Those were the days

Eddie Hobbs gets under the skin, cartoon characters wear nothing but skin, sailors see a surprising amount of skin and the 1980s feel like a second skin for Dermot Bolger

Firstly a word of contrite apology. Two weeks ago I expressed the opinion that although its heart and vital statistics were firmly in the right places and its targets largely justified, the deliberately patronising nature of its delivery made Eddie Hobbs's Rip Off Republic (Monday RTÉ1 9.30pm) irritating to watch. There is, however, a collective social good which outweighs that of an individual. Therefore I wish to revise my judgment based on the fact that the programme also appears to deeply irritate Senator Donnie Cassidy. The next opinion is totally personal, subjective and quite possibly both irrational and illogical, but I have long held a sneaking suspicion that anything which irritates Senator Donnie Cassidy must, by its nature, be good. On this premise, I sincerely hope that RTÉ are planning a second series as we speak.

Certainly they have had plenty of time to plan it over recent months as for some reason – possibly based on the premise that suicide bombers, natural disasters and Israeli soldiers take the same holidays as TDs – RTÉ has been serving up an amputated version of the Six-One News all summer. The sole advantage in this is they we get a chance to see again the excellent Reeling in the Years (RTÉ 1, 6.30pm Monday to Friday), which this week tripped lightly from 1981 to 1985. With its clever mixture of news footage from each year counterpointed against an ironic soundtrack of period hits, it makes for invariably interesting (if not overtly challenging) teatime television. One disturbing aspect though is that once it hit 1979 not only did I recognise all of the clothes people were wearing but I discovered that I was still wearing the same ones today.

However, at least I wear clothes – which is more than can be said for the central character of Peter O'Sullivan's clever animated short, Up on the Roof in the Shortscreen series (RTÉ 2, 12.10am, Saturday). With unfussy, animated and understated deadpan wit – and featuring the voices of O'Sullivan himself, Laurence Foster, John O'Donoghue and other – this is a moral tale of how any young man can go out for a few drinks and wind up sitting naked up on his roof.

If there were worst places for any young man to wind up naked after a few drinks, then down in the hold of an eighteenth century Royal Naval ship is probably as bad as you could get. The average naval ship of the period was just over four times the size of a double-decker bus and held a floating population of between 600 and 800 sailors when at sea, generally supplemented by the additional influx of up to 400 prostitutes onboard when it docked in port. Rum, Sodomy and The Lash (Channel 4, Sunday 9pm) was a graphic examination of life below deck for the crews who sailed under the one-eyed adulterer whose column used to tower over O'Connell Street.

Nelson's naval successes were all the more extraordinary when one realises just how few of the sailors at Trafalgar actually wanted to be there. Over half had been press-ganged, waylaid by burly men and dragged on board. A third were Irish. Large numbers were children from as young as eight and a surprising number were actually women in drag – lesbians whose sexual appetites were as vast as the extremely young prostitutes ferried out to the ship.

Thankfully Channel 4 did not provide a scratch and smell card to accompany the programme, because all contemporary accounts of those floating wooden worlds recall the stink below deck as men lived and slept and (when in port) copulated, all crammed together into one space. It was one of the few jobs where drunkenness was actively encouraged – the crew were fed a diet of watered rum from noon onwards to keep them from going insane. The programme's title is a quotation from Winston Churchill, which, as it was purloined by the Pogues as an album name, might be deemed to be his sole contribution to Irish culture.

One formal naval commander who doubted that he was making any contribution to culture was Ian Fleming, who created the imaginary alter-ego of James Bond to insulate himself against the shock of getting married at the age of 43. His wife had no doubt. She felt that perhaps a common person like an American might enjoy being Mrs James Bond, but the high artistic circles in which she liked to move her husband's books (although not his royalties) were an irritant. Starring Ben Daniels as the troubled author, Ian Fleming – Bondmaker (BBC1, 10.45pm Sunday) was an interesting drama/documentary. It showed just how much darker, more sadistic and more tortured by angst the written James Bond was compared to the cartoon figure in the films whose smooth tones will sadly no longer carry the faintest trace of a Navan twang.

Dermot Bolger is in conversation with sisters Nuala O'Faolain and Deirdre Brady about writing family memoirs in Tallaght Library on Thursday, 8 September at 7.30pm. Details from Tallaght Library, or see the Don't Miss section of this week's Village