Tipperary Rose justifies favouritism and takes the title

THE ROSE chosen to lead the international festival into its 50th year is Tipperary’s Aoife Kelly, an occupational therapist from Portroe. She was the bookies 7 to 4 favourite as the final 15 candidates for the Rose of Tralee presented themselves for selection at a sold-out Dome.

In earlier interviews, the newly-engaged 23-year-old, who works in the spinal injury service in the National Rehabilitation Institute, looked like a winner in the diplomacy stakes, bubbly, personable, adept in the art of speaking without saying much.

“I don’t think there’s any favourite . . . It’s up to people out there who they put their money on. It has no actual impact on the competition. The odds are 31 to 1 because there are 31 crackers, intelligent, articulate and all would make great ambassadors.”

But part of the Rose show’s great charm is its unpredictability.

“So you’re a traveller,” said host Ray D’Arcy, on hearing about Kelly’s global adventures.

Pause. “I’m a traveller . . . ,” she said, awkwardly.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” said D’Arcy, moving swiftly on.

Her South African fiancé has yet to take her home and last night her parents-in-law to be were watching her online.

Kelly was not among the 17 Roses who took the risky route of performing a party piece. Toronto’s performance was a party piece – though not as we know it, Jim.

A video clip of 19-year-old Karina Higgins being gathered up in an elephant’s trunk was, in the absence of a live link to the actual elephant, more of a holiday slide show than live television.

Philadelphia’s delicate ballet routine to the raucous strains of “Galway Girl” probably wasn’t everyone’s notion of a healthy cultural fusion.

But Roscommon’s Rubik’s Cube twist-off with host D’Arcy was on an entirely different plane. Triona O’Connor pulled it off in 83 seconds, chatting busily all the way through.

Note to quibblers: A YouTube Rubik’s Cube demonstration has attracted six million views.

And they didn’t have the additional attraction of a dozen fans dressed as Rubik’s Cubes, with the nine squares spelling out “Roscommon”.

O’Connor’s bit of whimsy was a step above the general blandness of Monday night’s offerings, and a reminder of the strange fusion that is the Rose of Tralee itself.

Thirty-one highly-educated, accomplished young women capable of devouring Ray and the entire RTE crew for elevenses, have been hitting circuses, streets, beaches and racetracks for a week, armed with flapping white sashes, six inch heels, perma-smiles and decorous waves.

A glimpse of them at lunch, sitting with ramrod straight backs, elbows resolutely off the table, resembled a scene from a Miss Manners etiquette course.

Asked about it afterwards, London’s Belinda Brown retorted in a strong northern Irish blas : “We’re always proper . . We’re young ladies!” Brown, a sparky accountant born to a Jamaican father and Co Antrim mother, and who had to cope with racist comments on the internet since her selection, admits that she found it upsetting, while pouring contempt on those who “hide behind computers”.

The compensation was the gift of a formal black gown from Paul Costelloe, which she wore last night, while singing a passionate “Black is the Colour”, after a giddy declaration of a mission – on her mother’s orders — to find a husband before she left Tralee.

The cheese and corn factor was conspicuously down on previous years; no-one yearned for world peace.

There was a recurrence of the festival’s musical cliché, “She Moves Through the Fair”, but Sydney’s Hannah Bradley managed to sing it with soul-stirring clarity and none of the West-End wannabe factor. The bubbly Derry Rose, Catherine Lagan, known as “Naggin’ Lagan” to her Religious Studies students in St Joseph’s Boys’ School in the heart of the Bogside, told a story about her mother’s and aunt’s tragic deaths, without self-pity, which left her catering for her father and siblings at the age of 11.

The festival will be 50 years old next year and the speculation is focused on whether Gay Byrne or RTE’s latest find, Bertie Ahern, might co-present the show with D’Arcy.

The current plan is to invite the 49 surviving previous winners back to Tralee.