kicker.

Cinema wasn't just a return for Powder because it was co written by Veronique Muller, who had represented Switzerland as an artist in 1972 with the lovely, folky, slightly haunting C'est la Chansons de Monde Amour or this Is the Song of My Love. Finally, we had two individual artists who came back later on for a duet.

Mariella Farre represented Switzerland in 1983 with IO cosi non chi St or I'm Not Going to Be like this, which if I'm honest, felt like a low point in my research session, as this was an entry that I described in my notes as loud and unpleasant and my main point of interest was that she looked a bit like a character that Rebecca Front might have played on Knowing Me, Knowing youg with Alan Partridge.

She finished 15th, but returned two years later to duet with Pino Gasparini, who had previously competed as part of the Pepe Leanhard band with Swiss lady in 1977. And that one is an absolute banger. I thoroughly recommend giving it a listen. Their song together was called Piano Piano, which despite the title was again actually a German language track.

It's definitely a better track for her, if not for him, and it feels very of its time, complete with the staging, which involves the two of them leaning on a post and attempting to flirt with each other. It still wasn't a huge success with the juries though, finishing 12th in a field of 19. OK, so that's all of our recurring presences from this era taken care of. Now it's time for the most noteworthy of the remaining entries.

Apologies if I do end up skipping over your favourite, but we do still have quite a lot of ground to cover and I have to get this episode finished before this year's contest begins.

I think we should start with 1961's Franca di Rienzo and Nous aux Rent de Main or we will have tomorrow one of Switzerland's many female fronted ballads of the era, but a really good example of the genre thanks to the luxurious orchestration and Franca's impassioned performance, even if her constantly flitting eyes do make it look a little bit like she's not sure where the camera is.

This one scored Switzerland a third place finish and two years later Esther Offerin went one better with Ton Va pas or Don't Go.

As well as being Switzerland's best finish since 1958, this was also noteworthy for its rather fun staging that year's contest being held at BBC Television Centre rather than in the concert hall like most of the previous contests, which allowed the set designers to get a bit more creative and the sound engineers to use boom mics to capture the vocals, which meant that Esther got to spend the song leaning wistfully against a door singing her heart out to great effect.

Incidentally, 1963 was also a year with a controversial outcome at the contest for Switzerland. When Norway came to give their votes, they announced them in a non standard format and when host Katie Boyle asked if they could confirm the votes for clarity, Norway asked if Katie could come back to them after all the other countries votes were in.

She did, and when she spoke to the head juror from Norway for the second time, the votes were different, giving Denmark the victory at Switzerland's expense. The Swiss broadcaster SRGSSR was naturally displeased by this turn of events and complained to the ebu.

But an investigation determined that the first set of votes had been incorrect, as the Norwegian jury's votes were still being tallied when Katie called and the scores that were given at the end denying Switzerland the victory were in fact their original official votes. I won't dwell on Gheraldin's Quelqueur va tout prisse which harp when you break from 1967 or Pierre Martel's Mein Ruchfnachtier my call to you from 1974, other than to say they were the other two last place finishers of this era.

Instead, let's focus on the ones that came oh so close. In 1982, Arlette Zola brought Switzerland their best result for nearly 20 years with Amour on Love we love you, a big rousing number with gorgeous harmonies, which is one of those songs that feels like several songs that you really love bolted together. I got hints of those were the Days by Mary Hopkin and Congratulations by Cliff Richard in there. I dare say you might find other familiar echoes too.

She finished in third place and that was unfortunately followed by three consecutive finishes outside the top 10. But in 1986, Daniela Simons came storming back with Pap aux Moi, Not For Me, a big dramatic ballad, which she sang with a heck of a lot of oomph and accompanied herself on the piano and was rewarded with a second place finish, albeit over 30 points behind that year's winner, Sandra Kim for Belgium with Jean La Vie.

But it was clear that these two near misses had absolutely ignited Switzerland's hunger for another win.

And despite a lacklustre finish again in 1987, in 1988 they deployed their secret weapon, Celine Dion. That does feel a bit weird to say, because obviously at the time Celine Dion was an unknown 20 year old just starting out on her career in the music business with nobody knowing the international success that lay ahead for her in the very near future.

And she also wasn't even Switzerland's secret weapon to lay claim to either, being French Canadian who had reportedly never even been to Switzerland before that year's national final. But of course you can't deny that she is a powerhouse performer.

And despite an ill advised stage outfit that was part tuxedo, part tutu, she brought the house down in Dublin with Ne pas tait pas san moi or Don't Leave Without Me and scooped the victory for Switzerland for the second time in a truly nail biting climax where she beat the UK's Scott Fitzgerald by a single point, with the winner being determined in the very last round of votes where Yugoslavia awarded Switzerland six points and the UK nothing at all.

Ok, we're going to leave it there for this week. Thank you for listening. I will be back in a week's time to take us from 1989 right up to the present day, including Switzerland's Eurovision Dark Age in the late 2000s and 2010s before their eventual renaissance. Please do come back and join me for that one and in the meantime, subscribe and review us on your podcast platform of choice.

If you haven't done so already, you can follow me on bluesky at stephenperkins Bsky Social and producer Liam at thisisthehef Bsky Social. Until next time, goodnight Europe and good morning Australia.