Apply Immediately (BBC2)

PAUL Hilton wanted to swap bread for the dead. After 30 years of rising at two in the morning to work as a baker, he fancied becoming a funeral director.

And he wanted hands-on experience with dead bodies as an embalmer. "If I can decorate a wedding cake and make this slab of fruit cake into a masterpiece, I have the ability to make a dead person look, not alive, but as he was just before he passed away," he declared.

No offence to funeral directors, but I suspect that profession doesn't figure strongly on career wish lists made by schoolchildren. But, thanks to the Co-Operative Funeral Service, Paul was given the chance of six weeks work experience.

You could tell he was serious because he juggled his baker's job with seeing dead people in this fascinating look behind the scenes of a job most people prefer not to think about. His guide in his new undertaking was Neil McDonald, who threw his pupil in at the deep end with a mock funeral and driving a hearse. "Take your time, it's a large vehicle and I would like to see Christmas," said Neil.

Paul was still keen to "get hold of something in my hand" - a corpse - while admitting he'd always been frightened of dying and perhaps this was his way of dealing with that, by seeing how everything happens. In his second week, his wish was granted as a freelance embalmer arrived to deal with a body from a local hospital.

He turned out to be a ex-milkman whose embalmer wife had introduced him to it. He was a cheery chap who admitted it was sometimes difficult when relatives gave him a photograph and asked for the deceased to be made up in that fashion. "It's been taken ten years ago, he has a pint in one hand, a cigarette in the other and a flat cap, and they want him looking like that," he said.

Paul emerged unfazed from the embalming, feeling there was nothing there he couldn't handle. "I've a little surprise now, you're going to do one," said Neil. His pupil turned as pale as, well, a corpse. Then Neil added he was just having a little joke.

Another test was arranged, in which Paul had to make the funeral arrangements for a grieving relative, played by funeral services employee Pat. He needed some grooming in his presentation after calling the funeral vehicles cars instead of limousines, referring to a funeral as a package, and talking about the lower priced coffins as cheap.

But I liked the exchange when Paul produced a book of pictures of coffins. "You can choose one your mother would like," he told her. "I don't suppose she's too bothered actually," noted Pat.