Róisín Ingle spoke to the Chief Chaperone of the Rose of Tralee, who looks after everything from snapped heels to broken hearts.
As Chief Chaperone of the Rose of Tralee contest, Bernie Buckley never knows what is going to happen next.
Yesterday afternoon, she took delivery of some emergency earrings for one contestant and, minutes later, she was called on to comfort Darwin Rose Jess McNeill who had just learned of the death of a friend. The current crop of Roses have taken to calling the Tralee woman "Mammy". It's not hard to see why.
Every year Buckley tells her husband that she this is her last time doing the job. That she is finished watching the Roses. Every year he laughs and makes plans to do his own thing for that frantic week in August.
For 12 years now, Bernie Buckley has overseen the dry cleaning of dresses, the mending of rips in outfits and the sticking back on of broken heels. The most difficult job is getting the Roses where they need to be on time. "To be honest, this bunch are very good time-keepers. We have hardly been late once and that is saying a lot when you're dealing with 26 women," she laughs.
Roses wander around in various states of undress in Rose HQ - the fourth floor of the Brandon Hotel - so Buckley keeps an ear out for male voices at all times. The Roses are barely allowed anywhere on their own and are escorted to the hairdresser and then back to the fourth floor.
"Chief Chaperone sounds very old- fashioned. I have been trying to think of a new name for it," she says.
"It's an interesting job - you get very close to the girls. It's all good-natured fun. You are trying to keep everybody calm when there are mishaps. The Roses tend to think that when things go wrong it is the end of the world, but of course it isn't," she adds.
Sometimes pressures can come from within the Roses' families. Roses can be castigated by their mothers for anything from the style of their dress to their choice of hairdo - and it is Buckley's job to keep things calm.
"You do have to watch out for that. An awful lot of the girls are so mature now they don't depend on their parents or heed them as much. There are one or two girls who you hear saying that their parents are putting them under too much pressure. You just calm them down and tell them it doesn't matter if you win or not - you are going to get fabulous opportunities out of this."
The atmosphere on the fourth floor of the hotel is like an all-girl boarding school. Buckley tries to allow the women more freedom than when she started out in the job, but she never forgets that she is the one who is responsible for them not being bleary-eyed while doing their official duties. The Roses are allowed have a few drinks but "there is no point in being silly about it and I haven't had to say anything to them yet".
When New York Rose Kathleen Tuohy heard that she was going to be chaperoned in Tralee, she was not impressed. "I have to say, my first thought was 'uh-oh, I don't like the sound of that'," she says. "When I met Bernie, I was really surprised. She couldn't have been nicer and she's helped us without making us feel restricted."
Buckley's assistant this year is Julie Dohm, the 2000 Texas Rose, who began dating her escort during the contest before coming to live in Tralee to be near him. The relationship broke-up but she still lives here and is enjoying being a chaperone almost as much as she did being a Rose.
"People say I have a hard job, but I don't really," says Buckley. "You are just there to guide them. By the end of the week, you are glad that it's over. But I keep coming back."