Alternative Miss Ireland

The Alternative Miss Ireland (AMI) was an annual gay event which took place in Dublin, Ireland, on the Sunday closest to St. Patrick's Day, 17 March. It occurred over three-and-a-half hours and featured a pastiche of the beauty pageant rounds inspired by Andrew Logan's Alternative Miss World, with day-wear, swimwear and evening-wear rounds. It is commonly shortened to AMI, both as its initials and a wordplay on the French for "friend". It began in 1987 and ended in 2012.

The event promotional material states: "Alternative Miss Ireland (AMI) is an annual beauty pageant that is open to men, women and animals. It is also a non-profit collective dedicated to raising money for Irish HIV/AIDS organisations (over €235,000.00 raised since 1996)."

It features on the front cover each year of the March issue of Gay Community News magazine and is the highlight of Ireland's calendar of gay-themed events. Coverage by mainstream news media is muted, possibly because it clashes with reporting of St. Patrick's Day, with occasional pieces in The Irish Times, and a documentary A Bit of the Other commissioned by RTÉ television.

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