Here the viewer is left fill in the blanks slightly. One area where the documentary perhaps falls down is in communicating Hanley’s talents as a broadcaster. MT-USA became unmissable viewing – a spark of joy amid the drudgery of the 1980s Irish weekend “He’d say, ‘listen lovey, I’m going to go all the way’.” “Vincent always saw a better life ahead,” recalls Hughes, who at moments struggles to hold back tears. It was something he was desperate to keep a secret, owing to the terrible taboo in Ireland around Aids – regarded by many as retribution against the sin of the homosexuality.

This is followed by a heartbreaking chronicling of Hanley’s drawn-out illness. Hughes, a producer, broadcaster and gay activist, traces his friend’s rise from suffocating provincialism in Clonmel to the ever brighter lights of Cork, Dublin, London and New York. And it is an excoriating profile of 1980s Ireland, a grey hell steeped in violent homophobia where the choice gay people faced was to leave the country or live in the shadows at home. It is a lament for his death from Aids at just 33. Vincent Hanley: Sex, Lies and Videotapes (RTÉ One, 9.35pm) is a celebration of the late MT-USA presenter’s career in Ireland and the UK. Bill Hughes’s film about Vincent Hanley is several things at once.