KEY POINTS:
Right then, it's whacko, and straight into the second series of Waterloo Road (TV One, tonight, 8.30pm).
Well, it would have been good old whacko, and six of the best in the days of grumpy old dipso, and Head of English, Grantly Budgen.
Grantly Budgen? That's a name
straight out of Corrie, for a, say, grumpy old dipso who teaches English to naughty boys and girls in some ghastly comprehensive school where the poor kids are served their turkey twizzlers by a trout of a dinner lady called, say, Mavis Hairnet.
These days it's the modern academy, which is what Waterloo Road school is supposed to become.
A flash new model of the modern comp was unveiled last week, to degrees of comprehension ranging from contempt to sucking up to the new owner by the staff.
Apparently, the school is now in the hands of a cad called Roger Aspinall, who has a vision and deep pockets. I never quite understood how this is supposed to work. But the motive became clear.
Old Grumpy Grantly had been mean to Roger when he was a lad at Waterloo Road. "Don't you remember telling me I was the thickest pupil you'd ever come across?"
"I tell it like it is," said Grantly, grumpily and, for an old-fashioned English teacher, a bit oddly.
"I was dyslexic," said Roger, "I still am."
Grantly went gloomily to the pub at lunch time. He got drunk, dozed off, and Roger's bit-of-all-right, but bad-arse kid wrote "PRAT" on his forehead. Which possibly proves that he doesn't have dyslexia.
Grantly got a warning, got the huff, and buggered off. He's the union rep though, so odds are that he'll be back.
That set the tone of the thing: Change is good, as long as it's done the way Roger the Revenger wants.
There are the sulky, bent on being sultry kids. Roger's son Brett invited a couple of girls around to, ha ha, study French. There's drink and dope and girls being bitchy - one gets her mate drunk, gets her top off, takes a pic on her camera-phone.
That was pitched perfectly: best girlfriends one minute; pouty princesses wanting to scratch each other's mascara-ed eyes out over some tosser boy the next.
You know that photo is going to do the rounds before you can say RTD.
The kids are bad; the teachers are worse.
Last season Tom left Lorna for Izzie; now Lorna, who was supposed to have gone to Australia - where she would have been right at home in a dingo colony - is back.
She has forgiven Tom and Izzie, she's delighted, really, about the baby. Oh, and can she come and stay the night only her lav's blocked up and there's nasty stuff everywhere?
Lorna looks sweet, in that blonde with little sharp teeth way, which in soapland means you should never leave her alone with a baby.
In the best performance as an attention-seeking stunt artist since Princess Di, she threw herself down the stairs.
Meanwhile (there's a lot of meanwhile in Waterloo Road) Jack the headmaster was about to have it off with the French mistress when he gets a call from Roger saying he's no longer headmaster.
Meanwhile, his deputy is at dinner with Kim, Head of Pastoral Care and Art (who he thinks he's about to have it off with), and gets a call saying he's to take over.
So far, so exhausting. Waterloo Road is made by the geniuses who created Footballers' Wives and Bad Girls. Which means that a dingo ate my hermaphrodite baby story line is altogether possible.
