The Alternative Miss Ireland was an annual gay event which took place in Dublin, Ireland, on the Sunday closest to St. Patrick's Day, 17 March. It occurred over three-and-a-half hours and featured 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 ended in 2012. The event promotional material states: "Alternative Miss Ireland 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 ." 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.
History
The first contest was held in Sides nightclub on Dame Street on 1 April 1987, followed by a hiatus until it began again in its present form during the mid-1990s. Upon recommencement, it was held in The Red Box, POD for the first few years. It switched to the Olympia Theatre in 2000 to accommodate its increasing popularity. It is a fund-raising event for HIV/AIDS charities such as Cáirde and St. James's Hospital. Although open to any entrant, it features mainly gay-themed entrants and is commonly known as Gay Christmas since its host, Panti, used that term regularly in her opening routines. It features entries from heats around Ireland including Alternative Miss Cork, Alternative Miss Limerick, Alternative Miss Philippines and the rest of the approximately ten contestants enter directly. In 1998, Miss Veda Beaux Reves, who had just lost first place to Miss Tampy Lilette, allegedly threw her Golden Briquette trophy at the judges in a tantrum. At the 2007 contest, the host Panti was surprised by a message from her hero Dolly Parton. It is traditional that the previous year's winner does a new performance after the interval, as Miss Heidi Konnt did in 2006. There is a large production team involved, known as the Alternative Miss Ireland Family. It was reported in October 2011 that the final pageant would take place in 2012. One organiser said, "people have less time to pull everything together". Critic Fintan Walsh has written about the contest in the article 'Homleysexuality and the 'Beauty' Pageant'.
