Live At The Apollo (BBC1, 10.35pm)

SOUTH Shields stand-up Sarah Millican is given another chance to shine as the host of this comedy caper with the Tynesider engaging her “nearer the knuckle” side and revealing more about a phone conversation with her mother than we’d care to imagine.

Fortunately, she moves to firmer territory with a joke about buying a house and being told by a builder that she needed a damp-proof course. “I told him I haven’t got time to go to college,” says Millican. Retaining her deft daftness, the comic asks her audience is they’ve ever tried to toast bread in front of a log-burner.

The if.comedy award winner for Best Newcomer at the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, with an act based on her divorce entitled Sarah Millican’s Not Nice, is regarded as one of the top 100 most powerful women in the UK. She broke the record for female stand-up DVD sales in 2011 with her Chatterbox tour video release. Six more comedy nominations, including being named People’s Choice: Queen of Comedy, have followed. Her latest DVD, Home Bird, is out this month and Millican reassures fans on her website that she’s busy writing her four national tour, having enjoyed three sell-out tours already.

She has appeared on QI, Mock the Week, Have I Got News For You, 8 Out of 10 Cats, Live at the Apollo, Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow, 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown and has shared the sofa with the kings of chat like Graham Norton, Jonathan Ross and Alan Carr.

There are also rumours that she could play Kate Daniels, the detective at the centre of Mari Hannah's crime novels, once they're adapted for the small screen by Stephen Fry's Sprout production company.

Tonight she’s sharing the stage with Russell Kane, who beat her to the Edinburgh Comedy Award in 2010. Kane is perhaps best known for presenting a range of programmes on BBC3, including Freak Like Me, Unzipped and Live at the Electric, but it should be interesting (and hopefully hilarious) to see him return to his stand-up roots.

Also featuring in the first of a new run is camp comic Joe Lycett who, at 26, is the baby of the bunch and is still to make a major breakthrough on TV, although appearances on the likes of 8 Out of 10 Cats, Celebrity Juice, Never Mind the Buzzcocks and Virtually Famous suggest it won't be long before he's vying with Sarah and Russell for a place on the A-list.

Confessions of a Copper (Channel 4, 10pm)

WITH the arrival of stricter regulations, health and safety rules and political correctness, this new four-part series, examines whether many of our professionals have lost the authority and respect they once felt was part of the job.

Featuring shocking, surprising and candid confessions, law enforcers, teachers, GPs and secretaries spill the beans on their working lives. Thanks to rare archive footage, the strand gives us a visceral sense of the social upheavals that we've experienced since 1964, and asks: were things actually better in the good old days? In this opener, eight police officers reveal how they feel life for those in the force has changed forever.

The Apprentice (BBC1, 9pm)

IN the latest task, the entrepreneurs have to come up with advertising campaigns for soft drinks and pitch them to experts in New York. However, while half the teams having to stay behind in London to create and brand the drinks, a power struggle ensues to get a seat on the plane.

We've already said goodbye to Chiles, Robert, Scott, Lindsay, Nurun, Steven, Sarah and Ella Jade among others... and at least three more candidates are on their last chance.