It’s 21 years since Mickey Joe stole heart of nation

Before Ireland’s Eurovision Song Contest entry was decided in an annual mini-contest on the Late Late Show, we had “You’re A Star”, an X Factor style series where the grand prize was the chance to compete for Ireland at Eurovision.

The first, hugely successful season hosted on RTE by Ray D’Arcy ran for 20 shows from November 2002 to March 2003, with a judging panel that included Louis Walsh, Atomic Kitten’s Kerry Katona, Phil Coulter and music publicist Darren Smith.

5,000 hopefuls auditioned at heats across Ireland where 13 were eventually chosen to appear in ten live shows.

The final gripped the nation and made household names of winner Mickey Joe Harte from Lifford in Co Donegal and runner-up Simon Casey from Ferbane, Offaly.

A massive 1.3 million televotes were cast during the final show of the series which set records for Irish TV ratings.

Harte and his green guitar represented Ireland at the 2003 Eurovision in Riga, Latvia, with the winning song, “We’ve Got The World”, written by Martin Brannigan and Keith Molloy. He placed 11 th out of 26 participating countries, a result at the time considered a major disappointment given Ireland’s strong tradition in the contest.

Boosted by the success of the TV show, “We’ve Got The World” was a big seller in Ireland, spending five weeks on top of the Irish singles chart.

Mickey Joe Harte, who was 29 when he competed at Eurovision, first started playing the guitar and writing songs at the age of 13. In a Sunday Independent interview by Joe Jackson in 2006, he explained that by the mid-1990s he had become frustrated by the likes of Louis Walsh and Boyzone “turning Ireland more into a country for boy bands”.

“I felt I’d never get a break and was desperate because during the boy band era no one wanted singer-songwriters. It would have helped if, say Boyzone, had recorded songs by Irish songwriters, but most of their songs were written by songwriters from abroad, so we didn’t even get a chance to have a song covered. If I had, that certainly would have paid the mortgage for a few years!

“Although, at first, like most Irish singer-songwriters I was totally anti-boy bands until I realised we had to try and work our way through it”.

History has revised opinion on Harte’s eleventh place finish at Eurovision. In the 20 years since then, Ireland has only managed a better result in the contest on three occasions: in 2006 with Brian Kennedy’s “Every Song Is A Cry For Love”; 2011 with Jedward’s “Lipstick” and of course this year with Bambi Thug’s “Doomsday Blue” which finished sixth.