That girl was called Shirley Temple Bar and, although beneath the pigtails and uniform she was actually a 25-yearold man called Declan Buckley, what happened on stage that night was the youngest and freshest thing to happen to the tradition of drag in Ireland since Mister Pussy was a lad.

Shirley was created by Buckley for the Alternative Miss Ireland (AMI) pageant, a celebration of alternative performance that has crossed over from the underground to become the most mainstream expression of gay Ireland in the intervening years.

Originally held as a once-off in Sides Dance Club in Dublin on April Fool's Day 1987, AMI was repackaged in 1996 by Rory O'Neill, who has acted as its host, Miss Panti, since then;

graphic designer Niall Sweeney; and DJ Tonie Walsh. The original brief, that the show was open to men, women . . . and animals . . . of all sexual orientations as contestants, still ostensibly holds true.

The biggest percentage of entries reflects the make up of AMI's audience. Drag tends to be the order of the day, and queer innuendo makes for most of the comedy on offer to a crowd that gather from the four corners of gay Ireland and beyond.

Past winners have gone on to front television programmes, have their own shows in the Olympia and Project theatres, feature in dedicated documentaries, act in Fair City and have their own magazine columns. One winner, the first drag king to snap up the crown, even co-founded her own troupe of women who drag up as men . . . The Shamcocks . . . and toured with them in Ireland and the US.

"It was such a thrill to win, " says this year's winner, drag king Funtime Gustavo, aka Iris Meehan (22). "When I heard my name called out, I think I cleared the Olympia stage . . . I just leapt up into the air."

Competition to win AMI is fierce and the acts get slicker every year. "I have to say I worked really hard with my team to win, " says Meehan, who tore a photograph of George Bush in two during her final number, a 12-person, pitch-perfect rendition of West Side Story's 'America'.

"I knew I was up against some stiff competition, so I wanted to fill the stage with presence. For me, it's not about drag. I'm all about performance. I was hoping that it would come across on the night."

In contrast to the contestants, hardworking and dedicated as they may be, the organisers of AMI are as casual as the day is long about the contest itself.

"I don't think they think of it as other than anything than a great night out, " says Declan Buckley. "Any bonus beyond that is the money they make for Aids charities. But for everyone else it's got that traffic accident quality you find on things like X Factor or You're A Star, where people come along thinking their lives are going to be changed. But what's really going to happen? Is someone going to dance around the stage miming to Kylie Minogue and suddenly end up living in Malibu next door to Brad and Angelina?"

You never know. The way things are going with AMI right now, the sky's the limit.

DECLAN BUCKLEY Won as Shirley Temple Bar, 1997 "I came out as gay because of and during the Alternative Miss Ireland in 1997. I must have told my family a month beforehand.

"I had done drag about three times before at a friend's house, but that was about it. I cobbled together a kind of a character and a bit of a piece, but I didn't really know what I was doing until almost the day of the show. God, it was awful when I think about it. My lipstick turned out to be my eyeshadow and my blusher and everything.

"I think Shirley captured people's imagination that night because the act had a subtext that was very much a product of the time.

What Shirley was going on about was trying to get away from drugs in Dublin's inner city, and by drugs I mean heroin. She was a 12-yearold schoolgirl with a Da who was in prison for dealing, who was using the Community Games to transcend her lot in life. I think people could kind of relate to it on a level, and it had a larger meaning.

"There was a gap between winning AMI and how that parlayed into something else, a few gigs that paid a Lotto ticket and a packet of crisps. And then Bingo in the George came along and as that became more popular it reached the point where I was like, 'Hold on, this is my career now'.

"This bloomed into a couple of documentaries that followed me, and then RTE approached me to do Telly Bingo, based on the fact that I was Ireland's "most famous bingo caller", as it says on my website.

"Telly Bingowasn't right for Shirley though, in that it doesn't feature any interaction. In fact it's filmed remotely, so I'm just in a room by myself without even a cameraman as an audience. Both my parents are deaf, so I have grown up relying on being visual for reaction. To work without any reaction whatsoever was really freaky. For the first year I really hated it. But now that I do it as myself, as Declan rather than Shirley, I am totally comfortable with it.

"Having said that, I was proud to be who I was, to be a gay drag queen on television for middle Ireland. It really meant something to me in that way.

"Shirley Temple Bar won AMI when she was 12 years old. Over the years I've let her grow up a little, given her a chest and more adult clothes, but in real time she would be approaching her 21st birthday now. Sometimes I think I'll let her age and in 30 years time let her be brought out on to the AMI stage in a wheelchair, like the old Hollywood actresses they wheel out for lifetime achievement awards. It will be the only ageing drag-queen experiment ever."

KATHERINE LYNCH Won as Tampy Lylette, 1998 "Tampy Lylette came about because a friend of mine called Warren Myler persuading me to enter AMI. We went out and spent £50 old money on lots of red and white gingham and put this character together who sang all the camp country classics by Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynnette.

"The show was in the Red Box at the time and the audience was about 2,000 strong. The competition was really stiff and the audience expectation was huge. I felt like the small girl in the corner who hadn't a clue, and didn't for one minute expect to win. When Panti handed me the AMI crown I said, 'But I don't want to be a drag queen! I want to be an actress!'

"I did Tampy Lylette for a while afterwards.

