While serving as head of Eurovision his he appeared on the broadcasts as the adjudicator and scrutineer of the voting. In 1969 when the Contest was held in Spain there was a four-way tie between France, Spain, UK and the Netherlands. Before the show the presenter (Laura Valenzuela) had asked Brown what would happen if there was a tie, his reply was "Madam, that never happened before, and that's never going to happen", as noted in "The Eurovision Song Contest — The Official History" by author and historian John Kennedy O'Connor, Brown admitted in a BBC documentary in 1992 that the result caused disgust among many people, not least the Scandinavian countries.