if you can't access Ch 4 Iplayer for some reason, it's on 4Seven in 11 mins time plus it's repeated on Thursday
I take it you meant 9pm, or 21:00... Technically there is no such thing as "nine bells" - bells increase by one every half-hour throughout a standard four hour watch (middle, morning, forenoon, afternoon, dogs, first) therefore the maximum is eight... Or a maximum of four if the dog watches are split into 1st and 2nd dogs... Just saying...
maybe he was talking about "civil clock" bells then, unless we are all at sea? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock
Source: http://www.navy.mil/navydata/traditions/html/navyterm.html Aboard Navy ships, bells are struck to designate the hours of being on watch. Each watch is four hours in length. One bell is struck after the first half-hour has passed, two bells after one hour has passed, three bells after an hour and a half, four bells after two hours, and so forth up to eight bells are struck at the completion of the four hours. Completing a watch with no incidents to report was "Eight bells and all is well." The practice of using bells stems from the days of the sailing ships. Sailors couldn't afford to have their own time pieces and relied on the ship's bells to tell time. The ship's boy kept time by using a half-hour glass. Each time the sand ran out, he would turn the glass over and ring the appropriate number of bells.
Wouldn’t it have been easier to just have one bell and rung it several times, rather than having to keep a set of eight ? ... just sayin like
Also - If the hourglass was warmed, it expanded and the sand ran through quicker. Hence the naval expression "warming the bell" - ie f***ing off early
Maybe so - but that's just generally called "nine o'clock" But, of course the "civvy version" could mean nine in the morning, or nine in the evening - which is why matelots differentiate between "twenty-one buffalo" and "oh-nine crack-sparrow-fart"...
are you sure that's not a naval term for having a wank e.g. "i'm going below decks and warming the bell"