Eurovision Party

For pure, crowd-pleasing pop fun there's no spectacle in the world that can touch the Eurovision Song Contest, even in this age of global pop idols and widespread Cowellisation. The great thing about Eurovision is you're never quite sure what you're going to get — good, bad, indifferent, or borderline nuts — which makes this collection of international tunes the best excuse for a party this side of millennium eve. Get the melodious madness underway with ABBA's 1974 winner "Waterloo", Bucks Fizz's perky "Making Your Mind Up", and Sir Cliff's joyous "Congratulations".

Head to Next Steps for Norwegian Bobbysocks and an Irish Turkey.

Say what you like about Eurovision, but the sheer variety of the contest makes it a thing of enduring wonder — here, we take you from the lovely, swoonful "Refrain" by Switzerland's Lys Assia, winner of the inaugural contest in 1956, to the parodic "Irlande douze pointe", Ireland's mickey-taking 2008 entry that floundered in the semi-final stages. Fire up your techno-passions with T.A.T.U.'s 2003 third-placer "Ne Ver, Ne Boisia", save a last dance for Johnny Logan, who won in 1987 with "Hold Me Now", and jive along with Norway's Bobbysocks (1985's winner, "La det swinge").

The mighty Matt Monro gets beaten by a teenage Italian girl, in Deep Cuts.

How things have changed over the Eurovision decades: back in '64 a dickie bow, a quiff, and a golden set of pipes took Matt Monro (a singer much admired by Frank Sinatra) to within a whisker of glory with "I Love the Little Things", only to be thwarted by "Non ho l'eta' (Per amarti)" from 16-year-old Gigliola Cinquetti, Italy's only winner to date (for the record, she would go on to taste defeat at the hands of ABBA in '74). Fast-forward to 2006, and you'll find the Euro-disco euphoria of Romania's Mihai Tristariu ("Tornero") and the boisterous pop-rock of Lithuania's LT United, who sang "We Are the Winners" but came in only sixth.

The European Union, established by the Treaty of Maastricht, came into effect in 1993, but for the true milestone in 20th-century Euro-harmony you have to go back to 1956, when the Eurovision Song Contest highlighted the common bond of pop, be it cheesy, misguided, baffling, downright atrocious, or — once in a while — sublime. Narrated for eons with a wink and a chuckle by Terry Wogan, the proceedings never fail to entertain, whether you're singing along, screaming at the TV, or wondering what on earth the Bosnia & Herzegovina entry is going on about. Here, we give you Eurovision in all it's multi-national glory, from the ethno-rave of Ruslana's "Wild Dances", to the towering monster metal of Lordi's "Hard Rock Hallelujah" and the Europop-tartiness of Gina G's "Ooh Aah . . . Just a Little Bit".