The most eccentric Eurovision performances of all time

Scooch, the 2007 UK entry, were dubbed the 'Tesco Value Steps'

(Image credit: Sari Gustafsson/AFP via Getty Images)

By Richard Windsor, The Week UK, Chas Newkey-Burden, The Week UK

last updated 15 May 2025

Swiss city Basel will host the Eurovision Song Contest grand final this year, with 37 acts set to compete for the Eurovision crown.

The unique music competition is growing in popularity, with viewer numbers rising by more than two million between 2022 and 2024, and a total of 163 million people now watch worldwide.

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The visual element of Finland's entry for 2024 was perhaps more unusual than the music itself, which was "fatally generic Europop", said the BBC. The performance of "No Rules" saw Teemu Keisteri emerge from a giant egg, dressed in small underpants and a cropped T-shirt, before parading around the stage waving fireworks, leaving "most of the heavy vocal lifting" to "someone else", said The Guardian.

However, it was "their frontman's Hitler-like appearance", the "acid-trip screen visuals", the band's "military drag" outfits, and the "sudden appearance of a rocket-straddling Vladimir Lenin" that brought the "shock rockers" the most attention, said Vulture. That may have caused the band's message to become slightly "lost" – as did the music, which "sounded like half a dozen songs playing simultaneously".

Anyone tuning into the 2012 contest in Baku "would have thought they'd slipped into some cheese-induced fever dream" when the Russian act appeared, said indy100. "In all the decades of Eurovision, it was (not unsurprisingly) the first time a group of grannies performed a demonstration of live baking", recalled the news site, "and the sight of the elderly women boogying to their truly bizarre song Everybody Dance was a sight we won't forget in a hurry".

This UK entry for the 2003 event in Latvia "suffered the ignominy of finishing dead last with zero points", said The Irish Post. "Horribly off-key from the start, Chris Cromby and Gemma Abbey claimed they were unable to hear their backing track, resulting in the memorably awful performance." The iconic Eurovision host, Terry Wogan, suggested that perhaps the UK scored poorly because of a "post-Iraq backlash", but "he was being too nice".

The UK got it "iconically wrong" in Helsinki in 2007 with Scooch, the "Tesco Value Steps", said NME. The group's "airline-themed banger Flying the Flag (For You) was packed with end-of-the-pier double entendres that failed to land anywhere outside of Ireland and Malta, the only two countries to award it points", said the music site. It added that "it's still wild to recall that it actually features the lyric: "Would you like something to suck on for landing, sir?" But "to be fair to them, they were holding a sweet", said The Guardian.

Ireland has enjoyed a fine record in the competition but this 2008 entry was an exception. "Give us another chance, we're sorry for 'Riverdance'," went one of the lyrics. Few were in a forgiving mood. "When watching this performance," said Virgin Radio, "you wouldn't be blamed for thinking you had walked into a fever dream as the song was performed by a puppet turkey behind DJ decks surrounded by dancers dressed in feather boas."

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Chas Newkey-Burden has been part of The Week Digital team for more than a decade and a journalist for 25 years, starting out on the irreverent football weekly 90 Minutes, before moving to lifestyle magazines Loaded and Attitude. He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i new site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books.