Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest 1988

Thanks to Johnny Logan's win in Brussels the year before, the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest was held in Ireland's capital city, Dublin. The song "Take Him Home," written and composed by Peter Eades and performed by Jump The Gun was chosen to represent Ireland after it won the national final selection. Held on 6 March at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin, the national final was hosted by Marty Whelan (who would provide commentary for RTÉ's broadcast of the Eurovision beginning in 2000, although Whelan did provided the commentary The previous year and would provided the 1988 Irish Radio commentary), and Maxi, who had represented Ireland as a soloist in the 1973 Eurovision Song Contest, and again as part of the group Sheeba in 1981. Eight songs competed in the event, and the winner was selected by a panel of twelve "experts," each of whom awarded each song a score from one to eight points. One member of the panel was Sandy Kelly who had represented Ireland in the 1982 Eurovision Song Contest as a member of The Duskeys.^[1]

National final

Peter Eades, the lead singer of Jump The Gun, had competed in Ireland's national final selection in 1980, in which he ranked shared fifth. Liam Reilly would go on to represent Ireland in the 1990 Eurovision Song Contest (ended up finishing joint 2nd), and compose the Irish entry in the 1991 contest.

At Eurovision

"Take Him Home" was performed tenth in the running order on the night of the contest, following Switzerland and preceding Germany. At the close of the voting sequence, the song had received 79 points, placing eighth out of 21 songs.

External links

• Irish national Final 1988 page

References