There are many incongruous sights in life – but Mrs Doyle semi-naked in what’s left of her underwear and prostrate in front of the fireplace was, frankly, one we could have done without.

But if Galway’s own Pauline McLynn wanted to ensure she would no longer be typecast as Ted Crilly’s teamaker, she went the right way about it for her introduction to Shameless, which made its way back onto Channel 4’s screens this month with what might only be described as a bang.

Gone are the days of the two tea-cosies – one for the teapot and one on her head – because these days Mrs Doyle has morphed into Libby the librarian with the libido of a letch, a woman who has sunk so low that she’s fallen for the questionable charms of Frank Gallagher, the world’s number one waster.

Frank, a man with the hair of a wino and the breath to match, was lounging about as a lollipop man when he saved our Libby from certain death – and now the former housekeeper from Father Ted has fallen for him hook, line and sinker.

They make a rather unusual couple but then again life rarely follows a script on the Chatsworth estate and while Libby arrives on screen as the quintessential librarian – grey suit, hair in a bun, glasses – we quickly discover a passionate woman, literally, fighting to get out.

Libby suffers from narcolepsy, which causes her to suddenly fall asleep – usually in moments of high excitement. Nobody told Frank of course and, unable to control himself when she seduces him against the fireplace before she passes out, he first thinks he’s killed her before he discovers the facts.

It’s pure Shameless, a programme that may to too crude for many but the rest of us regard it as perhaps the best entertainment on the box.
This is the seventh series – which, in these recessionary times, tells its own story – set on a Council estate that you wouldn’t even slow down to look at in real life.

Frank’s the biggest layabout of the lot, father of nine but more heavily reliant on his youngest son Liam, who also happens to be a child prodigy.

The Gallaghers are the comic element and the Maguires provide the whiff of cordite; they’re the criminals, the racketeers, the drug dealers, the guns for hire – and naturally they’re Irish too.
All of their lives revolve around the Jockey, the local

pub that makes Iraq look like a nuns’ convent.

Disfunctionality would be the buzz word around the Chatsworth estate if only any of them could spell – but Shameless is solid gold television that perhaps shouldn’t work, given the madness of the characters. But it does.

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When it comes to work, however, you’d be forgiven for thinking that’s all there is for Charlie Bird these days – his two part special, Charlie Bird’s American Year, was a painfully honest look at the reality of life when you move to take on a new challenge in a new city.

There are those who see Charlie as a figure of fun; a sort of yapping puppy who’ll bounce back no matter how often you push him away.
Whatever about the canine analogy, he was definitely a big fish in a small pond when he plied his trade on this side of the Atlantic – but it’s a different story in the big ocean that’s Washington DC.

His passion for the story is obvious from the start but it’s his loneliness that gets you – a man facing 60 who has finally landed the job that he had coveted for so long. And then he finds that the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow was a mirage after all.
Sure – he gets to Guantanamo, meets Hillary Clinton, gets into the White House to shout at Obama on Paddy’s Day, but it’s the down times, the beer all alone in a crowded bar, the searching for something to do in an empty apartment. That’s what shows the honesty.

And Charlie doesn’t beat around the bush either; he’s lonely and cannot acclimatise to being just another reporter in a strange town when he was once the one whose name they called through the barricades outside Leinster House.

Perhaps it’s the sheer scale of the travel involved in the post, but hard work has never been a problem for the former Chief Correspondent. And his natural curiosity always shines through – whether it’s refugees on the Mexican border or the US Secretary of State.

In many ways, this two-parter has provided more of an insight into American life and current affairs than all of his news reports to date, because it captures many of the strands that make it work – the zero tolerance Sherriff, the gun enthusiasts who will do what it takes to defend their families ... it’s all there.

And yet overshadowing all of that is a lonely man who longs for the streets where everybody knows his name. Sometimes, it seems, you should be careful what you wish for.