Most of us Eurovision fans dream of one day playing some minor part to contribute to or nestle your way into our beloved contest, be it by submitting songs, doing volunteer work at an event or why not starting your own podcast about the topic?

Alon Amir from Israel managed to do this for the first time at the tender age of 17 when his job was to light the candles for the 1995 Israeli entry "Amen", candles that they later weren't allowed to bring to Ireland, but they brought Alon anyway.

Through a stunning career at Shlomo Zach's record company, he got to do various tasks related to the Israeli Eurovision entries, and was very much involved in the victory of "Diva" in 1998.

Luckily for us, Alon has no scruples of telling us almost everything about what has happened during all his Eurovision trips.

Why didn't Dana International wear her expensive Jean-Paul Gaultier bird-suit in 1998 and what about the fall in 1999, why does Alon want the EBU to serve food in the green room, how much mafia money can you really make by being a totally inexperienced head of press for Belarus and was it really dangerous to return to the hotel after the semi-final?

Maybe not, but something that was seriously dangerous was to be part of the Israeli delegation in Azerbaijan, a muslim country with an open border to Iran and no guarantees for their personal safety, and Alon tells us about this suicide mission as well.

Alon bubbles over with so many interesting stories and new pieces of information at such a rate that it is hard to know which to focus on here, and to avoid a complete mental overload we will save half of this marathon interview for next week.

Legend: Alon Amir

Titles in Eurovision: Production assistant, Journalist, Assistant to the executive producer, Executive producer, Head of press, Jury member and Manager

Host: Emil Löfström

Contact: emil@schlagervannerna.se

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