Cakes on Sale? Call the Safeguarding Expert

Success came late at night. Five hours of online toil on the National College for School Leadership's safeguarding website qualified my chair of governors for a celebratory 10pm Pimms. Tutorial and test completed, he now knows how to identify a paedophile.

So sighs of relief from the rest of us too busy to bother: our appointments will still be legal. For, without at least one "safeguarding expert" on any panel, interview decisions will have as much authority as ones made by the presidents of Iran or Zimbabwe.

I'm to be given the once-over as well: 35 years after teacher training, I'm having my first Criminal Records Bureau check. I'm hoping it won't hurt and there's a free Pimms at the end.

But it's Pounds 64 from the stretched school budget that could have bought some library books. In fact, the sums are worse than that. We've discovered that we have to do this CRB thing with every member of staff every three years. So with 250 people on the payroll, it's not just some library books I might be sacrificing - it could be the librarian as well.

A voice in my head tells me to ignore it all. Haven't good heads always exercised their judgment and done it their way? Local management of schools gave us freedom, after all. Ah, but Ofsted has a new torture called "a limiting judgment", which means a school can't score higher than "satisfactory" unless the "safeguarding checks" are in place.

That's why on the first day of term every employee at my school - from cooks, caretakers and cleaners to chemistry and clarinet teachers - will do child protection training. Hundreds of us in the sports hall. Welcome back, everyone.

It's the same in finance. We try to run our own budgets, but the auditors think they're in charge. There's that "limiting judgment" again, which means the fat financial controller rubs their hands and reminds me that Ofsted won't award grades one or two unless I have something to prove I'm trustworthy.

This time it's integrity, rather than morality, that's being sledgehammered. You have to pass your financial management standard in schools, the "fmsis" test. We call it "f ... ing sis", with the emphasis on the first syllable.

All this is designed to keep the staff and students safe. And happy too. But visiting Brazilian headteachers were amazed that physical affection, which they regularly show to children, is banned here. We can't sell cakes or biscuits either; they were astonished.

This is the mad world of Every Child Matters. Now we're going to be measured in wellbeing. They haven't worked out the happiness tests or even the curriculum yet, but there's still a month to go.

What a pity no one has told them that children won't actually be happy if that's the target. Working hard and achieving are the real ends. Happiness is just a by-product.

Still, I've set aside five hours for my safeguarding assessment and a day for my child protection training. I need to learn that odd behaviour and bruising are danger signs because I don't have the common sense to know that.

Then I might join my governor in a Pimms. I'm determined to be happy.

Ray Tarleton, Principal at South Dartmoor Community College in Ashburton, Devon.

Flight of French Fancy - Tune in, switch off

More religious in middle age, Louis XIV rejected a long-standing lover and took up with the governess instead. Well, we didn't expect him to stop being a three times a day man

So this is what hell must look like: a theme park in Argentina, complete with fire, flames and water, resembling the set of an end of war movie. Hope this isn't your summer holiday destination. Total Wipeout, BBC One, had adults dressed in red space suits tackling fiendishly cunning obstacles. But cheering and jeering kept the audience happy.

"Every muscle in his body must be hurting now," purred Richard Hammond, as Ricky "the hype" Martin embarked on the barrel run, monkey bars and the spinner - all tortures to keep contestants wet and wounded.

Olympic Les, the veteran athlete, battled valiantly but couldn't out-speed Ricky for the chance of a Pounds 10K prize. "I feel beautiful, baby, beautiful!" proclaimed victorious Ricky, showing off his hype.

There was even more spectacle and colourful clothing in Versailles: The Dream of a King, BBC Two. Sumptuous and opulent, this was the best excuse for actors to dress up since the last Jane Austen adaptation.

Louis XIV enjoyed hunting, council meetings and sex three times a day. According to informant Lady Antonia Fraser, who sounded like a court insider, he would take a turn with a lady's maid if his mistress was slow getting her dress off. But then he changed his mistress more often than I change my car.

