Dr Phil,
RTÉ 1, Fridays, 11am.
Has your husband made you sign a sex contract specifying how often you have sex and what you'll get up to? If so, you could achieve the ultimate in therapy: an appearance on Dr Phil.
Dr Phil McGraw is the burly therapist who achieved fame and fortune thanks to his appearances on Oprah.
You can catch him on his own show on RTÉ 1 every Friday morning if you feel in need of his sometimes brusque and overbearing advice.
And if you've signed that sex contract, you can apply to get on his programme by going to www.drphil.com and completing a form.
He is also looking for people with more mundane profiles: women accused of being "man stealers", and people married to domestic dictators, for example.
With this brew of human conflict and pain, Dr Phil and his trusty assistant Robin put on a show which is like, well, all the other TV shows of its kind - shows which trade on misery and foolishness, in which the presenter poses as the representative of normality.
Mind you, if you tuned in to RTÉ last Friday for your weekly fix, you might have been left feeling somewhat deprived. The entire programme consisted of an interview with Senator John Kerry and his wife, filmed before the last presidential election.
Frustrating? Disappointing? Sure, but as Dr Phil would say: Get over it.
What that show underlined, though, is the status attained by McGraw. Either that or it underlined that Kerry was willing to do anything to become president.
Despite his status - he has even "done" the Osbourne family on TV - and his tough-guy image, he sometimes, to this viewer's eyes, looks a little unsure of himself. It is as if there is another Phil McGraw inside the big man, wondering how long he can keep up the game.
The game depends on the belief that Dr Phil's words of wisdom will sort you out. Here are some words of wisdom from a recent "tip of day": "In order to receive, you truly have to be willing to give so you can get back what it is you feel you need the most."
Well, yes, but just where does this kind of platitude get you?
"Is not there a big difference between falling in love and being in love?" he asks a couple who are obligingly fighting on his TV show. That sort of consideration can actually be quite useful in marriage therapy where it can be explored in relation to unrealistic expectations about marriage.
On live television, though, there is actually nothing useful you can do with it.
Dr Phil has written innumerable books on the back of his TV show and stuff like this, and people buy them in large numbers. What do they get from the show and its spin-offs? Perhaps what they get is the reassurance of being told what to do by a tough guy in a suit.
He is a sort of a tough guy, all right. Back in the 1970s, his first wife alleged to Steve Salerno, author of Sham: how the gurus of the self-help movement make us helpless that McGraw insisted on being informed of her every move. She was required to phone him before she left the house. All this time, she alleged, he was seeing other women.
Early in his career, before Oprah beckoned, McGraw gave an office job to a female patient who accused him of similar controlling behaviour and of sexual harassment, Salerno reports. The Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists reprimanded McGraw on foot of a complaint from the woman.
Still, his adoring audience loves its big, strong man. And so long as they know that all they're getting is entertainment, that's ok.
pomorain@irish-times.ie