50 years of Dana
Derry girl reveals she’s been through All Kinds of Everything
DANA Rosemary Scallon has told how she was waved off to Eurovision age 18 by two cleaners and a porter – and returned in a jet with her name on the side.
The 68-year-old has enjoyed a varied career as a pop star, Christian folk singer and a politician, representing Connaught/ulster as an MEP from 1999 to 2004.
But for many she will always be the shy schoolgirl from Derry’s Bogside who perched on a stool on an Amsterdam stage 50 years ago and won the Eurovision Song Contest.
She told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “Never for one second did I expect to win. Even the photographers didn’t rate Ireland as they never came near me all week. I was still at school, I was sitting my A-levels and I wanted to be a teacher of music and English literature. Then when I did win I was in a complete daze.”
All Kinds Of Everything was a surprise winner of the 15th Eurovision which had just 12 entries, and took 32 points to win.
The UK’S Mary Hopkins was clear favourite with Knock Knock Who’s There and Spain was represented by a handsome young singer by the name of Julio Iglesias.
Dana recalls: “I was so young and I just thought he was so beautiful. He was very handsome and imposing.
“I remember in dress rehearsals he had this cloak. He was walking up and down doing scales, swinging this cape like a matador. It was very dramatic.
“I’d never been abroad before. My mother and grandmother came with me and that was an effort for them because they had to buy their own tickets.
“Ireland had never won so there was no expectation for me to win it. I was waved off by two cleaning ladies and a porter at the airport.
“When I flew home my name was on the side of the plane. One week I
was in school with my friends... and then suddenly I was in this whirlwind.”
This will be the first year without Eurovision since it started in 1956 but Dana has contributed to a European broadcast on the contest and RTE’S replacement show.
She said: “It’s a spectacle now compared to the intimate theatre venues. The stage lighting can be beautiful, but many of them for me are a bit too distracting. At the end of the day it’s not about how many lights you have behind you, it’s about the song and the singer.”
Aside from Ireland’s winners, she cites the “sparkle and magic” of Abba’s Waterloo among her favourites with Portugal’s Salvador Sobral in 2017.
In tomorrow night’s documentary on RTE One, Dana opens up on all things Eurovision which she admitted she found “harrowing” in parts.
Revisiting her disastrous 2011 presidential campaign during which allegations of sex abuse against her brother John Brown emerged proved particularly painful.
He was later cleared of five charges and his trial heard that the false claims were made after a bitter feud and a disagreement over copyright.
Dana said: “It was like a nightmare. I was trying to do what was best for my children.
“We sat down and I said I’ll pull out immediately if that would be easier for you – without exception they said don’t because people will think you’re guilty. So it would have been easier not to run.” Breaking down in tears she sobbed: “I remember walking outside the day after it broke.
“There were two or three women standing in the middle of the street.
“I just thought ‘Oh My God what are they thinking of me, what am I going to say’. They just put their arms around me and said ‘Don’t you worry. Keep going’.
“I think if I had pulled out I would always have felt like a coward.
“It was harrowing at times doing the documentary but I’ve been so
Ireland had never won so there was no expectations on me to win it
DANA ROSEMARY SCALLON
ON HER SURPRISE VICTORY
If I was talking to my 18-year-old self I would say enjoy it. Be a bit kinder
DANA ROSEMARY SCALLON GIVES ADVICE TO HER HERSELF
encouraged by people’s generosity.”
Dana’s pop career took off after Eurovision but faltered when she lost her voice on the promo tour for her 1978 single Fairytale.
A throat specialist had to operate immediately on a tumour, which turned out to be benign. That same year Dana married hotelier Damien Scallon who she met while gigging at his premises.
They had four children and moved to the US in 1990.
She said her first run for Irish President in 1997 happened completely by chance after an anonymous letter and a rogue newspaper article.
And aside from a bruising radio interview with Vincent Browne she emerged unscathed, becoming the first candidate ever nominated by councils.
But the campaign four years later in 2011, where she was accused of covering up her brother’s “crimes” was a different story.
She revealed: “I felt safe in my home, but I realised I can’t live my life in my home.
“I’ve been to counselling. I know I have to deal with this and get stronger, and I will.”
In 2018 Dana recorded her first new album in 11 years and admitted she’s nervous about the documentary which she will watch in Australia where she was visiting family just before the Covid-19 crisis hit.
She said: “If I was talking to my 18-year-old self I would say enjoy it, don’t keep thinking you look dreadful, just enjoy it more and be a little kinder to yourself.
“In life there are really hard things that happen, they either crush you completely, or they make you stronger… and I’m working on that.”