help identifying short story please?

A long shot, but it's worth a go... I'm looking for the title, author, character name - anything! - of a series of comic short stories revolving around the
life of a sailor with remarkably poor personal hygiene, and a strictly personal
approach to questions of authority. I remember one in which his
commanding officer was impressed by the fact that he was the only
sailor on-board ship who could bring a cup of tea (coffee?) from the
galley to the captain's cabin without spilling a drop, and decided to
spy on him to see how it was done. The punchline being that he took
a great gulp of it at the top of a ladder, and spit it back into the
cup at the bottom, before serving it to the captain.

I heard them read out on BBC Radio 4 at some time in the 80s. Does anyone
have any idea what this might be?
Thanks.

Sailing the Dream By John F. McGrady mentions this on page 57. (You can read that specific page from Google Books.) It’s a story told by their friend Bob. If Sailing The Dream is NOT what you heard on the radio, maybe you can figure out Bob’s full name. Or maybe this story is an urban myth.

Thanks for the suggestion! I'm certain that I didn't hear "Sailing the Dream". (Apart from anything else, it was written long after I originally heard the short stories.) But the tales Bob tells all sound suspiciously close to the style of the stories I remember hearing. I'll continue digging...