A new book on the “feis fixing” scandal was described as “a personal story about real people and real lives” at its launch on Wednesday.
Dirty Dancing, written by Irish Times political correspondent Ellen Coyne, delves into the Irish dancing cheating scandal.
Coyne broke the story in 2022 of the practice of teachers and adjudicators allegedly competition-fixing, a practice that later became known as feis fixing.
The book was launched by Irish Times writer, presenter of the Inside Politics podcast and duty editor Hugh Linehan, who told attendees they were in for “a real treat” when reading it.
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He said Coyne told the story “with empathy and with affection, but also with intellectual rigour”, describing it as “a quintessentially Irish story”.
“I think Ellen is ultimately critical of the way in which it [Irish dancing] became beyond anything else a competitive sport, and the competition in a way kind of corrupted the original intentions of what this should be about, this activity of Irish dancing,” said Linehan.
He said one of the “fantastic things” about Dirty Dancing is that “it does what all great long form journalism does” as it digs further “to paint a picture of a culture, of a society, of a whole group of people and the interactions between those people and maybe even beyond that, it tells us something bigger again about human life.”
He said Coyne explained how the culture developed within Irish dancing over the decades and where it came from, “but she does it in such a non-judgmental and sympathetic and empathetic kind of a way.”
“It sets the story against a backdrop of history and culture, and changing cultures,” said Linehan.
“In a way, the book is also a story of how modern journalism stories work and what they mean to real people.”
“Remarkably, it manages to pull everything together with a combination of intellectual clarity, but also sympathy for all the individuals involved. That I think is a hallmark of really good journalism,” said Linehan.
