I was one of the favourites to win Eurovision – now I work in a phone shop in Wales
A FORMER Eurovision singer who was tipped as one of the favourites to win the competition now sells mobile phones.
Bobby McVay, 61, took to the stage in Germany in 1983 with the band Sweet Dreams and says not winning was a “huge loss”.
McVay was part of the group Sweet Dreams alongside Carrie Gray (now Grant) and Helen Kray.
They performed the song “Never Giving Up” in the 1983 Eurovision Song Contest at Munich’s Rudi-Sedlmayer Halle arena.
Reflecting on the “special” time in his life 40 years on he says that the “highs and lows of the music industry are crazy”.
McVay who now works in Get Connected, a small phone shop in Abergavenny says that 500m people watched the group’s performance and he genuinely thought they were going to win.
Speaking to WalesOnline, he said: “I thought we looked the part, we sounded good and the routine was great.”
Sadly it wasn’t to be and Sweet Dreams lost out to Nicole from Luxembourg with her song Ein bißchen Frieden, something that McVay says he couldn’t help feeling like it was a “huge loss”.
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The group still came an impressive sixth place and the singer acknowledges that contestants would “bite their hand off” to be placed sixth in the competition these days.
After his taking part in the Eurovision McVay went on to have a solo career and then “fell into” local radio that he says still “felt a like a little bit of showbiz”.
He stayed in radio until his final gig with Real Radio ended in 2008.
McVay left the station to start a new life in Calabria on the south coast of Italy.
On the day he left, he took a call from Cheryl Baker, Mike Nolan, and Jay Aston, who asked him to join a Bucks Fizz reunion group, called The Fizz.
He was to replace Bobby G as the fourth band member in the group.
He said: “I’d been friends with Mike for years – long before The Fizz we shared a flat together in London and Bucks Fizz were also managed by Razzmatazz.
“Cheryl rang me and I told her the timing was appalling because I was off to the south of Italy where I’d planned to spend the rest of my life.”
After spending seven years in Italy Mike called him again and asked him if he would reconsider joining the band, he agreed and spent the next three years splitting his time between Calabria and touring the UK with The Fizz.
In March 2021 McVay moved back to Wales and started working for Get Connected after his boss mistook him for Bobby G.
He said: “I only work here because they thought I was Bobby G from Bucks Fizz.
“I had the video interview and then the face-to-face interview and the boss said he wasn’t sure.
“They told him I was in Bucks Fizz and he said: ‘Bobby from Bucks Fizz? Give him the job!’”
While he admits to not being a Eurovision superfan as it is today, he says he will be watching when the contest comes to Liverpool on May 13.
When asked who he thought would win the competition, he said: “I’ll go for Finland.”