More religious in middle age, he rejected a long-standing lover and took up with the pious governess instead. Well, we didn't expect him to stop being a three times a day man.

Since Louis sited his palace near a swamp with little water, the gardeners had to fiddle the fountains, which flowed only when the King walked past. Blame the bog.

Versailles outshines every other palace. Though it took weeks longer than planned and was well over budget. No change in builders then.

And he took his pain as completely as his pleasure, enduring a grisly procedure for an anal fistula, vainly instructing his surgeon to: "Treat me as you would the least of my subjects. Then your hand will not tremble."

Critic Paul Morley in How to be a Composer, BBC Four, was all trembling hands, learning how to compose at the Royal College of Music, but admitting he couldn't read a note: "I'm hesitant and I don't know where I'm going." Not likely to be a number one hit then, Paul.

Minims and crotchets were: "Simple dots but unbelievably profound." It turned out he was being shown Beethoven's Fifth. A music critic without a pen is like a violinist without a bow.

Abba represented "hell" to him even without crotchets. His composition would: "Create time as limbo but in a notated way." I would save that for the lyrics. And he wanted inspiration to "come from the swamp". Why not try Versailles?

But this was how to do one-to-one tuition, everybody. Strategies to model for the new one-on-one team in September.

My wife complained bitterly about the noise of his composition as she tried camouflage, by way of Chopin's nocturnes, on her iPod. There's just too much hell on TV these days; I think I'll join her with the Chopin

Ray Tarleton is principal of South Dartmoor Community College in Ashburton, Devon.

Is this meant to be a sick joke? - Tune in, switch off

Can you laugh at death? Are jokes about the sick just sick jokes? Shakespeare used comedy in his bloodiest of plays. But are we ready for a drama set on a geriatric ward, a comedy Casualty?

BBC Four's Getting On was a brave exploration of the final taboos and last rites. Directed by Peter Capaldi - Malcolm Tucker of In the Loop - it used a documentary format. So I really thought the patients, piss and poo were real. Even a corpse looked genuine. Nurse Kim (played by Jo Brand) attempted to take out the corpse's teeth but couldn't, even with Vaseline. Clearly the old dear still had her own teeth - even at 87 years old.

Much of the humour was at the expense of NHS bureaucracy, the kind of silliness we laughed at in Yes Minister. So the faecal deposit found on a chair had to stay there until a nurse had done the paperwork on it. And then it had to go in a stool pot because the doctor was engaged in a "faecal research programme" to expand the British Stool Chart.

A terminally ill patient was off to Zurich, ostensibly on holiday. "Good disabled access there," commented the doctor, who we later heard privately telephoning the Dignitas clinic in broken German to check her patient had arrived. It was brutally painful, reminding us that tears and laughter are very close.

Extremes of bodily functions were also the subject of Born Survivor (Channel 4). Bear Grylls in Siberia reminded me of my old PE teachers trying to warm us up on cold days. Temperatures were so low here (-30C), that metal stuck to skin.

Bear showed us how to remove a knife blade "super glued" by the freezing temperature to his hand with a hot liquid burst from his bladder. He told of a colleague who tried to pull an ice screw from his mouth, losing skin and part of his tongue in the process. He should have phoned a friend.

Grylls gave us constant warnings about the dangerous terrain, as if we were planning a school camping trip in the world's biggest ice box: if you stand still you die. We'd never get this past the health and safety police. Even a trip to the nearest village requires a week of form filling now.

You burn twice the calories in Siberia so soya beetle bark scrapings, followed by deep-frozen roast venison with cave-cooled, crispy mosquitoes for pudding filled a gap or two. Raw squirrel brain tasted like "frozen pate". I'd have brought some Kendal mint cake myself.

And other than scaring me half to death, Bear's immersion in the deep water under the ice had me lighting the log fire. With a "serious risk of cardiac arrest" (mine as well as his), I was shouting: "Please don't go there!"

