Bright spark

PUERTO Rican TV repair man Jose Rafael can light up a room with his presence.

Literally. He’s a human conductor who has nothing to do with buses or orchestras.

He can – and lights up to prove it – withstand high voltage currents. He holds a live wire in one hand and lights up a fluorescent bulb with the other. And yes, someone does warn viewers not to try this at home.

What no one has worked out yet is why electricity flows through and fires out of his body, without apparently harming him.

The 40-year-old lives in a small one-bedroom house where the furniture is plastic to stop static electricity passing out of his body.

Lighting up bulbs is okay, but Jose wants to move on to bigger and better things. For him, the future is bright. He wants to connect himself to the mains.

Amazingly, he shows no physical pain as the current passes through his body.

Or when he sets fire to paper with his finger.

We don’t need an expert to tell us: “I think he’s doing something extremely dangerous.”

He’s kept people in the dark about his electrical powers until now but, inevitably, scientists can’t wait to experiment with him to find out what makes him light up their lives.

He’s given a medical and his heart emerges unscathed. All that electricity appears not to have damaged it.

His local university’s department of electrical engineering takes a look at him and measures the current going through his body. “The ability to do that with his fingers reminds me of the X-Files,” suggests one man, after seeing the light-myfire trick.

He’s not the only bright light switched on in the enlightening Extraordinary People documentary. Debbie Wolf, from Brighton, reckons she can randomly destroy electrically-powered objects with her emotions.

The 39-year-old goes through amusement, disbelief and embarrassment as her powers are revealed. I wouldn’t be surprised if the security forces don’t try to harness her power.

As for Jose, I suppose he’d be handy to have around in a power cut, although I wouldn’t like to see the size of his electricity bill.

AND so The Apprentice trundles on with the competitors reaching new heights – depths? – of incompetence each week.

Unusually, no one has emerged as the clear winner. You’re more likely to know who you don’t want to win. Mad Lorraine, for one. And Debra, the woman with no face (take a look, it’s a blank mask), really should have been sacked for the task to rebrand Margate. How bad was her failure to finish the brochure and leave blank spaces.

This week, Sir Alan sends them to London’s Olympia to a baby show. There, they’re expected to flog baby products (not babies, although that would undoubtedly tax their ingenuity).

The key to successfully completing the task will be choosing the right products to sell. Pick the wrong one – cardboard playhouse in the shape for your cat anyone?

– and you could be staring boardroom defeat in the face.

By now, Sir Alan must have a pretty good idea which one he’d like to employ on a six-figure salary, making his firing decision accordingly. That can be the only reason why several apprentices who should’ve been fired in previous weeks are still playing the game.

THERE’S no stopping Griff Rhys Jones these days. Having abandoned being funny (although I never laughed that much), he’s moved over to factual programmes. Recent offerings have found him examining his own anger and doing a Whicker by reporting from foreign lands.

Why Poetry Matters finds him hosting the official introduction to the BBC’s poetry season, running across TV, radio and online.

He and poet Simon Armitage dissect Keats, while Jones visits a poetry doctor for a diagnosis. He also joins former poet laureate Andrew Motion – a man who must be fed up with the headline Poetry In Motion – on a versifier’s tour of the National Gallery and gets commuters at London’s Euston Station to perform WH Auden’s Night Mail.