Anyone who has witnessed the enthusiasm with which grown men and women perform at historical re-enactments of military battles knew it could only be a matter of time before the events moved to other parts of life.

That time has come.

The 1974 Eurovision Song Contest, which took place at Brighton Dome, will be reignited by a man who has won a committed following for his character comedy as pensioner rapper Ida Barr and racy country music singer Tina C (who penned the classic sexual politics number, No Dick’s As Hard As My Life).

“Historical re-enactment can be for entertainment as well as battles,” insists Christopher Green, who qualifies for the role not only for his sharp stage work but also as an ABBA super fan.

ABBA won the Eurocontest in Brighton, setting them on the road to a whopping 380 million album and single sales.

Green was a childhood ABBA fan and just about old enough to remember the night (though he admits the 1976 album Arrival was his epiphany).

“I was a childhood ABBA fan and I refused to let it go. Even during ABBA’s dark decade, I was still a shining light.”

Such is the performer’s devotion to the Swedish quartet that in 2011 he was granted an interview with Anni-Frid Synni “Frida” Lyngstad. Millions would kill for the chance to meet the singer who became a princess after marrying a German prince (he later died of lymphoma) once her relationship with former ABBA songwriter Benny Andersson ended.

Green has also had the stamp of approval from Björn Ulvaeus.

“Christopher Green’s work is funny and intelligent,” they declared, after giving him permission to be the first person to use ABBA’s music in a stage show, before Mamma Mia! existed.

“I remember I hadn’t been playing very long, so that was real validation,” says Green.

After the success of that show, Pop Junkie, in which Green played a bunch of characters including Baba the dyslexic ABBA, and flying to Stockholm to meet the group’s management, he later met Frida at a private show he was performing.

“It was about what happens when you meet the person you have loved since you were a child – ‘Hello, you don’t know me but I love you’. Of course she is used to that happening, but it was a new experience for me.

“When I met her it was overwhelming. I was constantly examining how I was feeling. I was going, ‘You’re a grown man, you can’t be going weak at the knees meeting a middle-aged woman, she’s just another person’.”

BBC Radio 4 asked Green to turn the encounter into a radio show. He called it An Angel Passing Through My Room.

“It was really interesting to sit down in a BBC studio and say here we are, two human beings, let’s talk about what it is like to be a fan of somebody, what did I want from you and what did I think you could give me. How does it feel when someone like me wants something from you. It was quite a dark, intense conversation.”

Frida opened up.

“She talked about her husband dying and my partner was ill at the time, so we really connected as people. That felt like an important part of growing up, to be able to sit there with Frida from ABBA and talk about life, how you have strategies for coping with the bad things that happen and how you enjoy the good things.”

Nothing Green had done before connected with people in the same way. Afterwards he received hundreds of emails from around the world, not only from fans but also from people who had lost their partners.

“It was real privilege to make something that had connected with people. That is what I do really – use trashy entertainment to talk about difficult things in life.”

He compares it to the winning number ABBA performed twice on April 6, 1974: Waterloo.

“It’s not my favourite song but it is a sophisticated song, especially the interplay that is going on. It’s all about power balances in relationships and the dynamics of relationships, yet it has an upbeat cheesy feel.”

For The Anniversary – A Celebration Of ABBA’s Eurovision Win, Green will dress as Napoleon to mirror the famous outfit the band’s composer, Sven-Olof Walldoff, wore that night.

“He looked a bit of a berk. He was a serious classical music conductor in Sweden and when he died all the obituaries talked about him dressed as Napoleon.”

Such a legacy is presumably not what the conductor would have wanted.

Rediscovering the spirit

Green says to expect a performance lecture. He’ll rediscover the spirit and reimagine the events of that famed night of Brighton history.

As MC, he’ll guide the audience, interspersing facts and figures with performances of the Greek, Italian, Dutch and British entries, a reinterpretation of interval act Remember You’re A Womble by The Wombles, and this year’s San Marino Eurovision entry, Valentina Monetta, Martha & Eve And The Martini Encounter.

“I will encourage the audience to imagine what it would have been like to be in the crowd in 1974, who those people were, what their hopes and dreams might have been, what they might have been doing that day.

The host will build up to the moment ABBA won and they reprised Waterloo, with everyone singing along.

But he stresses this is neither for ABBA devotees nor Eurovision fanatics.

“It’s a quirky bit of social history; 40 years ago is not that long but lives were very different back then.

“The history book on the shelf is always repeating itself. I’m trying to hit some intellectual points as well as giving a good trashy night out.”

  • The Anniversary – A Celebration Of ABBA’s Eurovision Win is at Brighton Dome Concert Hall, Church Street, on Sunday, April 6. Starts 8pm, tickets £12. Call 01273 709709