The Alternative Miss Ireland (AMI) is an annual gay event which takes place in Dublin, Ireland on the Sunday closest to St. Patrick's Day, 17 March. It occurs over three-and-a-half hours and features a pastiche of the beauty pageant rounds inspired by Andrew Logan's Alternative Miss World, with day-wear, swimwear and evening-wear rounds. It is commonly shortened to AMI, both as its initials and a wordplay on the French for "friend". It began in 1987 and will end in 2012.
The event promotional material states: "Alternative Miss Ireland (AMI) is an annual beauty pageant that is open to men, women and animals. It is also a non-profit collective dedicated to raising money for Irish HIV/AIDS organisations (over €235,000.00 raised since 1996)."
It features on the front cover each year of the March issue of Gay Community News magazine and is the highlight of Ireland's calendar of gay-themed events. Coverage by mainstream news media is muted, possibly because it clashes with reporting of St. Patrick's Day, with occasional pieces in The Irish Times, and a documentary A Bit Of The Other commissioned by RTÉ television.
Read more about Alternative Miss Ireland: History, Winners, List of Past Judges, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words alternative and/or ireland:
“No alternative to the
one-man path.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“They call them the haunted shores, these stretches of Devonshire and Cornwall and Ireland which rear up against the westward ocean. Mists gather here, and sea fog, and eerie stories. That’s not because there are more ghosts here than in other places, mind you. It’s just that people who live hereabouts are strangely aware of them.”
—Dodie Smith, and Lewis Allen. Roderick Fitzgerald (Ray Milland)