Secret History: Brighton Bomb (C4); Club Reps: The Workers (ITV1)

THE plan was a fiendishly simple one. Weeks before the Tory Party Conference, an IRA explosives officer booked into room 629 in the Grand Hotel on Brighton seafront. He planted a bomb in the bathroom, timed to explode 24 days, six hours and 36 minutes later on the last night of the political get-together.

The result, as most will remember, was an explosion that ripped apart the hotel, leaving five dead and dozens injured in October 1984. Pictures of the shattered hotel and the rescue of the trapped, including Norman Tebbit, are ones we're unlikely to forget.

The prime target, Margaret Thatcher, escaped unscathed. She'd been working on her conference speech in her hotel suite, five floors below the bomb, until just before the explosion at 2.53am. Her decision to give her big speech a final polish probably saved her life. Other rooms in her suite were badly damaged.

Secret History was a reminder of the first attempt to wipe out the government since the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. With the aid of interviews with victims, firemen and a former IRA man, the documentary did a thorough job of piecing together the pieces of the jigsaw to give us the complete picture of the incident.

Only Mrs Thatcher herself was missing from the line-up. But we learnt how she was bundled out of the hotel by a back door to a place of safety within minutes of the explosion. She left not knowing that many friends and colleagues were injured or trapped in the wreckage. Her PA Cynthia Crawford told how her all-important conference speech was put in her handbag (she had no intention of leaving it lying around) and how she grabbed a few fresh clothes before leaving. She insisted on talking to the press, despite special branch fears that a sniper might be around, and insisted that the conference would go ahead as planned in the morning.

The bomber was caught and imprisoned, but released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement in 1999. He is now a free man. Norman Tebbit reminded us that his wife, paralysed as a result of the incident, had not been so lucky.

Club Reps: The Workers could hardly have provided a greater contrast as we embarked on another of those fly-on-the-wall series in which young people behave badly. These paid party animals work on the Greek island of Rhodes enjoying "sun, sex, booze, new friends and no responsibilities".

Ex-army physical training instructor Andy runs a pool bar club where games involving sex with giant inflatables are his speciality. He went shopping for these blow-up playthings. "When I see an inflatable, I know what I like," he told us.

A gang of lads from Bromley bought viagra tablets from the local chemist. "The boys have high hopes," said the cheeky narrator. Even she grimaced at the details they offered of their night of passion. "Too much information," she said after a particularly insensitive remark. The same comment might apply to the whole programme.

Published: 16/05/2003