Returning to the Young Scientist Exhibition for the first time in 25 odd years, I was reassured to discover that the ethos hasn't changed a scientific scintilla: about one-third of the students have almost killed themselves to display impressive and largely incomprehensible projects, and the remainder are there with the sole objective of getting off with each other. It was ever thus.

I desperately wanted to enter the Young Scientist when I was of an age, but a series of unfortunate events conspired to prevent it. The most significant hurdle was set by my school, which in spite of absolute anonymity in every other area, had at that time a very impressive record in the competition and had actually won the group title in the year before I showed up.

As a result, they were never going to sign off on some half-baked, handwritten, half project about watching television or, I dunno, disco dancing. And tragically, those were the only kind of projects I was interested in doing.

To confound me further, my older sister had successfully managed to enter a few years previously and had even ended up on television talking to Andy O'Mahony about feet (which, by a happy coincidence, was the subject of her project). So the bar was set high and frankly, I couldn't see me ending up on television talking about television or disco dancing (how wrong I was).

I did make one attempt at a serious project. For a couple of weeks, for reasons I can no longer remember, I poured washing powder on a small section of our back lawn.

I don't know what was supposed to happen and to be honest, I stopped caring before anything did. At the instruction of the science teacher whose fingerprints were all over the school's previous high achievers, I'd bought a hardback journal in which to record my every movement relating to The Project. I wrote a page about the washing powder thing, then filled the rest of it with a rambling story about a youth club full of fit boys on roller skates which the producers of Olivia Newton John's flop film, Xanadu, might have alerted their lawyers to had it ever entered the public domain.

So I was always destined to be a spectator at what, even before I was of age, I recognised as the adolescent equivalent of speed dating. I was back in that role last week along with my own batch of young scientists, who didn't seem to notice the odour of uncontrolled testosterone and had their heads happily turned by the aforementioned razzmatazz. Top of their pops was the seriously impressive robot, Titan, but they also enthused about The Theatre of Science, a sort of fast-moving romp through the worlds of mathematics and psychology presented by Simon Singh and a psychologist sidekick.

Singh, for the brainiacs amongst you, is the author of Fermat's Last Theorem, that best-selling book about, I dunno, disco dancing. I met him on The Panel a year ago and was delighted to bump into him again last week on the basis that he's one of the most interesting people I've ever met.

Here's why: Singh is one of the cleverest people on the planet and he enjoys nothing better than being shot through with a million volts of electricity for the amusement of children. Enthusiastic, I believe is the technical term.

Anyway, clever clogs or not, even Dr Singh wasn't immune from the sexual craziness that permeates the Young Scientist. When he asked the lad in the middle of the hall for a number between 1 and 100, the stage whispers of "69, 69, 69" could be heard all over Dublin 4. Eventually, Our Hero plucked up the courage and said it out loud. Briefly casting his eyes to Heaven, Singh accepted the number and worked his magic on it. These, after all, are the future leaders of Ireland. On the evidence at the RDS last week, it's going to be one hell of a ride. Thousands of young scientists are banking on it.

Lost with alien stories I can't make my mind up about Invasion, trying so very hard to be this year's Lost and making the particularly paranoid wonder if Hurricane Katrina was just a PR job to distract from little green men. The biggest problem I'm having with it is that I once had a poster of its creator with his shirt open to the waist on my bedroom wall.

As one half of The Hardy Boys, Shaun Cassidy rocked several worlds and now he's making up a few of his own. And does he wear his shirt open to the waist while he's writing his alien stories? I've tried and failed to find a current picture of him on the internet to check, so if anyone out there knows whether Shaun is still a babe, get in touch. I suppose he is 107 now, but still.

Look at Peter Stringfellow, for God's sake.

Keep the skirts up, girls Back in the RDS, I was intrigued by one particular girls' school whose uniform skirts were so short they scarcely showed up. I couldn't figure out if they'd just rolled them up, like we used to, or whether some bright principal had actually designed them that way. To be honest, I was going to ask one of the girls which it was. But then I realised that if I did, I'd have turned into everything I spent my entire youth railing against. So I left them alone, content in the knowledge that the kids are alright.