If you're in Ireland while the Rose of Tralee festival is on, make sure to catch it on RTE (I think). It's wonderful. Low budget, but good natured and sometimes hysterically funny. I remember one year where the entrant from New South Wales came on to the Welsh National Anthem, and the winner's crown was so loose that it fell over one eye, at which the grandmother leaped on to the stage to help and tangled her own hair in the crown as well.

It's a sort of beauty contest where anyone from anywhere with some Irish acestry can enter: if she wins she becomes the Rose of Tralle for twelve months