I was given the Wednesday night slot in the George, but I wasn't ready for it. I needed to go back and do more work before taking on the Dublin gay scene.

"The way up for women on the British comedy scene is much different to here. People like French and Saunders began playing gay bars in Soho, and I think it's a good grounding. You get told you're crap when you're really crap and praised for the right things.

"People say I'm a straight girl in drag, but I think the drag queen tag totally pigeonholes me.

Having said that, I really admire drag. It's an amazing thing to be able to do.

"I love being part of the gay community too.

I come from a small community in Leitrim and in many ways it's the same. People know each other and look out for each other, so it's a kind of home away from home.

"My character Busty Lycra evolved because Tampy wasn't a great MC host.

Warren and I created her as a porn star who says all the wrong things at the wrong time.

She's one of those Irish people who went to America for a while and came back American.

"My regular gig with Busty is G-Spot at Gubu on Dublin's Capel Street. It's been going about four years now and I've got a loyal following. I still get nervous, and I still take it way too seriously. People tell me to chill out, it's only a small bar, but I filled the Olympia for five nights in 2002 and I'm just as stressed about doing Gubu.

"One of my most popular characters is Singin' Bernie Walsh. People have been upset because Bernie is a traveller, but in the light of people like Pat Shortt and Des Bishop's Joy in the Hood, I think Bernie isn't so controversial. She's appearing on The Unbelievable Truth on RTE Two, which started last month.

"RTE has asked me to come up with something using Bernie, so we'll see what's next there. I'm running a blow-up church at the Electric Picnic called the Camper Hamper in September. We did it last year and they really liked it, so we're coming back bigger and better with more international acts.

ENDA McGRATTAN Won as Miss Vada Beaux Reves, 1999 "I entered AMI in 1998 and came second. I didn't take losing very well. So I came back in 1999 with a stronger idea of who I was as a performer and determined to win. I wanted it so badly. I've seen other winners been blown away by the experience, and it's like a celebration for them. But it wasn't like that for me.

I breathed a sigh of relief and said to myself, now I can get on with what I want to do.

"Vada isn't a typical drag queen. I'm more androgynous, a bit more rock 'n' roll, maybe a bit more modern than any of the queens that were around at the time I won AMI. I don't do fake tits, big diamonds and huge hair; they're really not my kind of thing. I'm more minimal;

I like to look a little more graphic.

"I've been doing a night called Space 'N' Veda at the George for almost seven years now and I still absolutely love doing it.

"My band Daddy's Little Princess crashed and burned two months ago, which is heartbreaking. It's like a really messy divorce. We were doing really well, we played in the Kings Hall in Belfast and the RDS in Dublin with the Scissors Sisters. Ultimately a couple of the members came and said they didn't want me to do drag as part of it anymore, they felt it was limiting the band or overshadowing the music.

"I'm working on an amazing project right now with Martin McCann from the band Sack and another drag queen, Davina Devine.

It's a little more electro and club orientated.

Our working title is Ladyface and we're kind of like the drag version of Baccara who were big in the '70s with the song 'Yes Sir, I Can Boogie'. I'm taking it one step at a time though.

"I don't think you need to win AMI to be a working drag queen in Ireland, but it definitely helps. It's like a unique club, with its own loyal and dedicated following. People who are connected to it can be very helpful when it comes to your career. It's a quality mark.

NEIL WATKINS Won as Heidi Konnt, 2005 "I have a penchant for cabaret-style performance and for making up my own lyrics to wellknown songs, so I saw AMI as the perfect opportunity to put that out there. I developed Heidi with a friend of mine, Paddy Fagin, who won AMI in 2003 as Alter Ego. It began with me playing 'The Sound of Music' and finding something to use from that. I wanted my act to be instantly recognisable to the gay audience.

"Because I'm on the performance circuit in Dublin, I had the odd professional I could call on to help me. So I got Muirne Bloomer, who has done a lot of work for Cos Ceim, on board for choreography. The Von Tramp family was made up of people I knew from my time with Dublin Youth Theatre and the Nazi Nuns were mates from the gay rugby team The Emerald Warriors. The final touch for Heidi came when we got Mark O'Halloran in, who worked with the Corn Exchange theatre company in its particular kind of Comedia Del Arte make-up.

"My mother sewed all the costumes and I performed it at home in the kitchen for her and my Dad beforehand.

"Stepping out on stage into the Olympia in front of the biggest audience I've ever performed to, I remember thinking 'I have to be very clear'. I literally shouted my first song. The audience just erupted! They totally got it.

"I would have been terrified of being known as a drag queen before I won, but I don't give a shit now. I thought it might end up limiting me, but the opposite is true. Since winning I've done my own play at the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, A Cure For Homosexuality. I had a run on Fair City playing a Norwegian au pair called Karl, who seduced Nicola. I did a Christmas Show at the Project theatre, with Annie Ryan from Corn Exchange directing, and I appeared in the opera Imeneo for David Bolger in the Gaiety last November.

"Right now I'm working on a short film with Darren Thornton, who wrote the RTE series Love is the Drug. I have my own film project that I'm working on slowly but surely and I am putting on a huge performance for this year's AMI.

"Sometimes Ireland can feel really provincial, like all the good things are happening somewhere else, but at AMI it feels like we're at the centre of the universe."

Brian Finnegan is the editor of Gay Community News