EARLIER this year Brighton celebrated 40 years since it hosted the night pop music was changed forever. Nearly eight months since the milestone the city is still celebrating the brilliance of Abba, this time as part of a comedy festival. FLORA THOMPSON reports.

IT was 40 years ago that a little-known Swedish band blew crowds away with its performance at the Eurovision song contest.

In 1974 the Brighton Dome played host to the competition, where the audience were the first in the world to hear the live performance of hit song Waterloo.

Last week BBC Four celebrated the quartet of two couples in a programme called The Joy of Abba, which documented its steps to stardom.

While on Thursday comedy festival Brighton Fringe – the ninth so far – revived the city’s love for pop through a humorous set.

A Night Out with Abba and Esme, a character comedy by Mark Blayney and Karen Sherrard, took place at Otherplace at Bar Broadway, in Steine Street.

The event urged everyone to become their own life coach, calling on the power of the 1970s and sage advice from the pop band’s top songs for help.

It concluded with a comic look at gardening from character Esme de Flange.

The festival – which concluded on Saturday – offered a score of alternative comedy from stand-up to sketch groups and comic theatre.

The band formed Stockholm in 1972, and Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad were each known on the Swedish music scene separately but it wasn’t until their union and the concert in Brighton that the foursome shot to stardom.

The band had odds of 14-1 to win behind favourites the Netherlands when the betting for the 18 countries at the contest opened.

Few in the audience that night, on April 6, could have guessed they were witnessing pop history, especially when the quartet had attempted to make the competition the year before in Luxembourg and failed.

Their entry Ring Ring lost out in the qualifiers for the Swedish entry but Waterloo – an upbeat tune inspired by the glam rock movement sweeping England – was a roaring success.

Nevertheless the town threw itself into the spirit of Eurovision – with postmen doing their rounds in the uniforms of their continental colleagues.

The BBC hired The Dome from Brighton Council for £1,000, erected scaffolding for 200 spotlights and eight cameras.

Its producer and director Michael Hurll took three days to work out 500 camera shots which were written into the script.

In the eight years that followed, the group charted the up and downs of their personal lives, the superstardom and heartache, through timeless songs including The Winner Takes It All, Mamma Mia, SOS, Dancing Queen and Take a Chance on Me.

The reception to the band in Sweden was mixed, causing controversy as the songs – mostly about love – often seemed too light hearted and flippant in a politically-charged music scene and a backdrop of conflicts such as the cold war.

But internationally, particularly in the UK and Australia, the group and its music was adored.

The couples split up and the band dissolved without ever officially splitting – but the songs live on and are now critically acclaimed as some of the best, moulding the history of pop music.