The second Dutch Eurovision victory within three years caused a slight dilemma for the contest organisers, as many felt that taking the show back to the Netherlands so soon after they staged it in 1958 wasn't an especially good idea. Luckily the idea of the previous year's winner hosting the show was not as firmly established as it is today, so for the first, but not the last time, Europe's biggest broadcaster stepped in and the 1960 contest ended up being hosted by the B.B.C. in London, as the United Kingdom had finished second in 1959. At the inception of the event, the British broadcaster had been slightly reluctant to embrace the Eurovision Song Contest, but with the country considering its first bid to join the fledgling European Economic Community (the fore-runner to today's European Union) the opportunity arose for the United Kingdom to show off its European credentials to a continental television audience.     

Given that the BBC is based in London, a city full of suitable venues to host the Eurovision Song Contest, the decision to stage the show in the British capital was hardly surprising. However deciding to stage the contest in the Royal Festival Hall (left) was quite ambitious, as this was by far the largest venue to host the event up to that time.

The visually rather stark and modernist Royal Festival Hall was built on the south bank of the river Thames and opened in 1951 for the "Festival of Britain". It has been a popular venue for concerts and conferences ever since. For the Eurovision Song Contest the live audience exceed two thousand people. Today the venue is part of the South Bank Centre and since hosting the contest, the Royal Festival Hall has undergone several transformations and today the hall is undergoing its latest refurbishment.         

As if to match the large venue, this was the biggest contest to date both in terms of participating countries and also in terms of the live television audience. By the early 1960s television sets were becoming more commonplace in European homes and it is believed that this was the Eurovision Song Contest where the television audience exceeded those listening to the show on radio. By contrast it was the last Eurovision Song Contest to be staged on a midweek evening. 

All of the eleven countries that had competed in Cannes a year earlier returned in 1960. In addition, Luxembourg who had not participated in 1959 returned and Norway made its Eurovision debut, meaning that for the first time all three Scandinavian countries were in the contest. 

In 1960 eight of the thirteen participating countries chose their entries through a national final and yet again the winning song in the San Remo festival represented Italy. Four countries had internal selections; France, Monaco, Austria and Luxembourg. Interestingly for its return to the contest, Luxembourg chose an entry in Luxembourgish a distant linguistic relative of German. 

Sweden kept its rather usual formula of choosing its Eurovision singer and then had a separate national final, where the potential entries were sung by different singers, none of whom had a chance of going to Eurovision.

Although several of the songwriters were making a return to the event, only one former performer, Belgium's Fud Leclerc had previous Eurovision experience.  Interestingly Leclerc also competed in the Swiss national final, and could conceivably have sung for two different countries in London. Remarkably such a conflict of interest has only been disallowed in the last two years, after Polish group Ich Troje came close to competing for both Poland and Germany in 2003. 

Once again there was no interval act, so after a brief explanation of the voting procedure, it was time for the juries to be called. Unfortunatly the manually operated scoreboard ran into a couple of problems, and the voting took a lot longer than in previous years. As in previous years, countries voted in the reverse order to their performance, and the French jury was the first to cast their votes.  Perhaps influenced by the French title, they put Germany into an early lead but completely ignored the Italian  song which was expected to be the main rival to France. The Italian jury adopted a similar tactic, ignoring the French entry and starting speculation of deliberate tactical voting which persists to this day. The first dramatic move on the scoreboard came when Germany awarded seven of their ten points to Monaco, to put them into a very strong lead. However with high votes from Netherlands and Switzerland, the United Kingdom soon took the lead and at one point looked like they had an unbeatable eight point lead. 

The two favourites were having mixed fortunes after their slow starts. The Italian entry never made any significant impact in the voting, but the French entry began to make strong progress halfway through the voting. With four juries to vote the Danes awarded four points to France and ignored the U.K., switching the leaders positions, but Luxembourg quickly reversed that with five votes to the U.K. and only one to France. The audience in the Royal Festival Hall got more and more excited, so much so that presenter Katie Boyle had to make an appeal to them to remain calm, as she was finding it difficult to hear the votes being announced. With two juries to vote, a single point separated the U.K. and France, with no one else in serious contention. When Sweden gave four points to France, the excitement, came to an end, because the U.K. was last to vote and could not vote for their own entry.

After looking like we were about to see the U.K.'s first winner and the first home victory since 1956, it was France who triumphed for the second time in three years. Monaco finished a distant third. Once again a highly rated Italian entry had failed to excite the international juries, with "Romantica" finishing down in 8th place. However this would not stop the song becoming a sizeable international hit in the following months. For much of the voting it looked we were about to get the first Eurovision entry with the dreaded "nil points", but Denmark recovered in the second half of the voting. Luxembourg's attempt to bring their national language to a bigger audience failed miserably, scoring a single point and finishing last. It wouldn't be the last time that a minority language would be rejected by Eurovision juries, as Ireland and others would find out in later years.

Before the reprise of the winning song, the prize, a silver vase, was presented to Jacqueline Boyer by the 1959 winning singer Teddy Scholten. This was the first time that this was done and it started a tradition that has been repeated also every year since.

Below you can find a table with the votes as they appeared after each country voted. 

