Don't you just hate those mornings where you wake up, head in hands, thinking: Oh no, did I embarrass myself last night?

No-one is privy to whether Eamon Dunphy lay in bed last Saturday morning, staring at the ceiling, trying to blink away the memories of the night before. Whatever his mood as he rose, he must have been expecting the phone calls.

The second Dunphy's eyes watered up on the Late Late Show on Friday night, he would have known he was back in the news. There are not a pair of tear ducts in the country more rigorously policed than Dunphy's.

As soon as they began to glisten during the heated debate on the economy, the questions started. What's wrong with him now? Is he "tired and emotional" from the hospitality in the green room? Is he genuinely upset? Is Pat Kenny going to tell him to get a hold of himself?

Dunphy says he was sincere in his tears. He also says that it might not be a good idea to well up on national television's flagship chat show, a feat which earned him a round of applause from the studio audience. "If you get applause on the Late Late, you are usually doing something wrong," he said on Saturday. In this way, he acknowledged that his critics would suspect him of trying to wring emotion from the viewers at home.

Puffing

It was also a response to Senator Eoghan Harris, who accused him of playing to the gallery on Friday night. You could see Harris puffing up in annoyance as Dunphy lost the rag -- and his composure -- egged on by those in the audience. It's hard to argue with a man who resurrects the memory of his late father.

Of course, Pat Kenny wasn't going to tell Dunphy to put a plug on the tears. It makes for good television and it ensured that the Late Late was still front-page fodder by Sunday.

What is most interesting is that Dunphy was at pains to tell reporters that he teared up because he was thinking of a friend who may be made redundant. Yet, on the Late Late, Dunphy's emotional response was very obviously linked to the story he told about his own father returning home in the 1950s to tell the family that he had lost his job. Dunphy, a young boy at the time, had feared they would lose their home.

The memory is evidently still traumatic, even though Dunphy is within two years of collecting his bus pass. But why, we wonder, was he so quick to downplay it as the source of his upset? Perhaps Eoghan Harris did Dunphy a disservice in suggesting his were crocodile tears. Perhaps Dunphy was for real, and is now embarrassed by displaying raw emotion to the nation.

We're still not entirely comfortable with the idea that big boys can cry. Women don't have a monopoly on public displays of vulnerability, but male tears seem to be acceptable only on great sporting occasions. Even then, excess is frowned upon: Gazza, for example, is still ridiculed for being a sad clown.

Influential

The fact is that Eamon Dunphy's tears can still divide the nation. This reveals two things. Firstly, that Dunphy is still influential despite the fact that his "tired and emotional" performance on RTE during the 2002 World Cup should have branded him forever the pundit who cried... well, just cried.

Secondly, that a man in tears in public is still touched with taboo. Should Dunphy wish to avoid suspicion in future, he should borrow a dog and walk the legs off it when he needs to get something out of his system. It works for Roy Keane and isn't he what we call a real man?

- Susan Daly