This year is the 66th anniversary of the first Rose of Tralee and the 29th birthday of the Father Ted Lovely Girls episode that so fondly and famously lampooned the pageant.
In other words, for more than a third of the competition’s history, we, as a nation, have been knowingly giggling up our sleeves in the general direction of the Rose of Tralee, torn between cherishing it as a uniquely Irish curio and scoffing at it as a Miss Universe with an extra sod of turf chucked in the fire.
To cheer or to cringe? It’s a dilemma as old as time – or at least, as old as that first Rose, in 1959.
Without doubt there is a lot about the Rose of Tralee that requires tweaking – a punishing six-hour run time, for starters. But there is nothing like it anywhere else in the world, and for that there is a growing appreciation.
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In any event, the wider question as to whether the Rose of Tralee is a patriarchal embarrassment or a national treasure is not going to be answered over the two evenings of the 2025 final.
Instead, night one of the Rose of Tralee International Festival (RTÉ One, Monday) is confirmation of business as usual across a gruelling three hours sprawling either side of the 9pm news.
As ever, its hosts, Dáithí Ó Sé and Kathryn Thomas, have negligible chemistry and aren’t on stage together very much. They do a good job in not condescending to the contestants, however – those grim Gay Byrne years have never felt further away – while the Roses themselves are the familiar collection of warm, likable overachievers from home and abroad.
There are lots of traditional party pieces. The Meath Rose, Ella Bannon, performs an Irish dance – but only after a brief moment of panic when Thomas struggles to undo a knot in the outer layer of Bannon’s dress. The Wexford Rose, Cliona O’Leary, sings Boulavogue, while the New Zealand representative, Ciara Jo Hanlon, in traditional Maori dress and originally from Galway, negotiates She Moves Through the Fair.
As the night goes on, these staples of the contest grow ever wackier. There is a bagpipe malfunction. A Rose receives a lifetime membership gold card to a popular Dublin nightclub. Yoga with dogs is performed on national television – a sentence you will only write when discussing the Rose of Tralee.
The biggest change is the replacement of Will Leahy as MC with the breakfast radio host – and RTÉ’s answer to Bilbo Baggins – Carl Mullan.
Leahy says he is stepping down after 20 years, and while the chirruping Mullan is a bit much this late in the evening, he acquits himself adequately. If only he weren’t so cheery. Give him a few years and he’ll be as miserable as the rest of us.
If something is missing, it is tension. As per its unofficial billing as Ireland’s Lovely Girls contest, everyone is sweet and pleasant and there is not a hint of cut-throat rivalry. That’s a good thing on balance, but it does make for ever-so-slightly plodding TV.
Sixty-six years in, the Rose of Tralee is neither controversial nor toe-curling – but instead a beige national treasure jigging its way into the wee hours, with a bright smile but a slight blankness behind the eyes. It could do with a shot of adrenaline – or, at the least, a trimmer running time.
The second half of the Rose of Tralee International Festival begins on RTÉ One at 8pm on Tuesday, August 19th
