Beauty is in the eye of the employer

Beauty is in the eye of the employer


C’mere ‘til I tell ya
Daniel Carey

WHEN Colm Murray appeared on RTÉ News practising tai chi with a group of elderly Chinese women, I was convinced the Olympics couldn’t get any stranger. Then we discovered that Lin Miaoke, the nine-year-old singer whose performance of ‘Ode to the Motherland’ went down a treat during the opening ceremony, was miming the words. It seems the voice spectators heard belonged to seven-year-old Yang Peiyi, who had been due to appear on stage but was apparently deemed ‘not cute enough’.
A story with similar overtones has caused controversy closer to home. A new e2 music store in Mullingar advertised for new staff, but a note in the window added that ‘no ugly chicks’ need apply. Shop owner Aaron McGoona told the Westmeath Examiner that the sign was a purely humorous remark, adding: “I don’t think that in this day and age, employers would discriminate against anyone. We are looking for people with a massive knowledge and interest in music and film.”
Frank Sinatra knew more than most about music and film, and it’s unlikely that Ol’ Blue Eyes was ever described as ‘ugly’. But in his old age, the singer and actor was rumoured to have taken a sheep hormone injection to make himself look younger. London tabloid legend has it that Piers Morgan, later a famous editor but then working as a lowly sub-editor, came up with the headline: ‘I’ve got ewes under my skin’, for which he was instantly promoted.
Not all bosses are so accommodating, as Breandán Ó hEithir discovered while working with the Irish language organisation Comhdháil Náisiúnta na Gaeilge. Ó hEithir recalls in his book ‘Over The Bar’ that his boss, Brian Mac Cafaid, measured success by the number of meetings the organisers convened every week, and would regularly arrive unannounced to find out how many meetings were scheduled for that particular day.
Once Annraoi Ó Liatháin, later president of the Gaelic League, was caught ‘meetingless’. Keeping his nerve as best he could, he took Mac Cafaid for a drive along a remote country road, praying hard, and was lucky enough to come on a schoolhouse where a meeting was in progress. Rushing into the startled chairman, Ó Liatháin pleaded with him to allow his slightly deranged boss to address the meeting, or he would almost certainly lose his job.
The chairman was too startled to refuse and Mac Cafaid was ushered in. He launched into his stock speech which combined quotations from Pádraig Pearse and other assorted patriots with aphorisms praising Irish at the expense of English. As soon as he drew a long breath, Ó Liatháin led a round of applause and ushered Mac Cafaid out to the car. Doubling back on some pretext, with the intention of thanking the chairman for having saved his bacon, Ó Liatháin was stopped in his tracks at the door by the sound of an angry voice being directed at his benefactor: “What in the name of Jaysus has all that sh*** to do with rural electrification?”