THE ROSES tour bus arrives in RTÉ just as Colin Farrell’s entourage is exiting after an interview with Miriam O’Callaghan. The Farreller might have overshadowed the arrival of the Roses somewhat, but Daithí Ó Sé, the newly married, mammy-charming host, knows how to make everyone feel comfortable. He pretends to be a bouncer.
“You’re not coming in unless you have the right ID,” he jokes to incoming Roses, chaperones and PR people, and soon 32 Roses in heels, fascinators and, in one case, a cowboy hat, mingle with journalists over coffee and biscuits.
“So where are you from?” I ask a well-dressed, middle-aged lady called Collette.
“I’m not a Rose!” says Collette, who is actually a chaperone. These are the ladies who heal, counsel and mend any sick, nervous or costume- malfunctioning Roses.
“Check out this charmer,” says Steve, also part of the operation. “He’ll be asking for your number next.” Everyone connected to the festival is incredibly friendly. Dáithí tells me about leading the parade (“It’s kinda weird,” he says. “I emerge from a sort of mushroom-top float.”) and the discipline required for six hours of live television.
“By the time they’re gone through the second chorus of the song on the second night my dicky-bow is off . . . That would be a great time to catch me, but you’d want to be in the full of your health because I’ll have been off beer for six weeks.”
Another seasoned festival employee quickly determines that my mother’s people originally come from Cool Mountain near Dunmanway in west Cork.
“They’re all mad with poitín and cannabis in that neck of the woods,” he tells me (a phone call to my mother confirms that this is true).
I can’t imagine any of the impeccably dressed, beautifully mannered Roses even saying the words “poitín” or “cannabis”. Although Waterford Rose Lorna Ferncombe and Cork Rose Bríd Ryan do get a bit wide-eyed when I tell them Colin Farrell was in the building (“Is he still here?” asks Bríd).
Both have wanted to be Roses since childhood. So why enter now? “I’ve done things I’ve wanted to do in my life and I’m feeling happy in myself,” says Lorna. “It felt like the time to do it.”
Soon the Roses are herded out into the grass in front of the television building, where they line up, some stumbling in their heels, to face a line of burly T-shirt-wearing photographers. For a moment I think I’m about to see the world’s strangest game of British Bulldog, but then they’re handed red balloons and Dáithí is placed in their midst.
Dáithí is a pro. He does whatever the photographers ask of him, all the while quipping away to the girls.
“Here’s one I made earlier!” he says, pretending to make a balloon animal. When the balloons are let fly away he goes as if to chase them. “We need those for the next launch!” he says in fake panic. “It’s not in my contract to run!” he cries out later, while running towards the camera.
“Dáithí’s gas,” I say to a couple of observing RTÉ employees.
“He’s a unique individual alright,” says one lady, and we stare in admiration as he is held horizontally by five girls while gripping a real rose in his teeth.
After the big photo-op, journalists chat to the Roses. There’s talk of a party-trick that needs to be vetted by health and safety (“If it gets the go-ahead it’ll bring the house down,” says Dáithí) and there’s a lot of interest in Mayo Rose Dervla Kenny, a niece of the Taoiseach. “You can’t control who you’re related to,” she says with a big smile.
“It must be hard to keep smiling all the time,” I say to the Kerry Rose Anne-Marie Hayes, a doctor. “Ah, you never get tired of smiling,” she says. “It’s the most relaxed pose for your face, actually, a smile.” And then she smiles.
