Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

So there we were on Friday. Hanging out at the water-cooler (a bottle of bubbly, actually) and whiling away the time with a trivia quiz about the one European institution that commands something like endearment — The Eurovision Song Contest. Here's a test: Who won it for the UK by a record 70-point margin in Dublin on 3 May 1997 with the song Love Shine a Light? (And you get an extra dix points if you know that Marc Roberts of Ireland was the runner up with Mysterious Woman).

It was, of course, Katrina and the Waves. Reacting to her win, Katrina said it was the second landslide victory in a week. You see, Tony Blair had won the 1997 British general election two days previously. Eerily, our trivia joust was taking place at the same time as Gordon and Ken were getting a hammering in the local elections. Surely some kind of omen, eh?

Anyway, the ascent of Labour in 1997 marked the beginning of the end for Katrina and the Waves. The band never reached the same heights again and Katrina Leskanich went on to a solo career. But in that funny way in which memory works, all that talk of the band, and the bubbly, and the Champions League, and a recent visit to Merseyside, soon had me humming their 1984 song Going Down to Liverpool, which was covered brilliantly by The Bangles, who were so big in the mid-'80s that they could afford an extraterrestrial, emotionless, unmusical chauffeur.

"Hey now, where you going with that UB40 in your hand? / I said hey now, all through this green and pleasant land." All Brit trivia nerds will know that this was a reference to a form issued by the Department of Health and Social Security for claiming the dole. It meant Unemployment Benefit Form 40. And then there was this reggae band...