Sandy Shaw won Britain’s first Eurovision title 50 years ago but was almost dropped

The girl from Dagenham, who epitomised the Swinging Sixties, captivated the audience in Vienna and millions of TV viewers. She’s among fi ve UK acts to have won the cheesy annual extravaganza and, after all the early success, it seems unthinkable that our latest hopeful is seeking to end a 20-year drought. Former X-Factor contestant Lucie Jones has just been chosen to fly the flag in Kiev and will try to emulate Shaw in May.

However that debut triumph in 1967 almost never was. The entire build-up was fraught with tension and Shaw, who was 21 at the time, has since revealed that she was nearly fired on the eve of the contest because of a scandal in her private life. That year the BBC, which had been attempting to win Eurovision for the UK for a decade since its inception, recruited a reluctant Shaw.

Born Sandra Ann Goodrich in 1947 she was a former car factory worker and part-time model who was spotted by Adam Faith and given a recording contract when she was 17. By the time of Eurovision Shaw already had two No 1 hits under her belt, (There’s) Always Something There To Remind Me and Long Live Love. Crucially she was already well-known on the continent, recording most of her singles in French, Italian, Spanish and German.

Known for her fashionable clothes and trendy bob haircut Shaw worried that Eurovision would damage her credibility but record sales were starting to flag. The singer has said that Faith, who became her mentor, and her manager Eve Taylor “bullied” her into taking part. Her mood worsened in February 1967 when Puppet On A String, one of her fi ve possible entries, was voted by the UK public as our song for Europe: “I hated it from the very first oompah to the fi nal bang on the big bass drum. I was instinctively repelled by its sexist drivel and cuckoo clock tune.”

Nevertheless she flew to Vienna two months later carrying the weight of an expectant nation on her slender shoulders. On the plane to Austria the atmosphere was frosty. Shaw later revealed that behind the scenes some BBC executives, who had earlier begged her toparticipate, wanted her axed.

“I was involved in somebody else’s divorce and they didn’t think it was the right image and so it was incredibly unpleasant,” she said. The background was that she’d been named as “the other woman” in the break-up of the marriage of leading model Veronica Murdoch and her TV executive husband Douglas.

He’d worked with Shaw on the pop show Ready Steady Go! A court heard that while the Douglases were living apart during a trial separation Veronica had twice visited her husband at his London flat to find Shaw there, on one occasion wearing only a nightdress. Shaw denied adultery but was found by the judge to be a key reason for the breakdown of the marriage.

The BBC eventually decided to allow her to sing but the row ruined the whole experience: “I was only young and to have all of that going on backstage was very hard. I had to hold all that in when I was singing,” she said. Despite all the controversy Shaw gave a fl awless performance but didn’t have the heart to celebrate. “I just lay down in my fur coat with the champagne and fell asleep,” she later said.

Puppet On A String went on to sell more than two million copies and gave Shaw her third and final chart topper. Eurovision gave her career a boost and the following year she launched her own fashion label. However the end of the 1960s signalled a downturn and her last top 10 hit Monsieur Dupont was in 1969. Shaw has spoken of experiencing a “decade of dark ages” during the 1970s when she suffered from severe depression as her marriage to fashion designer Jeff Banks broke down.

At one stage Shaw, who converted to Buddhism, worked as a waitress to pay off debts. “No one recognised me,” said Shaw, who went on to marry twice more and has three children. In the 1980s there was a Sandie Shaw revival thanks to the support of rock band The Smiths and in particular lead singer Morrissey who was a big fan. She collaborated with the band on hit record Hand In Glove and returned to the charts. There was also a successful tour but it proved to be a last hurrah in her singing career.

Although her back catalogue of great songs will ensure she always has legions of fans she turned her back on the music industry. In 1994 she qualified as a psychotherapist and her focus is now helping people in the arts cope with everything from the pressures of fame and stage fright to alcoholism and writer’s block.

Shaw officially retired from singing in 2013 but the name of her clinic suggests that the young woman who charmed Europe half a century ago with a song she loathed still has a soft spot for those early days. It’s called Barefoot Therapy.