I trust you are joking ? Christer has been the Exec for Melodifestivalen since the reboot in the early 00s, and was involved with both Malmö and Stockholm contests in 2013 and 2016 respectively.
Michael Ball came second though. And the uk came second in 1993. The 90s generally were far from the doldrums for the uk.
To be fair - the language rule was still in force until 1998... We last won in 1997... Once the language rule went - we generally didn't do quite so well.
(The language rule meant that the UK, Ireland - and I think Malta - were the only countries who could enter a song in English.)
Michael Ball came second though. And the uk came second in 1993. The 90s generally were far from the doldrums for the uk.
To be fair - the language rule was still in force until 1998... We last won in 1997... Once the language rule went - we generally didn't do quite so well.
(The language rule meant that the UK, Ireland - and I think Malta - were the only countries who could enter a song in English.)
Malta was also able to send songs in English before the language rule got canned after the contest in '98.
If the perceived “no-one likes the UK” theory was also a thing when the language rule existed
and
the theory that English language songs are more widely understood and therefore more universally likeable, then possibly Ireland may have benefited the most yes. It’s stretching it a bit if you ask me. Remember it was all jury voting for at least half of the nineties.
There's a clip from a BBC show just after the 1988 contest, where the UK lost to Switzerland by one point, where everyone's fuming that the UK didn't win and saying that it's all political voting. Even when we came second or third all the time people still complained because in their minds we should win every year.
I can definitely see the annoyance in 1996, as by far we had the most memorable and up-to-date song that was a chart hit all over Europe - but it was too ahead of its time for a contest that was still jury voting only then. Germany that year tried to enter a happy hardcore song that sounds even more radical than Gina G, but controversially they didn't make it through that year's (untelevised) semi-final - Germany were so angry the Big 4 rule was introduced soon after meaning they, Spain, France and the UK could never fail to qualify again.
The language rules had to change as the Ireland 1st/UK 2nd dominance had become ridiculous by the late 1990s. Part of me wonders if the slightly shambolic 1991 contest (much of which was presented in Italian) put some jury members off voting too much for a country that didn't have a majority of English speakers, as the only non-Irish/UK contest in the next seven years was in Norway who have plenty of English knowledge. Luckily they did a much better job than Italy and paved the way for the more relaxed, humorous contests that began with Birmingham 1998 and really kicked off from Stockholm 2000.