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 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 9 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 4.
Appearances
But having learnt about them, having seen as much of the message threads as I could, I think that was a little blown out of proportion.
I think it was two people kind of talking shite to each other.
And there was a strange thing that happened where because they were two men, there was like a weird kind of homophobic campaign against one of them later on.
I go into it in more detail in the book.
I just put it this way, you know, if people were having illicit affairs at Irish dancing competitions, they wouldn't be the first or last.
And I don't think it's reserved to gay men.
There's one thing of having an affair, but it's different if it then influences the marking in competition where one child gets marked up or another one gets marked down.
Yeah, and a lot of people seized on.
There was a particular exchange in the text where one person said, 100 is the highest score that a judge can give.
I'll give you 100 for... I'll let the listeners use their imaginations.
But I went back and checked the tabulations and there was no 100 given.
That was zoned in on, I think, because...
It made the whole story sound a little bit more salacious, but it kind of missed the point in that the point was you have this little network where a relatively small group of people know each other very well.
They've nursed rivalries and alliances with each other over the decades.
They take turns judging and teaching.
So if you had a teacher you were friendly with and you were judging their kids, you would look after them on the understanding that when the role was reversed, when that other person was judging yours, they would return the favour.
And all of this was just inherently contributing to this idea that Irish dancing is inherently unfair.
And when I was researching the book, I actually went back to like the 19th and 20th century.
And this was not new.
People had been like getting into fisticuffs at feshes in the 19th century over who they thought the rightful winner is.
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