"Tom Pillibi" gave France its second Eurovision victory in three years, but the song could hardly be more different from the first French winner; "Dors Mon Amour" in 1958. The 1960 winner had been chosen in an internal selection by French television and was the work of two of France's greatest songwriters. It was the first Eurovision winner not to be selected through a national final.

The song is a rather unusual tale of a young girl who falls for a man who tells her he has two castles and ships on which he travels the World. However the singer is rather sceptical suggesting that this "Tom Pillibi" is not serious and may be liar.  

Young Jacqueline Boyer started a career in the music industry at an early age, and despite being only eighteen, she was already well know in France, before her Eurovision victory. By 1960 the Eurovision Song Contest was a very popular event in Europe, and Jacqueline was treated as a young national hero following her victory in London. 

Despite a long career in music, Jacqueline would never have a bigger hit than "Tom Pillibi", which went on to be hit the charts in many European countries and become the most successful Eurovision winner up to that time. Jacqueline Boyer also recorded the song in German and English, and it was also covered by several others singers including Julie Andrews. Jacqueline remained popular both at home in France and also in Germany, recording several albums in German. She also recorded in English, under the name "Barbara Benton". During the 1960s she starred in several films and television shows. In 2000 she recorded a duet with Irish singer Brendan Keeley called "Still In Love" but while she remains a popular figure in the French media, Jacqueline is no longer an active recording artist and is now a grandmother. In October 2005 she appeared in a special Eurovision edition of the popular French music series "Chanter La Vie" on France 2.

The duo behind "Tom Pillibi" are two of France's most successful songwriters. Composer André Popp was born in Fontenay-le-Comte in 1924. He started his career as a church organist, filling the place of his father who had been called up to serve in World War II in 1939.  After the war, he met Jean Broussole, a poet and lyricist, and together they moved to Paris, when they began to have success with songs such as "Il Dansait." Popp's own 1954 instrumental number, "Les Lavandieres du Portugal (Portugese Washerwomen)" became a huge international hit and was covered by many of the performers mentioned on this site. Always a musical innovator, in 1957, Popp released "Delirium in Hi-Fi",  a very successful collaboration with Pierre Fatosme, an experiment in the recording techniques of the time. The duo later collaborated on the album "Popped" which was also extremely successful. 

"Tom Pillibi" was to be the first of four Eurovision entries composer by André Popp. In 1964 "Le Chant De Mallory" finished 4th for France, In 1967, "L'amour Est Blue" achieved the same result for Luxembourg and in 1975 "Une Chanson C'est Une Lettre" finished 13th, making Popp one of a handful of composers to write Eurovision entries for three different countries. André Popp was also a very very successful orchestra leader and recording artist, and recorded both "Tom Pillibi" and "L'Amour Est Bleu" as instrumentals. He worked for many years in the French radio and has been an inspiration for the later next generation of French composers.

The man behind the rather unusual lyrics of "Tom Pillibi" is Pierre Cour born in 1924 in the French city of Arles. Cour has a very varied career before concentrating on music. He was a pilot, a physical education instructor and journalist before turning first to acting and then to radio presenting. In the early 1950s be started to have his songs recorded and in 1954 his song "Mon Ami, Mon Ami" was a hit for Jacques Hélian and his orchestra. During the 1950s his songs would provide hits for stars such as Tino Rossi and Dany Dauberson. In 1958 his song "Les Gitans" was a huge hit for French singer Dalida. In 1959, Cour made his first trip to Eurovision as lyricist of "Oui, oui, oui, oui, oui", which finished 3rd for France and went on to be a major hit when covered by Sacha Distel. 

Following their collaboration on "Tom Pillibi" Cour worked with André Popp for several years and they wrote a string of French hits together. As well as local stars like Dalida, Sacha Distel and France Gall, their songs were also recorded by international singers such as Petula Clark. Cour and Popp collaborated  on two other Eurovision entries; "Le Chant De Mallory" for France in 1964 and, "L'amour Est Bleu" for Luxembourg in 1967. "L'Amour Est Bleu" went onto to be one of the biggest selling Eurovision songs of decades, and was recorded by over a hundred different artists.

During the 1960s Cour also worked successfully with Enrico Macias and also continued to write hit songs on his own. In 1968 "La Maison Du Printemps" was a bit French hit for Croatian born star Tereza. The 1970s saw Cour collaborating with other songwriters such as Roger Whittaker and he also wrote "C'est La Vie" a major hit for 1971 Eurovision winner Séverine. He also wrote three Eurovision entries for Luxembourg during the decade; "Pomme, Pomme, Pomme" (13th in 1971) on which he teamed-up with Hubert Giraud, the composer of 1958 Eurovision winner "Dors Mon Amour", in 1974 Cour wrote "Toi" which finished 5th and on which he teamed up with another former Eurovision winner Phil Coulter ("Puppet On A String", 1967) and finally "Frere Jacques" which finished 16th in 1977.

After a long and colorful life and career Pierre Cour passed away in 1997, at the age of 73, leaving behind a repertoire of fine songs, many of which were only discovered after his death.

The conductor of "Tom Pillibi" in London was  the famous French band-leader Franck Pourcel, who had also conducted the first French winner "Dors Mon Amour" in Hilversum in 1958 and who conducted a total of 23 Eurovision entries between 1956 and 1972.