THE REAL ME: Eurovision memories from Sarah Rudman

We at Eurovision Ireland want to hear from you. Is there a song that really means something to you? Something that made you really fall in love with Eurovision? Something that you associate with a particular event in your life? In our ‘Real Me’ articles, we get to the root of why we can’t get enough of Eurovision.

Today we hear from Sarah Rudman…

From when I was introduced to the Eurovision song contest at the tender age of 9 years old, courtesy of my parents allowing me to stay up, I never missed a contest as it happened on the night. That was until May 1999,where by some error of judgement, my wedding day was set for the night of the 1999 contest .

To say I was gutted was an understatement and in those days we had no catch up TV , the Internet was still a relatively new thing back then ,so no chance of catching up on the contest at any time that day! So off we went the next day on our honeymoon, setting off early and travelling down South to the Channel Tunnel to go over to France.

In those days,strange as it sounds, we had no mobile phones either ,so I was desperate to get to a phone box to phone my parents to find out the result of the contest My son aged 11 at the time, was by then a fan of the contest too and he told me that Sweden had won with a song called “Take me to your heaven”.

When I got back home a week later, I was able to watch our video recording of the contest and the words of the song ” Take me to your heaven….hold on to your dreams” and “flying high together ” seemed just right for a song that won on our wedding day,even though we didn’t see it on the actual night it won.

It’s for this reason that this song holds a special place in my heart and still does every wedding anniversary .

Author: Eurovision Ireland

Source: Eurovision Ireland