eusong1-4, Exercise 3: "Nul points"

Model answer:

"Nul points" is French for "no points". It comes from the days when scores were read out in English and French and the totals were announced in full, so a song with no points was announced as having none. Norway is the country most closely linked to it, generally recorded with four zero scores (1963, 1978, 1981 and 1997, to be checked) and with more last places than any other country.

"Norway, nul points" is better described as folklore because the record shows the zero scores, but the tidy phrase as people repeat it is what the audience remembered, not a set line said once on air.

Under today's scoring, with jury and public points added together, a zero in the final is rarer but not impossible (the United Kingdom in 2021, Austria and Germany in 2015; confirm the years). The old way of reading out every country's score in turn has gone, so the phrase would not be said in the same way.