Survival depends on a person's "ingenuity and determination" and not just "skills and knowledge", and Grylls demonstrated this brilliantly by making a toboggan from willow and deer skin, noosing a rodent for tea and taking a deer leg as a walking stick.

They teach them well in the Scouts these days. I've since cancelled my Northern Wastes package holiday. And I've decided TV is a dangerous place to be.

Ray Tarleton is principal at South Dartmoor Community College in Ashburton, Devon.

Tune in, switch off - Booze, Blunders and Brilliance

TV's Believe it or Not (BBC Four) was a series of surprises, featuring real out-takes that no one bothered to take out at the time. This was television's lows that, over the years, have become tremendous highs.

Oliver Reed (pictured) was certainly on a high when he played the part of booze-sozzled celebrity on the sofa talk show, After Dark (1991). Except he wasn't acting. It really was live, late night and alcohol-infused. And we thought standards were going down.

Reed's lines included: "That's where the widges, the widges and the women all go 'Ooooooh' and the big old chopper and we're gonna go down there, lads." You can tell he was drunk just by reading it aloud. But don't try doing it in the staffroom - unless you're looking to get signed off before the end of term. Or risk losing your licence to teach.

Teachers, of course, know how to deal with difficult characters: they're called pupils. So we knew engaging Reed in serious conversation would just create more disruption - and it did. His sofa sophistry made the other normal guests seem oddities too. Perhaps they were.

By 12.30am, the middle of the night in those days, Reed tried a different tactic, refusing to speak anymore, with fingers over his lips like a naughty three-year-old. Then he removed them to force down another drink. After that, surprised that no one liked him, he upped and went. It was the cue for viewers to leave as well.

A snippet from Diane Abbott and Michael Portillo's late night sofa programme, This Week, was also featured, from 2004.

Their guest, Shane MacGowan, poured forth streams of noise while Janet Street-Porter, then presenter, tried to keep the conversation going. And she did - but Shane was the conversation - one long drivel of drivel.

Diane Abbot's eyes pointed to the heavens (or perhaps it was the studio ceiling). Michael Portillo first looked fascinated and then cross. He reminded me of a cat caught licking its bum who tries to cover up by appearing nonchalant. Cats do that - and so, it seems, do ex-politicians. Appear nonchalant, I mean.

In the section on TV chefs, we were reminded of where cookery began. Fanny Cradock, on Success Story, served her guest an assiette de fruits de mer. This was 1959 so he'd never seen such stuff before, never mind eaten it, but he couldn't help noticing his meal was moving. "It must be the quality of the champagne," whispered Craddock. She could have sorted out Oliver Reed.

Still, it was preferable to the young lady promising to cook placenta pate who admitted she wasn't quite sure of the recipe. Well if I were you, I'd miss out the main ingredient. An excuse for summer repeats of forgotten lowlights, TV's Believe it or Not also contained plenty of ingredients to make you choke, but all with laughter

Ray Tarleton is principal at South Dartmoor Community College in Ashburton, Devon.

My Old School Chum - Tune in, switch off

"Sir, Sir. Please, me, Sir." Back in the Baby Boomer decade, Simon, one of my fellow pupils, repeatedly showed his urgent desire to read aloud by volunteering for parts in the plays in our English lessons. He brought the dullest scenes to life, reciting poetry where there was only prose.

These were really his first auditions and, had he not made it as an actor, I think he'd have still pretended he was one, such was his passion.

This is the sort of vision and ambition we try to instil every day in schools into our young charges. It must have worked with Simon because, more than 40 years later, he is now DCI Jack Meadows, star of The Bill (ITV), right.

I watched it to see how much I'd aged. Well in both cases there's a lot less hair and a load of wrinkles. That's before the make-up department does its stuff. But then he needs these to look the part. For me they're caused by the day job.

The Bill is so soapy you can see the suds. You could blow bubbles with the plot flimflam. After glitz-gilded dramas from American networks (and Hotel Babylon, of course) I felt I'd gone back in time. I get the same effect from reading West End theatre programmes: almost every actor has appeared in at least one episode.

