MOST CONTROVERSIAL

WHEN the photocall culture finally got on Irish people’s nerves, there was only one solution: Talk to Joe. In August 2009 a photograph on the cover of Food & Wine magazine prompted a heated debate on Radio One’s Liveline. The offending shot featured Neven Maguire in his chef’s whites, holding aloft a tray of hors d’oeuvres while a rather incongruous Georgia Salpa posed sexily behind him in a black bikini. One female caller to Joe Duffy’s show believed the photos were ‘evidence of a pernicious heteronormativity’ while another complained that it gave the impression ‘women are here to please men and we’re supposed to have these perfect bodies’. The magazine’s publisher apologised and admitted it was a mistake that happened while she was not at work. About the incident Georgia said: ‘For the whole shoot I was in my bikini. I think everyone was going mad because they didn’t know why I would be. And, I mean, why would I be, for no reason, like?’ Well… exactly.