"I love eye-er-land, Fenian rebel songs and tiaras!"
Tonight on RTE 1 the beauty pageant relic that is The Rose of Tralee kicks off. Growing up I loved its beauty-with-brains-and-jigs approach to making women don pastel coloured dresses and compete against each other. This was mainly because along with the Eurovision and the Late Late Toy Show, it was one of three events in the calendar year you were allowed to stay up late for. It was full of OTT ex-pat Nationalism, woeful poems about people’s grannies missing the oul sod of Ireland, women belting out ear-splitting versions of Danny Boy, bad party pieces and lots of ostentatious shoe-removal to dance out-of-time hornpipes.
It’s never been the same since Uncle Gaybo stopped presenting it and I can’t ever think about it without the Father Ted send up, The Lovely Girls, elbowing its way into my brain. Rememember the qualification rounds of “walking”, “sandwich making” and the “lovely laugh tie-break”? The same episode also features the feminist singer who is obviously modelled on Sinéad O’Connor (“What’s ‘clit power’? I knew a Father CLINT Power once”).
Anthea McTeirnan
Croí na Duibhlinn
Aoife Barry
Aoife McLysaght
Arlene Hunt
Attracta McCarthy-McKenna
clairehennessy
Ann Cronin
Amanda Brown
Eleanor Fitzsimons
Edel Coffey
Anna Carey
Lauren Murphy
Jennie Ridyard
Jude Leavy
Hazel Katherine Larkin
Léan Ní Chuilleanáin
Leigh
Lisa McInerney
Laura Slattery
Maman Poulet
Megan McGurk
Clare Kleinedler
Molly
Rosita Boland
Catherine Crichton
Sinéad Gleeson
sarahefranklin
siobhandowling
Susan Daly
theantiroom
Nuala Ní Chonchúir
I know this may be hard to believe, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen more than about five minutes of the Rose of Tralee. My parents never watched it so I never saw it at all as a kid, and I’ve only caught glimpses of it as an adult!
That Fr Ted piece was so funny it’s made me want to get out my precious boxed set and watch some of it this dreary bank holiday Monday!
Oh no! I have competition as the resident Mary!
Ladies, you’ll just have to settle it with a Lovely Laugh tie-breaker, I’m afraid.
@Penny, yiou’re making that up, no? It is THE best thing ever in that you want to be a contestant until you’re about 12. Then you just laugh at it.
@Mary#1, I know, I started watching tons of it on Youtube. I got totally sucked in.
@Mary#2, you’ll always have a special place in TAR’s heart, don’t worry.
@Kitty Cat, we could do that alright, or maybe a bun fight?
Is it true that single parent Roses are now allowed to enter? I hope so and that I didn’t just dream that up.
It’s a pretty farcical contest, based on some misty-eyed emigrant notion of Ireland. Like Penny, I’ve only ever seen bits of it. I’ve always found it it too mortifying to watch.
Father Ted’s send up, on the other hand, is pretty hilarious.
Did you see that some priest is holding an online beauty pageant for nuns? Even the celibate have to be fuckable apparently.
So I got out my precious boxed set of Fr. Ted and spent the afternoon rolling around on the sofa. The Lovely Girls episode is hilarious….again and again.
@WRW, I bloody well hope so, that’s an outrageous rule.
@Medbh, tell me you’re making that up? Or at least send me linkage to prove it.
@Mary, I watched the Henry Sellers one (he’s the Jekyll & Hyde TV presenter with a bad wig and a drink problem) the other night. Still gold…
Medbh speaks the truth – here’s the appalling story. I read about it on Jezebel, where the poster dryly pointed out that the Church is “breaking down stereotypes in the only way [it] know[s] how” – with more casual misogyny!
Oh my! That’s gas about the nuns. I was in Rome in June and there was this one calendar everywhere full of black and white photos of young and mostly good looking priests! Very strange.
I saw about 5 mins last night. It is just the most skin-crawlingly awful bit of TV. Not even in a car-crash eyes-glued -to-the-screen-awful. Just in an ‘oh sweet lord, turn it off now!’ sort of way.
And yes, all I could think of was the Father Ted send-up.
@Kitty Cat – I saw that calendar too! And, again it made me think of Father Ted – the episode where they advertise the priest chatline!