The Rose of Tralee (a.k.a. The Lovely Girls Competition)

Every year on these fair shores the Lovely Girl Competition to end all Lovely Girl competion's is held in Tralee Co. Kerry. This is a pagent dedicated to discover the prettiest and most accomplished and as already stated the overall Loveliest Girl in Ireland (or of Irish descent).


One of the Fr. Ted episodes did a fantastic take off of beauty pagents like this one which was called "The Lovely Girls Competion" where the girls had to impress the priest's with their baking and such like to win. My favourite quote has to be from Ted as he commentates on a girl on the catwalk (this is not a direct quote just my recollection of it!) " Would you not agree that she has a lovely bottom? I mean sure don't they all have lovely bottoms?" You have to see it to really appreciate it!

This year there were 30 entrants from all over the world and while I definately didn't have the time or the inclination to watch all them strut their stuff I did watch some of the show over the 2 nights.

To be honest I settled myself in to watch The Rose of Tralee with more than a pinch of cynicism as I haven't looked at it for years and my over riding memory of past year's shows was of being bored out of my skull as one after the other frumpy looking girls in guna's tried to flirt with Uncle Gaybo on stage, generally while shaking with nerves and waving at their Granny's. This year there was the requisite amount of Granny waving, leaping around dancing, caterwauling and instrument beating, so I wasn't disappointed! However there were a couple of fundamental differences this year.

The first being Ray D'Arcy (I like him) and his ability to put the girls at ease flirt with them in a flippant way and generally the fact that he seemed to be aware of how silly the whole thing really is but was determined to have as much fun as possible doing the job!

The second was the girl's themselves. Jesus some of them were very impressive. There were nucelar physicists, assistants to Congress women, biologists extracting DNA from fossilised bones, I even heard a rumour about a potential astronaut being among the number! I believe it too. These women were high achievers the majority were gorgeous and sporty and funny and .... it was a bit sickening actually. Back when I was a kid if they had the Leaving Cert they were clever and ambitions ranged from becoming a teacher to getting married and having babies!

The winner this year was a case in point Aoibhionn Ni Shuileabhain is from Mayo has earned a first class degree in maths and theoretical physics. Is a talented Sean Nós singer (type of Irish rythmic singing very beautiful and difficult to perfect) a musician and overall a Lovely girl! She was a deserving winner!


This not a great photo of her!