Ellen Coyne

speaker

622 appearances 9 recordings 5 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 18 Jun

Ellen Coyne’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 9 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 4.

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The Last Word with Matt Cooper · How A Cheating Scandal Shocked The World Of Irish Dancing · 21 Apr 2026 podcast

Really, everything in Irish dancing, the only reason it exists and the only reason it has evolved is with the sole aim of getting marked up at a competition.

Like really, on Comisíon Larinca Gaelica, it's the biggest and oldest governing body in the world.

And it kind of has this prestige as being like the cultural custodian of Irish dance.

But to be honest, when I was writing the book, I'm not really sure how true that claim is.

I think CLRG and Irish dancing really revolves around competition more than it revolves around celebrating the culture or the history of Irish dancing at all.

Okay, competition.

And this, I suppose, is where I find it difficult.

I love a sport where you have a ball goes into a net or into a hoop or whatever and you get a score for it.

Or even if it's things like athletics or swimming where you see the person who touches the wall first or breaks the tape to win a race.

There's an enormous difficulty, isn't there, in actually judging.

It's a bit like, I suppose, figure skating and other sports like that, gymnastics.

But there's a big difficulty, isn't there, in actually deciding really who is better than others when they're all at a pretty similar level.

Exactly.

And that scope for subjectivity, I suppose, is nearly where fesh fixing actually came from.

Fesh fixing.

I love the expression.

The credit for that, I think, goes to Joe Duffy.

I think he was the first one to roll it out and obviously stuck in the Irish vernacular instantly after that.

But it is because, as you say, if you're at the All-Irelands or you're at the Worlds, you're probably in the top 1% of dancers globally.

And if you're on that podium, you know, in the most competitive categories, it's probably the teenage girls, the girls that's in first, second and third place.

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