Once upon a time apprenticeships lasted seven years. Then along came Sir Alan...

The Apprentice line-up has been announced. There is an air of familiarity about the new bunch that Sir Alan has assembled: a single mother, a champion show-jumper, a self-confessed tomboy, a descendant of African royalty, the daughter of a millionaire, a woman who shares a Guinness World Record with her siblings for their impressive array of degrees, a former member of the Royal Artillery, a boxing ball-dancer, a software sales manager, a bank manager and a former debating champion who claims never to have lost an argument. It sounds like Extreme Monty Python. I already have a favourite - 24-year old Nicholas De Lacy Brown, a barrister, artist (in the vein of Salvador Dali with Crayola Crayons) and property developer. Poor lad, he's been telling the media that "from the moment I was born I knew I was destined for great things." Sadly, that's so obviously not going to be the case but at least he's on a reality TV show. I reckon Lee McQueen might be the first one to be sacked, given that he appears to be completely insane, describing himself as a cat and, according to The Times (no doubt via a BBC press release): "sometimes purring with perfection and at other times just biting".

Coverage...

My friend Jamie, a sports hack for the Scunthorpe Telegraph, sent me a text to let me know he was on the local radio's evening sports phone in and, while he was at it, asked me if he could have some free tix for the play. "Mention the play and you can," I txted back, not thinking he'd stand a cat in hell's chance of getting in a plug for a play about lifeboats between all that chat about transfers, sidelined players and FA Cup coverage. But miraculously, just after a push on what readers could expect in their Telegraph, he got the plug in and got it in well. Very impressive. Meanwhile, over on BBC Look North, On A Shout was getting some visual exposure, albeit atop the set for another play (the real thing is still in the workshop). I would have been there but I was otherwise engaged at a rather thrilling sub-regional economics conference (don't ask!). You can view the video for the next few days here.

On the Road...

I'm saddened that nobody congratulated me on my prediction that David Platt would drive his car into a canal. Which he did. It's not as if I read What's On TV to keep up, I actually thought about David's demise. As it was, of course, he just faked his death and turned up a couple of hours later, looking a bit soggy. But I was, for once in my life, right. So well done me. Mind you, that was a while back. Since then Corrie and Eastenders have both fallen into that pre-Christmas show excitement lull that they always do at this time of year, just readying story strands and characters for another turkey munching dinner that leads to a black abyss.

So it's to Waterloo Road that one must turn to for thrills and spills. My deity, I wouldn't want any of my offspring to go to that Rochdale hell hole - it's got disaster written all over it. All the kids have a dead parent/live with an abusive uncle/have to contend with a family member being on the staff/crack habit/no chance of passing their exams. If the shining light for good teaching practice in your school is Neil Morrissey, you're surely staring a failed Ofsted inspection in the face. At the end of the last season, drama teacher Izzie Redpath died - the victim, as was her unborn child, of a wayward knife - leaving her two daughters - Chlo and Mika Grainger - without a mother. As their father always has been "estranged" it immediately fell to hearthrob teacher Tom Clarkson, who lived with and had impregnated Izzie in between his dalliances with Lorna, to take on the daddy role, apparently with no questions asked by social services. So, the summer holidays over, the girls are back, sans mother, and prone to giving Tom a hug in the corridor, but that's fine because he'll have enhanced CRB clearance. But it's all gone wrong for the two short-skirt wearing sisters thanks to Chlo's kneejerk marriage to Donte, a very bad musical (oh, what's this, it's to be directed by the school's gay teacher. Odd, this show usually does a good job of bucking stereotypes) and the French lessons that Mika's boyfriend Brett was giving her. Yes, you've guessed it, he was giving her a lot more than French lessons. Now, after Donte found the pair in bed together, Chlo has run away (no wonder - she's been publicly shamed in the school car park, her sister and husband hate her and the once smug and all-powerful Brett's unable to offer any further French action after taking a kicking) and is well on the way to becoming a prostitute after suffering a terrible journey from Rochdale station to an unidentified place with nice appartments, free drinks and a slimy woman who is demanding a "finder's fee" from a man in return for this pretty blonde. Blimey, none of this happened at the all-boys senior school I attended. But what a show.

Sadly, my favourite character Maxine Barlow ("Maxine dropped out of school as soon as she could claim benefit, planning to spend her days at the park with her mates and her money on the recreational drug habit she'd developed," starts the official character biog), who had a good run last year smoking crack and turning her life around, looks destined to be a mere bit-player in this series' shenanigans, while teacher from Hell Grantly Budgen looks set to be heading for the major fall (gambling debts aplenty) we've all been craving for from the moment he reminded us (oh, all right then, me) of the day we were given a week's detention and shamed for "gesticulating" behind our form teacher's back. "You don't even know how to spell gesticulate, do you, BOY, so there's no point in asking you to define it for me!!" Good old Mr McPhie. So, Waterloo Road, if you've not been there, do make the effort. But do be warned that you'll be confronted by ridiculously short skirts and a staff so disastrous that they may well end up teaching in Hull. Isn't television great?

Tags: televison, Waterloo Road