Mariane Finucane was a student protesting at the destruction of Dublin, Dana was a Derry teenager on the verge of winning the Eurovision when it really meant something in Ireland, and Jack Lynch’s government was about to be rocked by the Arms Scandal.

The year was 1970 and all of the above, and more, are remembered in the first episode of the new series of Reeling In The Years, which started on Tuesday on RTE 1 and is repeated this coming Monday, September 16, at 11.25pm.

Following on from the 1980s and 1990s, this new series posed an extra challenge for producer John O’Regan in that RTE archives from the decade are much more limited. Consequently, O’Regan had to buy in more material from ITV and BBC. However, there is still plenty of evocative homegrown material featured throughout the series, ranging from the visiting of the Nixons in 1970 to the visit of the Pope nine years later.

Music from the decade includes vintage performances by Rory Gallagher, Thin Lizzy, the Boomtown Rats and, from 1978, an extraordinarily youthful U2 doing ‘Street Mission’ on RTE’s Youngline.

As for those of us in this parish, buttocks are already being clenched at the prospect of some very hairy hotpress footage from 1978. You have been been warned.