Image source, Jamie McLoughlin/BBC Image caption,

Jamie McLoughlin explains how Eurovision has had a supportive hand on the shoulder of the LGBTQ+ community for decades

By Jamie McLoughlin

BBC News

It wasn't the biggest bar in the world and it was heaving, but somehow my partner and I found a seat by the farthest wall, sharing a table with a small group of Icelandic fans. When they found out we were from Merseyside, the eyes of one of them lit up.

He slipped an impressive, silver ring from his finger. "Look," he said proudly. "See what I've got engraved inside here."

Even in the half-light, the words You'll Never Walk Alone, the Rodgers and Hammerstein song forever linked with Liverpool Football Club, were unmistakable. Coupled with the drunken sincerity of his free hand reaching up to his heart, it was just as obvious how much the team meant to his Nordic soul.

It was around that moment the entire bar broke into a mass sing-a-long of The Herreys' Diggi Loo Diggi Ley, Sweden's 1984 Eurovision victor. Belted out with such booming fervour, the myriad of tiny glitterballs covering every inch of ceiling space threatened to rain down on the giddy clientele.

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