Coming up roses

THE TIMES WE LIVED IN:THE ROSE OF TRALEE festival really is an extraordinary institution. Love it or loathe it – and we've had all the finely honed feminist arguments for years, plus the priceless Father Ted parody, the "Lovely Girls" competition – it's as vibrant as ever in 2012, shaping up to get going for the umpteenth year in a row.

Our photograph shows a bunch of Roses from 1986, heading to strut their stuff upon the Kerry stage. Somewhere among those faces is the 1986 winner, Noreen Cassidy, aka the Leeds Rose, who went on to become chief executive of the festival and chief executive of the RTÉ People in Need Trust telethon before settling in Galway to run a marquee and event management company with her partner. No wilting violet she, even the staunchest feminist would have to agree.

Indeed, whatever one’s feelings about the competition – my own, I confess, being that the whole idea of “judging” women in this manner is anachronistic, if not outright creepy – there’s no faulting the Roses themselves. Cassidy’s predecessor, the 1985 Chicago Rose, Michele McCormack, went on to win an Edward R Murrow award as a broadcast journalist.

Roses have blossomed into successful actors and blazed brightly on the stock exchange. I happen to know a Rose from a decade ago. She has two lovely girls of her own now, and is a regular young working mother, just trying to get by in the urban jungle that is contemporary Dublin.

So let's hear it for the Roses. Maybe one of these days, we'll find a more adult way of celebrating the wild and wonderful women of Ireland – and of the world. Meanwhile, even such hardy geraniums as the Rose of Tralee festival do change and evolve. In 1986 the festival was officially opened by Charles J Haughey, who recited a poem composed for the occasion. This year the competition will kick off with a gig by Jedward. Now that's progress. Isn't it? Arminta Wallace

irishtimes.com/archivePublished on August 21st, 1986 Photograph by Pat Langan