GRIFF FM, a college station which had earlier characterised itself as tits `n' ass radio", decided to lower the tone a bit last Friday by turning to the subject off Michael Collins for a no holds barred debate such as RTE never quite gave us.

If the students' timing was a bit late, they can hardly be blamed these were the weeks for which they got their limited broadcasting licence. (They can be blamed for referring, in their press release, to "the Civil War of 1921", but these are journalism students, not bloody historians, right?)

So carrying forth the torch of free speech radio while there's still a continuous tone up at 100.2 FM rather than Eamon Dunphy and company, this college station let Eoghan Harris and John Stephenson have a go at each other for an hour, with just two young would be hacks, Sinead McCarthy and Anne Henrichson, to prevent head butts and low blows. It promised to be the best radio clash of egos since Bono criticised Bono on the Dave Fanning show.

But what's this? The merits of Neil Jordan's film were not even a matter of controversy between the two men both agreed it's a poor, unconvincing work. That's fair enough as it happens, most people I know agree wholeheartedly. It was strange, however, to hear them citing Oscar nominations and US box office performance as vindication of their opinions. Harris, in particular, went all populist, going on about the film literacy of the American cinemagoer. Lads, do the words Jurassic Park and Independence Day mean anything to you?

They found something to shout about when it came to what Harris called Jordan's "misogyny" Stephenson reckoned "Neil" is just not interested in telling stories about women. (Amusingly, both these right on men continuously cut across their female interviewers to argue their points.)

In general, this was good, free flowing radio, both men cogent and convincing except when Harris returned to his theme of the autumn that Collins has a dangerously nationalist/republican agenda. (The "national" agenda of the critics who lined up to praise the film is, arguably, an entirely different phenomenon, though he seemed to conflate them.)

Harris accused Jordan of being part of Hollywood's macho, rugby club" fraternity of filmmakers. (It's hardly LA's most popular sporting code, but you know what he means.) However, it seems the rugger brotherhood ain't what it used to be.

During Saturday's Scotland Ireland match, a commentator for BBC Radio Scotland gazed down at Ireland's injured captain, Jim Staples, and said. "That'll be Staples out of the game hopefully." Such bad mindedness about a player took some of the gloss off the Scottish broadcasters' usual full and frank anglophobia, so much healthier than our covert version thus, when word came through about France's comeback victory over England, one Scot, already satisfied with his own nation's performance, passed over into nirvana "I think it's gonna be a good night, Phil."

I hesitate to comment on Tonight With Vincent Browne (RTE Radio I, Monday to Thursday) dutiful listeners to that programme will have heard me and my head cold struggling through a dismal enough chat about Radio Ireland's travails just a fortnight ago.

However, sheepishly, and with my usual "no-relation" disclaimer, I'm going to shower praise on the erratic, but occasionally fabulous, not my cousin Vinnie. Last Thursday's programme, on the legalisation of drugs, was vintage Browne stuffs.

In his usual fashion, he carefully picked holes in the arguments of firm liberaliser (Tim Murphy) and hard line prohibitionist (Grainne Kenny) alike. But it was the laconic manner with which he chastised Father Sean Cassin, the panel's "on the one hand, on the other hand" member, that made this a classic performance. Cassin started by accusing Browne of polarising the two main protagonists in the debate Browne interrupting sarcastically "It took some effort to force them into those corners, didn't it?"

He let Cassin say a bit more of his piece which, in fairness, was sensible enough then asked him, devastatingly, So what's the middle of the road position? To pose a lot of bland questions?"

However, Browne did let the programme's most absurd assertion go by with only a muted grunt to indicate scepticism. Grainne Kenny said one in three people who try the "gateway drug cannabis, go on to become "daily, regular" users. Think of that how many young adults do you know who a have tried cannabis? All of them? Right, how many of them out side the music industry get high every day? Okay, him. But that's about it isn't it?

It would be funny, except that Kenny peddles this line (based, she says, on "thousands of studies") at schools around the country where, presumably, kids snigger and parents panic. Considering that Browne even got Pat "Wild Man" Rabbitte to admit he'd tried marijuana, there's a gap between reality and this prohibitionist analysis the size of a Jamaican spliff.