We all know now that the UK are hosting Eurovision 2023 in the city of Liverpool in May and that Mae Muller will this year be representing the UK with her song ” I wrote a Song”. However, what has become of the acts who proudly flew the UK flag at past contests? We at Eurovision Ireland,during the build up to the 2023 contest and in honour of the host country, have decided to bring you special editions of our Here Today, Gone tomorrow series , looking at how this year’s host country’s past acts have fared since their time at Eurovision. Today we are going all the way back to the year 2003, when Jemini , who ironically are from this year’s host city, Liverpool , represented the UK at the Eurovision Song Contest , which took place in Riga, Latvia , following Marie N’s victory the year before with “I wanna”.

Who were Jemini ?

Jemini consisted of duo, Chris Cromby and Gemma Abbey , both from Liverpool, also the home of famous music artists such as the Beatles and Cilla Black. They met at Liverpool’s Starlight stage school back in 1995 and toured Liverpool’s clubs and pubs with the academy’s kids roadshow. They formed Tricity together at the age of 16 but later changed this to Jemini .In 2003, they were selected to take part in BBC’s A Song for Europe national final , with the prize being the honour of representing the UK at that years Eurovision Song Contest in Riga, Latvia . They entered with their song “Cry Baby” and the British public voted to send them to Riga.

At Eurovision

Unfortunately , things did not go well at all in Riga for Jemini , not even a good luck message from Sir Paul McCartney could prevent them becoming the first UK entry in the contest’s history to score the dreaded 0 points. All kinds of reasons were put forward as to why this happened , with Terry Wogan, the then UK commentator blaming the UK’s involvement in the Iraq war and Jemma and Chris claiming that there were technical issues , meaning that they couldn’t hear the backing track . However, there is also the theory put forward by many disgruntled fans, the UK media and past UK performers that the song just wasn’t good enough and the performance had just been very off key on the night.

Where are Jemini now?

Following their return to the UK after the contest and having to face the wrath of the UK media , Jemini admitted that their performance had been off -key but continued to blame technical difficulties , saying they couldn’t hear the backing track.They were dropped by their record label and their album was never released , although their Eurovision Song “Cry Baby “did reach number 15 in the UK charts, despite the poor Eurovision result. They then split up as a duo. In 2013, they reunited for a one -off interview about their performance in a BBC 3 TV special , ironically entitled “How to win Eurovision”. In 2014 , they again reunited to take part in a Eurovision special of the UK quiz show, “Pointless Celebrities”. Individually, Chris has worked at Ted Baker and according to the UK social network site LinkedIn , became the company’s Global Retail operations Manager. He still performs music in his spare time . Gemma is now a mother of three , she started up a make up business in 2010 and in 2017 joined the Liverpool dance group Ultrasonix as the lead singer.

Today, Jemini’s appearance in the contest is still talked about , if only for the wrong reasons . It’s probably to their relief that they at least only had the experience of getting nul points for one set of votes in 2003, in the days before the system of giving the jury and public votes separately was introduced .They could not have foreseen that in years to come , James Newman , with “Embers” would suffer the same fate but worse in the respect that he had to hear nul points coming from a Jury vote and a public vote separately at the contest in Rotterdam in 2021. With their home city, Liverpool , hosting the contest this year, do you think there may be a possibility of Jemini reuniting one more time and making an appearance in some way ? Could all be forgiven?

Author: Sarah Rudman

Sources : Smooth Radio, YouTube ,Eurovision.TV, LinkedIn