Émile Gardaz was born in 1931 and shot to fame as a radio presenter of Radio Suisse Romande, a broadcaster he has worked for since 1955. He was also a succesful book author releasing many novels and collections of poems like Frères comme ça, Le pays d’Echallens and La courte échelle.

Furthermore, he wrote the lyrics to about 600 songs, five of them were entries in the Eurovision Song Contest: Refrain was performed by Lys Assia in 1956 and won the competition. The year after, L'enfant que j'étais was also performed by Lys Assia but only finished 8th out of ten contestants. His third song took part in 1961 - Nous aurons demain finished 3rd performed by Franca di Rienzo. 1962, Le retour, which was presented by Jean Philippe, was less succesful and reached 10th place out of 16. In 1963, Esther Ofarim sung T'en va pas and the song was a comercial success but also succesful in London, where it finished 2nd.

A special thank you to Jürgen Haepers for his contribution to this text, and the site www.esctoday.com .