The United Kingdom held a national pre-selection to choose the song that would go to the Eurovision Song Contest 1975. The Shadows were selected by the BBC to represent the UK, after BBC executive Bill Cotton had stated that he specifically wanted a group to sing for Britain in 1975. His choice was met with a negative response by the UK media, the song writing community and the general public. Members of the group were responsible for two of the six shortlisted songs, causing a further outcry from the music publishers associations. The Shadows performed one song a week for six weeks on the BBC1 TV series "Lulu", hosted by 1969 Eurovision joint winner Lulu. Uniquely, although the group were seen performing weekly, in fact they only recorded one performance of each of the six songs in December 1974, for a special edition of the series broadcast on 15 February 1975. These performances were then shown individually for the six week period, before being shown back-to-back in the final, followed by an immediate repeat of all six. Viewers cast votes via postcard for their favourite song and the winning entry announced on 22 February was "Let Me Be the One" which received 17,477 votes, the lowest published figure known for a winning song in the UK finals that used either voting by mail or telephone. The choice of The Shadows led to calls from the Music Publishers Association for the songwriters and composers to be allowed to select the artist of their choice to perform the songs in future UK selections for Eurovision and the low postal vote persuaded the BBC that a new format was indeed needed. This was inaugurated in 1976. The winning song was written by Paul Curtis, who won the Song for Europe contest another three times, making him the most successful writer in the history of the UK selection process. He also wrote a further 21 songs that reached the UK finals. "Let Me Be the One" became the record ninth British entry to place 2nd in the Eurovision Song Contest.