Fergus Finlay: I never thought I'd be writing about toilets, but here we are

As Frankie Byrne used to say, 'the problems we’re discussing today may not be your problems, but they could be some day', reflects Fergus Finlay

There’s no reason we’re not building clean and welcoming toilet facilities ourselves. File picture

You’d probably need to be a bit older than you are to remember Frankie Byrne. But for generations of Irish people, lunchtime radio was part of our staple diet, and she was its queen.

There was the main news bulletin of the day, of course, but there was also drama, and there were what used to be called sponsored programmes. Some of us of a certain vintage can still remember Harbour Hotel, a radio soap that went out every day with a guaranteed cliff-hanger at the end of each Friday’s episode.