Graham Norton Backs Wild Youth As "Dark Horses" At This Years Eurovision

In less than a week's time Ireland’s 2023 Eurovision entry, Wild Youth, will take to the stage in Liverpool with hopes of qualifying for the grand final on Saturday the 13th of May.

While the Dublin indie rock band are already well known in Ireland and won the competitive qualification process back in February, the bookies' odds point to a difficult challenge for the four-piece to make it through the semi-finals. However, senior Eurovision figures including legendary BBC host, Ireland’s own Graham Norton, have praised the Irish entry.

Norton will host the song competition along with singer and Britain’s Got Talent judge Alesha Dixon, Ted Lasso actress Hannah Waddingham and Ukrainian singer Julia Sanina. Despite the bookies’ odds, Norton was full of praise for Wild Youth.

Speaking on ITV, Norton said, “I think little dark horses might be those boys from Ireland.”

He added, “It’s a good athematic song and I just saw a little bit of their dress rehearsal and it’s really well styled. They’ve got a disco gold jumpsuit… if they get through the semi-final I think they might do well on the night.”

Graham Norton was not the only one to take notice of the Irish entry, however. Wild Youth revealed this week that the band have been getting advice from Irish Eurovision icon Johnny Logan. There isn’t anyone who knows more about winning the competition than Logan who holds the record for being the only performer to have won the Eurovision Song Contest three times in 1980, 1987 and 1992.

Andres Poveda

Speaking to the Irish Daily Mirror, the band’s singer Conor O’Donohoe said that Logan told them that "no one gave him a chance" when he first represented Ireland at the Eurovision Song Contest.

He went on to say “We were in Tel Aviv with Johnny Logan. He is unbelievably nice. We got there and we knew he was playing so we were kind of fanning. He’s an icon.

We were like ‘How will we try to sneak out the back’ and hopefully see him. But when we got there the organiser said that Johnny Logan has asked that you go over to his dressing room.

So we went over and we were with him for like 15 minutes and he spoke and then he went out and he performed and then he gave us a big shout-out when he was performing. We watched it all from the side of the stage, which was amazing.”

Wild Youth is made up of the members Conor O’Donohoe, Callum McAdam, Ed Porter and David Whelan. Their song ‘We are one’ beat stiff competition from the likes of the former Sex Pistols frontman John Lydon and his band Public Image Ltd.

The band faces very tough competition in their semi-final which includes the two competition front runners of Sweden and Finland according to bookies odds. Most bookies currently have Ireland with around a 4-1 or 4.5-1 odds of qualification with BoyleSports being the most optimistic about Ireland's chances of winning the entire competition at 81-1!

While Ireland holds a record 7 Eurovision titles, we have yet to qualify for the final of the Eurovision Song Contest since Ryan O’Shaughnessy entered with his song ‘Together’ in 2018.

Let’s hope the lads can prove the bookies wrong and launch Ireland back to where we belong near the top of the famous song competition!