There were none of those camera tricks at rapid-eye-movement speed like you get in US cop dramas. The dialogue was as realistic as a copper's notebook, but less exciting.

It was like visiting a car boot sale after a lifetime of shopping in Harrods. You felt as if you were there, on the set, in the scene. But you didn't want to be.

The plot turned around the illegal antics of Jack Meadows' son, Ben, just released from prison, and the integrity of our Chief Inspector in having his own flesh and blood sent down. Was he noble hero or father from hell? Well, don't worry: this wasn't the moral dilemma of a Greek tragedy - just the filler between advertising breaks before you put the kettle on.

By episode two it looked as if recalcitrant son versus obstinate dad would end in a scoreless draw. Young Ben's apparent death in a car burn-out finally got to Jack and his emotions cracked. But some of us had noticed there was a clue in the title "Prodigal Son".

Our distraught DCI sprang surprise hugs instead of handcuffs on his reunited boy. Policeman melted into parent. It was a prodigal, even prodigious reunion.

Then it was the tension of the chase and all bravo ones and bravo twos as the police did what they are best at - driving at speed with blue lights through red lights while keeping an "eyeball" on targets. And losing an eyeball isn't as bad as it sounds. Might even be a useful word for pupil tracking.

My verdict on Simon? Well, had I not been told he'd become an actor, I'd have believed he'd spent 40 years in the police force. It was a brave, bravo, even bravura performance. In a script of prose, he was still the poet.

Ray Tarleton is principal at South Dartmoor Community College in Ashburton, Devon.

Tune in, switch off - Spot the Real Clowns

Question: "Do you have a schedule of work?" Response: "Er, not exactly." That's just what the Year 10s say and we all know it means "no chance".

Sarah Beeny had to deal with just this sort of fudging in Property Snakes and Ladders (Channel 4), calling in the homework from this week's amateur fortune hunters. As the economy crashes, they're sinking their lifetime borrowings into home improvement. "Look behind you!" I cry out in horror.

Wannabe magnates, two singers and an artist were too busy making records and painting to manage their builder. Why didn't someone warn them that this would involve humping bricks and getting covered in navvy sweat?

The second couple, Shaun and Nicola, who got their homework in on time, explained that they resolved all their work disputes back at the "office". This turned out to be the under-the-duvet space most of us call a bed, the place they were not allowed to argue. Magically, it was also where all their problems just melted away. I'd love to try that at school.

The young developers never got the planning right. It's the little things they missed, like forgetting to include a bathroom, or putting the kitchen in the loft. What's wrong with a house that has no doors, if it cuts a few quid off the budget? Stubbornly, they never listen to wise Auntie Sarah, even though it could save them millions. Well, Ms Beeny has an invitation to play Snakes and Ladders in my "office" any time, and I promise not to argue.

Children's entertainer Mr Jelly in Psychoville (BBC Two), pictured below, sounded like a property developer himself when, on arriving at a party, he announced the need for "a sturdy table, a pair of pliers and WD40".

Midway through his set, he terrified the children by pulling off his fake hand to reveal the stump beneath. I have a few classes he can come and put the wind up.

Another character, a deranged midwife played by Dawn French, relished showing the video of a screaming mother in labour to her parenting class, urging them to "split the pod to get the peas out". Not one for our childcare course.

Then, clutching a bloodied meat cleaver and emerging from what looked like the set of an Andrew Davies adaptation of a Dickens novel, we saw debauched David, who announced that he had done "a bad murder".

We first met David reading A Complete History of Serial Killers with Mummy - a clue for any Morse viewers that it would end in tears. Shadow-lit scenes of smoke-strewn staircases were as dark as the comedy. The running joke was a hellish alternative universe. And I thought Year 10 was strange

Ray Tarleton is principal of South Dartmoor Community College in Ashburton, Devon.