A fellowship united by wit and argument

The wit and Wisdom of Spiro T. Agnew was first published in 1969 by Price, Stern and Sloan. For those too young to remember, Agnew was Richard Nixon's vice-president and a man so crooked that his funeral represents the only recorded instance when the deceased actually had to be screwed into the ground.

The Wit and Wisdom . . . is approximately 100 pages long, of which three are title pages, one is a biography of Agnew, one is a picture of Agnew taken from the Forest Park High School Yearbook, 1937, and one is a foreword arguing that the book aims to present "a realistic portrait of the man as statesman and thinker".

The final 94 pages are blank.

It is an unfortunate indictment of the standards in Irish public life that few of the great and the good would merit a more considered appraisal of their contribution to wit.

The attempt by a Dublin TD to imitate Fawlty Towers's Manuel during a recent Dail debate represents a particular nadir ("Please, Mommy, make the bad man stop!"), but even a cursory viewing of proceedings in the Dail provides a strong argument for bottling the air in the chamber and selling it as an alternative to Prozac. There is little point in having something worthwhile to say if you lack the basic skills with which to say it; simply being capable of rudimentary speech is not enough. After all, a lump of wood can float but that doesn't make it a swimmer.

It is perhaps unsurprising that those speakers who can demonstrate an evolved grasp of the principles of rhetoric have, at some point, honed their skills in the chambers of the Irish Times Debate. "Generally speaking, those in Dail Eireann who are interesting or colourful characters did a lot of university debating," says the convenor of this year's debate, Ronan MacSweeney. "I'm thinking of people like Pat Rabbitte and Michael D. Higgins, but Michael McDowell was also a student debater. When he was in the Dail, he turned a lot of heads when he spoke. He could speak with a certain authority lacking in other public representatives."

Barrister Conor Bowman, a winner in 1987, is less diplomatic. "I think the standard of debate in politics is very low," he remarks. "Not only can they not write decent speeches or speak well, they can't even properly deliver a speech if it has been written for them. Dessie O'Malley is about the only person I've seen in the Dail who can deliver well without notes. The only other one is the Ceann Comhairle, and all he says is variations on `shut up'."

While hundreds of future broadcasters (Derek Davis, Marian Finucane), academics (Anthony Clare, David McConnell) and politicians (Mary Harney, Mary Robinson) have added their names to the lists of competitors during the debate's 40 year history, the ranks of m'learned friends have attracted the largest proportion of former winners. Almost 50 Irish Times winners have since become solicitors and barristers, although the only thing funny about them now is the fees they charge. As Eamonn McCann, a winner in 1965, put it: "They don't have to believe any of the shite. It's no coincidence that many of Ireland's leading lawyers were winners of the Irish Times Debate."

Given that the fear of public speaking - whether in front of two people or 1,000 - is so prevalent that it ranks alongside spiders and heights among the leading phobias, those who can overcome it through debating are likely to enjoy something of a competitive advantage in later life.

"Debating was 50 per cent of my education and at least 50 per cent of its value," Professor David McConnell of TCD, a winner in 1965, has recalled of his debating experience. Or, as the more prosaic Bowman puts it: "I got four weeks in the States paid for by someone else, and three or four years of notoriety, enjoyment and babe entrapment which was absolutely disproportionate to the reality of what I was involved with. It was unbelievable."

While the Irish Times Debate is noted for its cut-and-thrust, there is also a camaraderie between debaters which is supercedes the competition itself. This year, Aoife Begley, a 21-year-old debater from Maynooth who had qualified for the semi-finals, died tragically before the debate took place. There was a minute's silence in her memory at the semi-final in question, and her parents will attend the final of the debate.

"We shared in their grief," says MacSweeney. "Despite the tussles and rivalries, debating in Ireland is like one big family, win or lose."