accessing controller variable from view

In my ApplicatoinController I have:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base

  MOBILE_USER_AGENTS = 'palm|palmos|palmsource|iphone|blackberry| nokia>phone>midp>mobi>pda>' +                            'wap|java|nokia|hand|symbian|chtml|wml| ericsson>lg>audiovox>motorola>' +                            'samsung|sanyo|sharp|telit|tsm|mobile|mini| windows ce|smartphone|' +                            '240x320|320x320|mobileexplorer|j2me|sgh| portable>sprint>vodafone>' +                            'docomo|kddi|softbank|pdxgw|j-phone|astel| minimo>plucker>netfront>' +                            'xiino|mot-v|mot-e|portalmmm|sagem|sie-s| sie-m|android|ipod'

  def is_mobile_device?      request.user_agent.to_s.downcase =~ Regexp.new (MOBILE_USER_AGENTS)    end

My problem is in my /views/layouts/application.html.erb I have:

<% if is_mobile_device? %>

I get:

undefined method `is_mobile_device?' for #<ActionView::Base:0x6752ff0>

How can I refer to is_mobile_device? from this view -- as well as all views and controllers -- I want to be DRY about this - how can I do that? -Janna B.

Lookup helper_method

Fred