Qualla: Eurovision Song Contest 1993

Eurovision Song Contest 1993: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit M.N.A. van den Bogaart, CC BY-SA 3.0 nl. A BBC journalist called it a cowshed. Nicholas Witchell, looking around at the Green Glens Arena that May, could not quite believe what RTE had done. Eurovision had always belonged to capitals. Dublin had hosted it three times before. Now, somehow, the contest had been awarded to Millstreet, a town of fifteen hundred people tucked into the foothills of the Boggeragh Mountains, served by a single railway station that needed an extension just to handle the trains rolling in. The cowshed remark followed the contest for years. So did the answer Millstreet gave back: 187 points, a Waterford Crystal trophy, and the smallest place ever to stage Eurovision.

Image: M.N.A. van den Bogaart | CC BY-SA 3.0 nl

Eurovision Song Contest 1993: How Millstreet Got the Contest

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit KlausFoehl, CC BY-SA 3.0. The story turns on a wealthy local businessman named Noel C. Duggan, who owned the Green Glens Arena and used it mostly for equestrian events. When RTE's Director-General Joe Barry began scouting locations outside Dublin in the months after Linda Martin's 1992 win with Why Me?, D...

Image: KlausFoehl | CC BY-SA 3.0

Eurovision Song Contest 1993: The Largest Outside Broadcast RTE Had Ever Tried

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit KlausFoehl, CC BY-SA 3.0. Once the choice was made, the work began. The arena floor had to be dug out to give the stage and lighting rigs enough clearance. Phone lines had to be installed by the hundreds. The railway line at Millstreet station required an extension to handle the influx of delegations, pre...

Image: KlausFoehl | CC BY-SA 3.0

Eurovision Song Contest 1993: In Your Eyes

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit KlausFoehl, CC BY-SA 3.0. The night came on Saturday, 15 May, at eight o'clock Irish time. Gary Keenan's opening sequence drew on Celtic mythology, set to traditional music and the uilleann pipes of Davy Spillane. Fionnuala Sweeney walked onto the stage through a hidden doorway in the centre of the set. T...

Image: KlausFoehl | CC BY-SA 3.0

Eurovision Song Contest 1993: A Town That Held the Record

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Flickr_-_aktivioslo_-_Niamh_Kavanagh_-_Irland_(2).jpg: Aktiv I Oslo.no from Oslo, Norway derivative work: César (talk), CC BY-SA 2.0. Three to five hundred million people watched. The arena held about thirty-five hundred, which was more than twice the population of Millstreet itself. The cowshed line had not aged well. Harrogate, an English town of seventy thousand, had previously been the smallest place to hos...

Image: Flickr_-_aktivioslo_-_Niamh_Kavanagh_-_Irland_(2).jpg: Aktiv I Oslo.no from Oslo, Norway derivative work: César (talk) | CC BY-SA 2.0