MONDAY morning, 8.30 a.m. and nothing out of the ordinary has yet occurred. The man of the house is inching his way through the rush-hour traffic and is on course to be seated at the office desk by 8.55am. Easily.

He can even allow himself five minutes to nibble a banana, fill his Facebook fraternity in on his most recent thought or carry out a weekend's football postmortem with the water-cooler boys. It's been a good day so far.

Then the mobile phone rings, and the woman on the other end of the line has been climbing the walls. Shrieking those words that can make any man want to bend his ears in two – she thinks she has left her hair straighteners on. And doesn't she know exactly what she's doing.

By uttering those words, the cunning member of the opposite sex has shifted the responsibility from her shoulders over to his. If he doesn't turn the car around and return to check on the well being of their abode, then she can't be blamed if they arrive home to nothing but a mountain of ashes that evening.

And brave is the man who will dismiss her concerns. Most will decide there and then to incur the boss's wrath when he consequently turns up late. Even if he fails to mention that it had anything to do with a social hang-up on hair. To be fair, it's not just hair straighteners that have men around Ireland retracing their tracks within moments of leaving the house – irons are to blame too.

The time has come, therefore, for some innovative mind out there to develop a trip switch for these must-have female accessories. Long and flattened hair is a modern-day phenomenon and while chatting about this very topic the other evening, a gentleman present confessed to straightening the back of his other half's hair two or three mornings a week.

One morning he even had to let her leave the house with a lump of hair that was the size of a tennis ball jutting out, so pressed was he for time. Luckily for him it had flattened itself down by the time she got home. And the girl that sits behind her in work didn't have the heart to point it out.

Hair straighteners do make a difference to the appearances of some women and I have to admit the results of their work can be pleasing on the eye. But at what cost does it come? Can these machines not be battery operated? Can they not start to beep loudly if left untended for longer than three minutes?

Can they not be programmed to let a whistle at the absent-minded culprit, as she closes the front door? If not, we can worrying about turning off emersions – the hurrying people of Ireland have a new entry at top the list of things that they think they forgot to do. FRIDAY NIGHT NEEDS HOT DEBATE did. That sam professionalism he delivered to the Late Late Show, and a journalistic brilliance that he exuded, no matter where he was asked to turn his hand.

When it comes to asking questions, no one did or does it better.

With the autumnal shift in weather gears beckons RTE's new scheduling of programmes and the return of one of the world's most famous chat shows.

Tubridy has had plenty of time to settle in and the general consensus is that people have warmed to him. That's all well and proper, but now it's time to up the ante.

We Irish have certain windows in a standard week when we tend to care more about current affairs than others. And whether it is spitting whiskey alongside verbal onslaughts down the local or grumping off on the couch at home, Friday night is when it suits us to vent our spleens. Which means it's also the perfect time for televised debate.

The Late Late Show under Gaybo was renowned for controversial discussion. For taking taboo issues and stripping them bare in front of the nation – warts and all. And that's what Tubs need to do more of this season. And he needs to get involved himself. We have Primetime, The Frontline and Vincent Browne with their carefully chosen guests and more often than not, inconclusive defensive ramblings.

But we need to see more balance and we need to see, and hear, more from the victims. There are enough issues doing the rounds in Irish society to keep RTE in guest panels for a whole Late Late season and more. We want to bring on the public and have the callers phoning in, hopefully when most of them are up to their eyeballs in plonk.

This year let's see a reduction in the usual fluff that Tubs presides over. And let the national broadcaster tap into its audience's wrath, that shows no signs of

abating anytime soon.

The attention should really have been on Daithi and how he fared as he interviewed the Roses last week, but it wasn't. Not through any real fault of his own; he did alright and the contestants appeared to warm to his roguish charm. Yet while this year's crop of lovely ladies danced and skipped and made merry, I just kept thinking about Gaybo and how Irish broadcasting will forever struggle to fill his shoes.

Many have tried their hands at presenting the Tralee showpiece at this stage. None have brought the anchoring presence that Gay

- SHEA TOMKINS