THE SCENE IS Denver, Colorado on St Patrick's Day, 1987. A small group of Irish debaters - namely Messrs Aidan Kane and Paul Gavin of TCD and Conor Bowman of UCG - are engaged in a fruitless attempt to find an individual named Binky the Clown, who is to lead them to the official viewing podium, where they are to be feted as the winners of that year's final of the Irish Times Debate.

Sadly, Fate had decided to place a number of unexpected obstacles in their way: 400 unexpected obstacles, to be precise.

"We were to liase in a rather informal way with Binky the Clown," Bowman, now a barrister, recalls.

"Unfortunately, there were about 400 clowns at the parade. It was like a circus in receivership. We were going around asking each one: `Are you Binky?'"

The history of the Irish Times Debate, now 37 years in existence, is littered with such incidents. The oldest intervarsity debating competition in the country, it boasts an impressive roll call of participants: Mary Robinson Henry Kelly, Derek Davis, Anthony Clare, Michael D Higgins, Adrian Hardiman, Gerry Stembridge and Gerry Danaher have all participated - though both the President and Michael D failed to add their names to the winners' list.

Tonight, in the daunting environs of TCD's Edmund Burke Theatre, another chapter in the history of the debate will be written. Four teams and four individual speakers compete for the highest honour in Irish intervarsity debating.

THE DEBATE began in 1960 when the Union of Students in Ireland, which used to be concerned about such things, approached The Irish Times to ask for sponsorship for an Irish students' debating competition similar to that run by the Observer in Britain. The Irish Times, in a spirit of generosity which has remained to this day, gamely handed over the required cash - and a loose organisation known as the Debating Union of Ireland gradually developed.

Sadly, the Debating Union of Ireland went the way of the dodo and The Irish Times took on the task of organising the competition each year, with a student covenor acting as overseer and general port of last resort. This year's convenor is Kerida Naidoo BL, a gentleman, scholar and barrister - and it's not often you get all three of those in one package.

Since 1980, the winning team and the best individual speaker have jetted off to the US for a debating tour of US colleges, sponsored by The Irish Times and Aer Lingus, where they generally do us all proud while behaving with the utmost decorum at least some of the time.

Messrs Bowman, Kane and Gavin might charitably be described as one of the more "colourful" groups of winners to have visited the US. In the course of their brief tour, they managed to alienate a substantial number of Americans, got a round of applause at the Senate House in Denver and heartily recommended the listenership of a Denver radio station to visit a bar named Shotgun Willie's, which turned out to be a strip joint.

"The chat show host was thrilled," says Bowman. "There was a switchboard in front of us which had only had one or two lights on it and then the whole thing suddenly lit up. The guy said that was great because his ratings would just shoot up."

Sean Moran, now GAA correspondent of The Irish Times, won the individual speaker award in 1981, when he was auditor of the TCD Hist. "It came at the end of a period during which I always seemed to be at debates," he remembers.

"The Irish Times final came only two days after the Observer's, which was hosted by Sheffield University before an audience of roughly four people in the world's longest debating chamber.

"Half way down this hall and visible only through a telescope, three adjudicators presided. Afterwards, one admitted to having had difficulty in hearing the proceedings - while the Observer's Kenneth Harris, who used to descend on his newspaper's final like the man from Del Monte, went around the losers intoning: `In an average year, you would have won.' The sincerity of his mantra was undermined a bit when he extended it to the official timekeeper."

That year, the Irish Times final took place in UCD before a large and, presumably, partisan L&H audience. "Beforehand, a friend said that I was statistically certain to win as I was the only individual speaker amongst five teams and a team speaker hadn't won the individual prize for a while," Moran says.

"I don't remember much about the debate, but while the judges were out deliberating a friend of my girlfriend enquired - not, it seemed to me, entirely in jest - how I was so comfortable in front of a big crowd and yet so backward socially.

Twenty years ago, a team from Maynooth won the Irish Times Debate - the last Maynooth team to do so. That team, represented by Gerry Maher and Peter Hennessy, were on home ground and found themselves facing Mary Harney, then a student in TCD.

"The motion was a horrific Latin motion: Dulce et decorum est pro patris mori," remembers" Maher, now a teacher in the Cistercian College, Roscrea, Co Tipperary. "I remember we had an absolutely packed house in Maynooth and enjoyed very vocal support. The individual winner was Pat Healy from UCD, who was quite a brilliant speaker."

Mary Harney is a more familiar name, fortunately or unfortunately depending on whether or not you happen to be Alan Dukes, but she failed to capture the imagination of the popular vote that night. "Mary Harney was serious and very competent but probably lacked the type of spontaneous flourish that university debating required," says Maher. She hasn't changed much, then.

THIS YEAR, some familiar names will slug it out with the arrivistes: UCD L&H - the most successful society in the competition's, history - will face the TCD Hist - the second most successful - on the Hist's home ground in the team section; the UCD Law Society and first time team finalists UL Debating Union make up the quartet of teams.

In the individual section, the UCG Lit & Deb has two speakers in competition against the TCD Law Society and the Solicitors' Apprentices Debating Society of Ireland. This year also sees the inauguration of the Christina Murphy Memorial Trophy, in memory of the woman who was the driving force behind the debate for so many years, to be presented to the best individual speaker on the evening.

As the debate approaches its 40th year, the tradition of college debating remains strong and those who compete in the competition continue to make their mark in society in later years. If there is one regret, it is that the standard of heckling has deteriorated enormously and wit and humour in general have become rarer qualities than they once were)

Perhaps tonight's competition, with the potential for wit and verbal savagery which the motion offers, will give the audience something to smile about afterwards and will mark the speakers down as names to watch in the cultural and intellectual life of the nation in years to come.