🔴 1963 Eurovision Song Contest Full Show BBC (English Commentary by David Jacobs) - Host Katie Boyle

Date: 23 March 1963 - Host Venue: BBC Television Centre, London, United Kingdom
Presenter: Katie Boyle - Musical director: Eric Robinson
Directed by Yvonne Littlewood - Executive producer: Harry Carlisle
Host broadcaster: British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
Interval act: Ola & Barbro

The Eurovision Song Contest 1963 was the eighth annual Eurovision Song Contest. The contest was held in London, United Kingdom, after the British broadcaster BBC stepped in to organise the event. France had won the 1962 edition with the right to host this following one but was unable to, due to financial shortcomings.

The contest was won by Denmark with the song "Dansevise", performed by Grethe & Jørgen Ingmann. Denmark's win was their first, which was the first victory for a Nordic country. Four countries got nul points, with Finland, Norway and Sweden failing to score any points for the first time and the Netherlands for the second time, becoming the first country to go two years in a row without scoring a single point.

The BBC was willing to host the contest instead of the previous year's winner France, as was the case in 1960. They would do so again in 1972 and 1974 because the winning broadcasters from the year before could not afford to produce the contest. The host venue was the BBC Television Centre, White City, London, which opened in 1960. It is one of the most readily recognisable facilities of its type having appeared as the backdrop for many BBC programmes. It remained to be one of the largest such facilities in the world until it redeveloped in March 2013.

Two studios (TC3 and TC4) were used: one for the mistress of ceremonies Katie Boyle, the audience, and the scoreboard; the other for the performers and the orchestra accompanying them. Unusually, a boom microphone (normally used for drama and comedy shows) was employed - the viewer doesn't see this, so it appears as if the artists were miming to their vocals. This was not the case, but this innovation was to create a new look for the contest.

One controversy this year was during the voting. When it was Norway's turn to announce their votes, the spokesman in Oslo, Roald Øyen, did not use the correct procedure in that the song number, followed by the name of the country, should have been announced before awarding the points. Katie Boyle asked Norway to repeat their results, but the Norwegian spokesman asked Katie to return to them after all the other results were in. When Katie went back to Norway again the votes had mysteriously altered, thus changing the outcome of the contest and giving the victory to Norway's neighbours Denmark at Switzerland's expense. In fact, the Norwegian spokesman had not given the correct votes on the first occasion.

Monaco was also asked to repeat their voting a second time as initially Monaco gave one point to both the United Kingdom and Luxembourg. However, when Katie Boyle went back to Monaco to receive the votes again Monaco's one vote to Luxembourg was efficiently discarded (although this did not have any effect on the positions of the countries).

It has also been speculated as to whether the juries were indeed on the end of a telephone line or in the actual studio given how clearly their voices could be heard as opposed to sounding as though they were being redirected through a telephone line.

Each country had 20 jury members who awarded their five favourite songs 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 points in order. All those points would then be added up and the five song with the most points got 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 votes in order. Errors in the Norwegian (see above) and the Monegasque votes meant their scores had to be announced twice, with an adjustment to the scores being made in each case before the final score was verified.

Results
Draw Country Artist Song Language Place Points
01 United Kingdom Ronnie Carroll "Say Wonderful Things" English 4 28
02 Netherlands Annie Palmen "Een speeldoos" Dutch 13 0
03 Germany Heidi Brühl "Marcel" German 9 5
04 Austria Carmela Corren "Vielleicht geschieht ein Wunder" German, English 7 16
05 Norway Anita Thallaug "Solhverv" Norwegian 13 0
06 Italy Emilio Pericoli "Uno per tutte" Italian 3 37
07 Finland Laila Halme "Muistojeni laulu" Finnish 13 0
08 Denmark Grethe and Jørgen Ingmann "Dansevise" Danish 1 42
09 Yugoslavia Vice Vukov "Brodovi" (Бродови) Serbo-Croatian 11 3
10 Switzerland Esther Ofarim "T'en va pas" French 2 40
11 France Alain Barrière "Elle était si jolie" French 5 25
12 Spain José Guardiola "Algo prodigioso" Spanish 12 2
13 Sweden Monica Zetterlund "En gång i Stockholm" Swedish 13 0
14 Belgium Jacques Raymond "Waarom?" Dutch 10 4
15 Monaco Françoise Hardy "L'amour s'en va" French 5 25
16 Luxembourg Nana Mouskouri "À force de prier" French 8 13