Clodagh Rodgers: Come Back and Shake Me

In Six of the Best 28 I linked to a post about Clodagh Rodgers and how:

"Failing to win the Eurovision Song Contest in 1971 surely can't have helped her career (and she even received death threats from the IRA for representing the UK)."

Wikipedia casts more light on this episode, suggesting that she was invited to represent Britain at the height of the Troubles because a Ballymena-born artist was less likely to be booed by the Dublin audience. (The Contest was being staged there because Dana had won for Ireland the previous year.)

Another reminder of the era is that the British entry could not be chosen by television viewers sending in postcards - this was before the advent of phone in competitions - because there was a postal strike. Instead, Rodgers' song Jack in the Box - a none too subtle attempt to repeat the success Sandie Shaw had with Puppet on a String a few years before - was chosen by a vote of regional juries. "Hello Norwich."

I have always had Clodagh Rodgers down as one of those artists who flourished in an era when every BBC comedy programme had to have a musical interlude. Anita Harris was another. But I recently discovered that this Come Back and Shake Me is by her. I like her breathy, sexy, slightly distorted voice on the chorus.