Planning a party? Catherine Cleary meets the Irish Trinny and Susannah - or should that be Aggie and Kim? - whose aim is to provide hapless hosts with a helping hand
Sinéad Ryan credits her mother for a life lesson in remaining calm in the face of a crisis. It was a dinner party for 30 people, and her mother was just finishing off a large pot of Stroganoff with the last-minute flourish of natural yogurt stirred in at the end. To the open-mouthed dismay of both women, what slid into the bubbling pot were two large pots of strawberry yogurt, grabbed in blind haste. Mrs Ryan fixed her daughter with a hard stare. "Say nothing," she said, stirring the pink concoction into the mixture with a steady hand. Nobody was told. The guests declared it delicious, and the dish went down in family legend.
Over the coming weeks Ryan and her business partner, Joanne Byrne, will be trying to help "party virgins" avoid a strawberry Stroganoff moment - or cope with it, at least - for a new RTÉ reality TV series. Filming for It's My Party ("and they don't have to cry, because we'll be there to hold their hands") started last week, with the first event, a Communion party, promising "all the bells and whistles".
Ryan and Byrne, who run Presence PR, have seen a preliminary list of the parties, but they will meet the participants for the first time only when they arrive with camera crew in tow. The six events are all being held in people's houses, without the benefit of professional caterers, although a helping hand in the kitchen from a family member is allowed. They will range from a surprise 40th to parents hosting a kids- flying-the-nest bash. The two troubleshooters will arrive in the days before the big event, then return on the night to give it their expert assessment.
In the world of reality TV, where everything must be derivative of something else, people wonder, thinking of What Not to Wear, whether Ryan and Byrne will be the Trinny and Susannah of hapless party hosts. "Whenever we're asked that, we're saying think more Aggie and Kim, to be honest," says Byrne, evoking the housecoated duo on Channel 4's How Clean Is Your House? "But without the Marigolds."
So will they be getting cross with people, particularly those who fall into the category of bad guests? "If we spot any bad behaviour, then yes," says Ryan, firmly. "I've been at dinner parties where people have pitched up at the door an hour and a half late, pissed, with an uninvited guest in tow. The best-planned party can be ruined by the guests."
Parties at home are undergoing a revival, they say, due to the smoking ban, the cost of going out, difficulties in getting babysitters and taxis, and young couples settling in far-flung suburbs surrounded by other people their age.
Both women say they would prefer to host a party or go to someone else's rather than crowd into "overpacked and overpriced pubs" to meet friends. But hosting the event can be fraught with fear. "If people try too hard, or panic, then it's not going to work. What a party is about is giving your guests a really good time. So there's no point in insisting guests drink really good wine when really they'd rather have a few cans of lager," Ryan says.
Ryan and Byrne are best known as the women behind two of the Westlife weddings - Bryan McFadden and Kerry Katona's marriage in 2002 and Nicky Byrne and Georgina Ahern's Hello!-magazine-dominated event in the French village of Gallardon, in 2003. "Things such as the elements, over which you have no control, can be a real problem. With Nicky and Georgina's wedding, who would have thought in August the problem in Dublin would be fog and the problem in France would be 42-degree heat? Fog stopped the flights from Dublin, and then on the other side we had to find air-conditioning units and bring in the Red Cross at one point," Byrne says.
"I won't do weddings any more," Ryan says. "Not because of those two, but if something goes wrong at an event, you fix it and move on. If something goes wrong at a wedding, you have ruined" - and here she adopts a Hammer House of Horror voice - "the best day of their lives."
They expect the show to provoke a large element of Schadenfreude from an audience enjoying a peek inside people's lives and homes from the safety of their sofas. "Realistically, out of every half-hour programme there's only going to be five minutes of us, because it's about the people who are taking that kind of leap, not only to throw a party but to throw a party on national television."
Will they be themselves onscreen, their friends keep asking, with gleeful anticipation. "Obviously we'd like to come across as perfectly nice and pleasant people," Ryan says with a grin. "But I think the natural bossiness will kick in." u
It's My Party begins on Tuesday, July 11th, at 8.30pm on RTÉ1