17 November – Look at all my thoughts, they’re swaying, they’re staggering

I went on the other day about English being here there and everywhere. Of course, English hasn’t always been the prime language used in Eurovision songs. There have been others.

When our favourite TV show started, French seemed to be ‘de rigueur’. You had a number of countries that used it at every opportunity, including Luxembourg. However, once or twice the ‘bourgers branched out into another tongue. In 1960, we saw the only song that was entirely in Luxembourgeois/Luxembourgish/Letzeburgesch. It came from today’s birthday boy Camillo Jean Nicolas Felgen – a rare native Luxembourger who actually represented his country. The foray away from French didn’t pay dividends as he only scored one point from Italy. He did better in 1962 when he finished third. Here’s his country’s non-French song. Sadly he went to the great contest in the sky in 2005.

Camillo would have been 98 today.

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