The jobsworth

WHAT’S the scariest job in the world?

Bomb disposal expert, lion tamer, astronaut or comedian?

Apparently, it seems quite a lot of people would choose the latter, which came as a surprise to stand-up Rhod Gilbert.

Now, after years of hearing people tell him that they couldn’t do his job, he’s on a mission to find out how the other half graft in the new series, Rhod Gilbert’s Work Experience.

Maybe it’s the thought of getting up on a stage and trying to entertain a crowd of drunken strangers, or shouting to be heard over some pretty cutting wits on a panel show that brings the average noncomic out in a cold sweat, but Gilbert believes we shouldn’t get carried away in our admiration for the nation’s jokers.

“I’ll be sitting at a table with surgeons, lawyers, even a triathlete. People who do genuinely worthy, life-affirming jobs. Yet people still gravitate towards the standup,” he says.

“It’s embarrassing. Barack Obama, Saddam Hussein and Colonel Gaddafi could all be sitting there and people would still want to talk to me.”

Gilbert is a relative latecomer to comedy, as he didn’t even attend his first gig until he was 27. Instead, he worked in a “proper” job in market research before changing tack and attending a course for aspiring stand-ups.

He was soon picking up some of the circuit’s most prestigious awards.

Since then, he’s gone on to play around the world, host a regular show on Radio Wales and do gigs up and down the country.

In Rhod Gilbert’s Work Experience, he samples some important, but largely unglamorous, jobs. He begins by going on patrol with the binmen of Barry, in the Vale of Glamorgan.

He admits to reservations about the work, saying beforehand: “I’m not looking forward to it. But at the end of the day it’ll be some fresh air. Chuck a few bins on the back of a lorry – it can’t be that bad.”

However, there’s much more to being part of a waste enforcement team than that, and the Vale Council also have him out on dog dirt patrol on the seafront.

WHILE the Oscars grabbed the headlines this week, it’s important to remember other ceremonies such as the Children’s Champions Awards, which celebrate ordinary people who go to great lengths to make the lives of children better.

Chris Evans and Amanda Holden present the News of the World’s Children’s Champion Awards, which honours unsung heroes, from school teachers and dinner ladies, to doctors and foster carers.

A celebrity panel of judges, including Sarah Brown, wife of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, singers Emma Bunton and Peter Andre, Olympic gold medallists Kelly Holmes, Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, and TV presenters Christine Bleakley and Angela Griffin, selects the winners from nominations made by the public.

MENTION the name John Lewis to anybody and chances are what springs to mind is a rather swanky department store which has been providing the more affluent among us with all manner of goods since 1864.

Back then, the only outlet was on London’s Oxford Street and focused solely on drapery. The company grew when it took over a second shop in Sloane Street and, in 1920, the original Mr Lewis’ son founded the John Lewis Partnership, which expanded further in 1940 by purchasing Selfridge Provincial Stores.

Oxford Street remains the firm’s flagship store and was refurbished three years ago at a cost of £60m.

You might think that, in the midst of the worst recession in living memory, John Lewis would now be feeling the pinch. But it seems not.

So, how has this household favourite managed to survive in a climate that has wrecked the futures of so many others?

The documentary Inside John Lewis aims to find out.