We meet him in the middle of rehearsal week at Vienna’s Museum of Science and Technology, where the second floor is full of early mechanical instruments and historical synthesisers.<\/p>\n
Hyperactive at the best of times, Sam enters the exhibition like a kid in a candy shop, who has eaten all the candy, then discovered a secret, second room full of even more candy on which to binge.<\/p>\n
He charms the staff with his knowledge of these obscure machines \u2013 pointing out the bellows that power a church organ, and the pneumatic underpinnings of a piano roll player.<\/p>\n
“That’s the sound you hear on Strawberry Fields Forever,” he says, indicating a Mellotron organ, an early sampler that used tape loops to produce orchestral sounds.<\/p>\n
“And if you flick this ‘rumba’ button,” he says, prodding at a Roland CR-78 drum machine, “you’ll get the start to Blondie’s Heart of Glass.”<\/p>\n
The museum’s curator turns to me and observes: “He’d be a great tour guide. He almost knows more than we do!”<\/p>\n
Sam immediately offers his CV, before adding: “I don’t have a CV. But I’ll write one.”<\/p>\n
Still, none of this excitement is conducive to an interview.<\/p>\n
“Sorry! I’m forgetting I have a job to do,” Sam apologises. “You’ve taken me to the worst place!”<\/p>\n
Then he’s off again, having spotted a Eurovision karaoke booth. Grabbing the mic, he launches into a squeaky falsetto version of Abba’s Waterloo, followed by Tommy Cash’s 2025 entry Espresso Macchiato, complete with its loose-limbed choreography.<\/p>\n
Finally, this gives us an opportunity to discuss his own Eurovision performance.<\/p>\n
“I’m literally not a dancer,” he grins. “I’m awful.<\/p>\n
“I’ve got two left feet and there are parts where I need to use my right foot. But I’m all up for an experience and a challenge. It’s fun.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We meet him in the middle of rehearsal week at Vienna’s Museum of Science and Technology, where the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,391,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-584549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}