Dana adds glamour to election campaign

Irish presidential elections do not usually spark any great interest outside the Emerald Isle but the presence on the hustings of a former Eurovision Song Contest winner has certainly generated a good deal of interest in Britain and America.

Dana Rosemary Scallon, better known to Eurovision fans as Dana, was a big star on both sides of the Irish Sea in the 1970s after overcoming Spanish idol Julio Iglesias to win the 1970 contest with her song 'All Kinds of Everything'.

Now she has emerged as one of five candidates bidding to succeed Mary Robinson as the President of Ireland, albeit as an outsider.

At one stage, Dublin bookmakers, Paddy Power, cut Dana's odds from 50-1 to 12-1 after taking IR£330,000 in bets on her to win. The firm admitted that a victory for the singer would be a financial disaster for them.

After the latest opinion polls, which suggest she has little support at around 7%, the bookies have increased her odds to 66-1.

Rosemary Sheeran was born, one of seven children, on August 30, 1951 in Londonderry's solidly Roman Catholic Creggan estate and was raised in Rossville Street where 13 Catholic demonstrators were shot dead by British troops on 'Bloody Sunday' in 1972.

Her father, although a barber by profession, was a talented trumpet player and the young Dana -- the prefix Dana, which means bold in Irish, was originally a nickname given to her by schoolmates because of her precociousness -- was taught piano and learned ballet.

After her Eurovision success she embarked on a solo singing career and was still producing chart hits in the early 1980s.

In 1979 she married Ulster hotelier Damien Scallon in Londonderry, he later became her full-time manager. They have four children, Grace, John, Ruth and Robert.

Dana became a spokesman for the Irish branch of UNICEF and in 1992 moved to the United States and started broadcasting with the Catholic cable channel EWTN in Alabama.

The singer has performed three times for the Pope, the most recent occasion was in New York in 1995.

Dana does not represent any of the major political parties so she was forced to take to the road in order to get the necessary nominations.

Donegal county council was the first to nominate her, followed by Wicklow, Kerry, Galway and Tipperary North Riding.

Her traditional Catholic views - she is against divorce and abortion - have been lampooned by some but she says: "What is so awful about a possible president having a strong religious belief, that it would be portrayed as a desire to drag modern Ireland kicking and screaming back into the 19th century."

"As we progress and change, let us not stamp out or lose irreplaceable values and beliefs as we walk together towards our future,"