Rose of Tralee does nothing for me

George Hook

IN much the same way that you rarely hear of a person that didn’t like Father Ted, those that consider the Rose of Tralee to be an amusing and relevant showcase of all that is good about Ireland are extremely thin on the ground.
Here is a list of things I would rather do than sit down and watch the Rose of Tralee:
- Kick myself hard in the shins.
- Eat a bunch of nettles.
- Run a marathon across the Sahara desert in 40 degree heat.
Yet, there I was on Monday night last week - strictly in the name of research, of course - staring open- mouthed and flabbergasted as Daithí O’Se led over two hours of complete and utter nonsense in the name of entertainment.
Some of the stuff was so cringeworthy and awful that it actually left a nauseous feeling in my stomach. Any I remember appreciating the wonderful irony that that very thing that Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews had torn to shreds in Father Ted all those years ago was actually being played out in real life in front of my very eyes.
Remember the ‘Rock a Hula’ episode in Father Ted where Father Jack punches Ted in the stomach just before he goes on stage to host the ‘Lovely Girls’ competition? And as Ted pants heavily into the microphone, struggling for breath, the ‘lovely girls’ walk up and down the catwalk, giggling childishly to themselves?
People roared laughing at the lunacy of that twenty years ago. Yet here we are, 2015, Roses on stage in their pretty little dresses, while Daithí O’Sé whoops and hollers like some over excited pantomime act. You couldn’t make it up.

Participants
And what of the Roses themselves? Well I’m sure most of them weren’t helped by the level of banality coming out of the hosts mouth during the interviews, but I had to wonder what most of them were doing there in the first place. What possessed them to sign themselves up for this glorified beauty pageant?
“And wha’ are ya gonna do for me now?”
“Well Daithí, I might do a little dance for you…”
“Off you go there so like a good girl ‘til I watch you ha ha ha...Ah sure lookit. What a brilliant little dancer you are.. Off you pop there ‘til we bring out the next one...And what will you do for us little girl? A poem?! And you made it up all by yourself? Well fancy that!”
It was immediately apparent, by the way, that this particular Rose had indeed made the poem up all by herself. Seamus Heaney would have been spinning furiously in his grave.
The pièce de résistance was undoubtedly Daniel O’Donnell’s performance on the Tuesday night. O’Donnell’s song and dance routine is so over-the-top camp, he makes Bosco look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
And as the 53 year-old pranced around, shaking his bottom in his soft Donegal tones, with the audience gleefully clapping along, I wondered if perhaps someone had taken the liberty of rigging up my television set. I genuinely thought I might be a victim of candid camera.

Severe view?
‘Ok, enough of the sarcasm, George! Isn’t it only a bit of fun?’
Well, I suppose one could make that argument. And I’ve also heard how valuable the festival is to the local economy in Tralee with just under half a million people tuning in to watch it each night. But, like me, I can’t help but wonder how much of that television audience is watching for the sheer lunacy of it all. For me it is a bit like slowing down in the aftermath of a car crash - most of us find it difficult to look away.
The difficulty I have with accepting the whole thing as ‘just a bit of fun’ is that it flies on the face of common sense. A glorified beauty pageant with a male presenter does nothing for Ireland’s image as an equal society.
If organisers insist on keeping the Rose of Tralee alive, why don’t they bring it in line with the reality of life in the twenty-first century? Why not have a female presenter? And should the women really have to perform party-pieces like something out of a 1950’s gentlemen’s club?  
Scrap the week-long ceremony of parading the contestants around the country like some sort of cattle-mart for human flesh and make the festival a celebration of women: not a celebration of chauvinism and prehistoric sexism.