HAD Admiral Lord Nelson been battling today, it may not only have been his heroics ("Armada than your armada") that flagged the top mast attention of the tabloids. Despite losing an eye and an arm, suffering a persistent hernia and several other scars of war - despite being a devout Christian, too - the diminutive Horatio was a little bit of a lad.

His affair with Emma, Lady Hamilton, wife of the British ambassador in Naples, wasn't just common knowledge but conducted openly. That her daughter was called Horatia wasn't because the father's name was Fred, either.

So great was the esteem - the reverence, even - in which Britain held the son of a Norfolk rector that a still God fearing populace probably decided that nine out of ten commandments wasn't a bad average and allowed him to carry on regardless.

(The Sun, of course, still wouldn't have approved. "England expecting" the headline might have read, or "Good Lord! Emma gonna be a mum." The Telegraph would have spent two days circumnavigating the issue before devoting a leader column to it, a broadside from the broadsheets.)

Nelson remained, and remains, among the country's true heroes. His funeral procession was a mile and a half long, ten thousand soldiers lining the route, hundreds of inns named in his honour. Mostly they weren't called The Nelson, simply The Hero, and no one asked "What hero's that?"

Over 1,000 books have been written about him, more than 20 films and documentaries made. Trafalgar Day, October 21, is marked in the Senior Service as it is throughout the land.

"You've just got to mention a Trafalgar Day service and the lads start polishing their medals before you've finished the sentence," said Mike Cooper, secretary of the North-East and Yorkshire area of the Royal Naval Association.

Trafalgar was also in the news because of Mr Ken Livingstone's plan to remove the statues of Havelock and Napier, two more military heroes, from the shadow of Nelson's column. Mr Cooper declined to comment. "I'm sure that Ken Livingstone has his own agenda for London; I'm up here in Yorkshire." A reticence not shared by letter writers to the Telegraph.

In short, they would have had the jumped up little whippersnapper frogmarched down the Strand, beaten about the head with copies of Jane's Fighting Ships and made to scrub Trafalgar Square clean of pigeon droppings whilst armed only with a typewriter brush. "Besides," adds Mr Cooper, "I might end up in the Tower."

We were at York Minster for a millennium Trafalgar Day service, that part of the mighty cathedral so greatly overflowing that old salts were obliged to stand whilst younger hands could be seen swinging from the rigging, or at least the scaffolding which seems forever to festoon some part of the building.

In the Royal Naval Association they're all Shipmates, regardless of former rank, and all immaculately paraded in their blazers. It is an English curiosity that in other fields - football administration, say - the blazer has become a garment of ridicule whilst among old comrades it still commands honour. Something to do with the badge, perhaps.

It was October 22, the previous day's celebrations behind them, military precision restored though one or two appeared again to have been on the grog.

Nelson's numerically smaller fleet had engaged the French and Spanish off Trafalgar, the enemy intent on invasion. The battle began at noon and was over by 3pm; Britain lost no ships but suffered 449 killed and 1,242 wounded, the enemy lost 15 of its 33 ships and suffered 14,000 casualties.

Around 1.30pm, however, Nelson had been mortally wounded by a sniper and died three hours later. Had Victory not personally been so pyrhhic, his cult may never been so widespread nor comparisons with the crucifiction so thinly disguised.

"Nelson's leadership and courage have been an inspiration to all who are connected in any way with the Navy and the sea," the Dean of York, the Very Rev Raymond Furnell, told the congregation.

We sang proud old hymns like O Worship the King and Those in Peril, heard Vice-Admiral Sir Roy Newman read from Ecclesiasticus ("Now let us praise famous men") and the Rev David Porter, a York parish priest, continue the theme in his address.

Mr Porter occasionally watches Through the Keyhole, apparently.

"You wonder not only whose house it is but who the hell the person is when it's revealed. There is a world of difference between being a celebrity and being famous," he says.

He also listed some truly great Britons - Wilberforce, Montgomery ("another little big man"), Nightingale, Fry, David Livingstone. For some reason there was no mention of Ken.

Nelson's funeral, added Mr Porter, had witnessed a public outpouring of grief likened only by that of Diana, Princess of Wales. It lasted four hours - "You have a long way to go yet".

A bugler played Last Post and Reveille. Afterwards, standards high and flags flying, they marched past the Lord Mayor on the Minster steps before splicing the mainbrace (or whatever is the appropriate term) at the Navy Club.

What the tabloids would have made of it all can only be imagined. "Admirable Nelson", probably, and once again England had done its duty.