Lys Assia: First winner of the Eurovision Song Contest who made comeback attempts in her late eighties

In 2013, at the age of 87, Lys Assia, made a bid to enter the Eurovision song contest (with a hip hop band called New Jack), nearly six decades after she became its first winner.

In the video for the new song, her fellow artists, in between doing backflips and mid-air corkscrew twists, help her on to a skateboard.

“You can do what you want, you can be what you like, if you check in what’s in your head,” she sings in “All In Your Head” which, alas, did not get to represent Switzerland that year – her second failed attempt at a comeback as an octogenarian. She had tried the year before, too.

It is not for nothing that Assia was hailed by Graham Norton as the “Queen of Eurovision”.

Assia, who has died in Zurich aged 94, was born Rosa Mina Scharer in Rupperswil, Switzerland. As a teen, she trained to be a dancer. In 1940, however, she unexpectedly became a singer when she had to stand in for a colleague ahead of a show. Her last-minute performance was a great success and her destiny as a chanteuse was set.

At the first ever Eurovision Song Contest, which was held at the Teatro Kursaal in Lugano, Switzerland. Her French language song for Switzerland, “Refrain”, which handed her victory in Eurovision.

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By 1956, Assia was already a star in Germany and Switzerland – she had a huge hit “Mein Papa” – but 50 years later, in 2006, recalled how honoured she was to be asked to represent her country, saying of the song contest: “It was and still is very important. The idea is to open the frontiers … After the war, it was really necessary.”

Assia represented Switzerland again in 1957, coming seventh with “L’enfant que j’étais”. She had better luck in 1958, when she came second with a song called “Giorgio”. She claimed she lost out on first place that year only because the lyrics of the song contained a pun on polenta that upset the Italians. Many more hits and concert tours followed. She made several films and performed for the Queen Elizabeth, Egypt’s King Faruk and Eva Peron. However, she always remained associated with the song contest that made her name worldwide.

Having stepped back from her career in the Sixties, Assia returned to the stage in earnest after a break of almost 40 years. In 2011, she made a bid to represent her country again at the 2012 contest in Azerbaijan. Her song, “C’Etait Ma Vie”, came only eighth in the national selection round but she attended the contest in Baku as guest of honour.

Undeterred by the lukewarm response to “C’etait Ma Vie”, at the age of 87, Assia put herself forward one final time, hoping to represent Switzerland at 2013’s contest in Malmo with a song called “All In Your Head”, featuring hip hop band New Jack.

It was not chosen. But though she wouldn’t compete again, Assia remained the darling of Eurovision fans. She attributed her popularity to her authenticity. ‘I’m real. I am as I am. I am a good person. I have a good heart. You can’t sing if you don’t have feeling.’

​Assia was married for the first time in 1957, to Johann Heinrich Kunz. Their marriage was to be tragically cut short when Kunz died after just nine months. Six years later, Assia married Oscar Pedersen, a Danish general counsel and hotelier, with whom she remained until his death in 1995.

Fluent in eight languages, Assia lived between Switzerland and Cannes, France, though latterly, ill health meant she spent most of her time on Zurich’s Gold Coast.

Shortly before she died, she told the German press, “Life is too short to spend on unimportant things. Unfortunately, one notices this but usually only in retrospect. My life was very happy.”

Lys Assia, singer, born 3 March 1924, died 24 March 2018