HERITAGE IS everything when it comes to the Rose of Tralee.
So while Tralee girl Sarah Tinsley may only be 11, the fact that she can trace her ancestry back to the Tralee Mulchinooks will surely go in her favour when she enters the contest in another 10 years.
The entire festival is said to have been inspired by the tragic love life of local wealthy protestant William Pembroke Mulchinook.
“I know all about the history,” said Sarah, as she waited for the Rose parade to start in Tralee yesterday afternoon. Her grandmother was a Mulchinook and while this year Sarah won herself a place as an official “rosebud” – a kind of mini-me role for aspirant roses – her sights are set much higher.
“I will enter one day but I will wait until I am 21,” she said. “Because by then I will have a degree and you have to have a degree to be a rose. You can’t just appear in front of the judges and say ‘I want to be a rose’.”
Glancing at the biographies of this year’s crop, Sarah’s logic cannot be faulted. You certainly cannot just appear in front of the judges and say: “I want to be a rose.”
You have to say: “I want to be a rose and by the way I’ve a degree in media studies (Dublin) or political science (Toronto) or international studies (Texas) or psychology (Chicago and Dubai) or commerce (South Australia and Germany).”
In academic terms New York rose Caitlin McNeill trumps the whole lot of them with her degree summa cum laudein child study and speech language pathology. (For the dunces, summa cum laudecan be roughly translated from the Latin as "the bestest degree ever".)
But the contestants would have to be Nobel laureates for some, frankly sacrilegious, Tralee residents to be impressed. Sitting behind the counter of one betting shop in the town, Rachel O’Carroll (19) said the contest was “old-fashioned. None of my friends care about it any more, we’ve kind of grown out of the whole pageant thing.”
In fairness, she said this in a guilty voice perhaps in the knowledge that each year the festival brings an estimated €10 million in business to her town. And tonight, hundreds of thousands of us will tune in to watch the first part of the televised contest hosted for the second time by Dáithí Ó Sé. RTÉ said it was the most watched programme on any Irish channel last year.
It’s always interesting to watch where the betting money goes and this year it appears to piling on to the Queensland rose.
What about the Kerry rose? “The Kerry rose will not win. She just won’t,” said O’Carroll’s colleague, Barry, unwilling to expand on his Great Kerry Rose Conspiracy Theory which may have its roots in the fact that the Kerry rose has never won the competition. “She never does. It’s prejudice.” There’s always football. The county was celebrating yesterday as the Kerry team beat Mayo, making it into yet another All-Ireland final.
In other news, half of the highly educated roses went to the dogs yesterday where hot favourite Queensland rose Tara Talbot stood out from the bunch at the Kingdom Greyhound Stadium in a flower print 1950s style frock. She said the rose parade was “the most magical, heartwarming, amazing experience ever”, displaying impressive fluency in rosespeak even for a Dublin-born Australian. Plus she is gorgeous, can hold a Mary Black tune and has a degree. The bookies may be on to something here.
Clutching her crown in her hands, reigning rose Clare Kambamettu reminisced about meeting Michelle Obama and visiting relatives in her father’s home in India in the past year.
After relinquishing the crown she confided that her next appointment was with friends at the Electric Picnic. After that – Sarah Tinsley-Mulchinook take note – she plans to embark on her PhD.