Down Rose Fainche McCormack has slammed the Rose of Tralee contest in no certain terms. She criticised how half the 65 Roses didn’t get to feature on the televised show, and how there’s manipulation, bullying, intimidation, cruel and disgusting tactics used to pick who makes the final cut.
Writing on the official Rose of Tralee Facebook page, Ms McCormack posted:
“I and my fellow Rose sisters did not sign up for a cheap reality television show in which our emotions would be manipulated for entertainment purposes. Cameras intrusively followed us all week and asked inappropriate probing questions; asking one girl what colour underwear she was wearing right before she went on stage, what’s acceptable about that?”
She wrote how the Roses were “manipulated, bullied and mistreated” in the course of filming a RTE documentary about the show.