Clifford Brown

Who is Clifford Brown?

Clifford Brown MBE was a British television editor and director who became the second European Broadcasting Union scrutineer for the Eurovision Song Contest.

Brown was born in 1916 in Inverness, Scotland, after joining the army he started working for Scottish Television and ITV. In 1966, he was appointed to be scrutineer for the Eurovision Song Contest. In 1969 when the Contest was held in Spain there was a four-way tie between France, Spain, UK and the Netherlands. Before the show the presenter had asked Brown what would happen if there was a tie, his reply was "Madam, that never happened before, and that's never going to happen", as noted in The Eurovision Song Contest — The Official History by author and historian John Kennedy O'Connor, Brown admitted in a BBC documentary in 1992 that the result caused disgust among many people, not least the Scandinavian countries.

Brown stepped down as scrutineer in 1977 and was awarded the MBE award in 1990. He died in December 1993 after sometime of illness.