The last word

THOSE who gain the impression that teenagers today communicate solely by grunting and texting will have been pleasantly surprised by The Speaker.

The series, which reaches the final tonight, has been searching for Britain’s best young public speaker – and has proved that the UK’s adolescents are actually quite an eloquent bunch.

Judge Jo Brand has certainly been impressed by the standard. “It’s very easy to fall into the whole tabloid image of teenagers as sort of hoodie-wearing, happy-slapping, knife-carrying monsters, and I think we’re wrong to do that,” she says.

“This series enables people to see a huge range of different personalities, which I think is very useful.”

Speaking in front of Brand and fellow judges John Amaechi and Jeremy Stockwell, not to mention the TV cameras, must have been a daunting prospect.

Brand believes contestants had a range of reasons for putting themselves in the spotlight. “Some were hoping to go into comedy, some were quite actor-ish in the way they presented their speeches, and others were political.

“Some of them competed because their teachers said, ‘oh, go on, why don’t you have a bash at this?’, and they didn’t know what they wanted.”

Contestants have been working with the judges and mentors – Kate Silverton, Deborah Meaden, Alistair Campbell and Earl Spence – to sharpen their oratorical skills. Now only three remain.

Their final challenge entails travelling to Malawi with Unicef, where they meet a 13-year-old living with HIV, and discover the difference a well can make in a village.

After some words of encouragement from Unicef ambassador Ewan McGregor, it’s back to London, where they’ll use their findings to formulate a speech on one of three aspects of children’s rights.

The winner will be crowned Britain’s Best Young Speaker 2009.

Brand reckons all the teenagers who took part will look back on the series with fondness, not least because it could further their future careeers.

“It was an incredible experience for them,” she says. “Not only were they speaking in public, but they were being filmed as well for a TV programme, and that doubled the pressure in a way.

“So, just the experience of coming in from school and being put under that amount of pressure, I think they’ll really take something away from it. Hopefully, a lot of them will see it as a stepping stone towards something they really want to do.”

THESE youngsters give you more hope than the latest batch of would-be business types in The Apprentice.

What a bunch of useless twerps they’re turning out to be, whether it’s bombastic Geordie Philip or scary Lorraine (the obligatory contestant with the mad staring eyes).

Incompetent is too good a word to describe most of their decision-making and lack of common sense.

In this series, instead of buying a list of items at the lowest possible price, they’re given ten items with instructions to value and sell them.

The trick will be working out which ones are the valuable items. The bric-abrac includes a medical skeleton, an oldfashioned commode, an oriental rug and a pair of vintage shoes.

EXTRAORDINARY People continues to find, well, extraordinary people such as Octopus Man. This is the remarkable tale of 55-year-old Rudy Santos, who has an extra three limbs protruding from his abdomen.

He was once able to command up to 20,000 pesos a night as the main attraction of a travelling exhibition and became a national celebrity as the Filipino Octopus Man.

Then he disappeared. He’s keeping a low profile from tax officials, but his extra limbs are beginning to have a noticeable impact on his health.

Losing weight and too weak to work, he’s given a ray of hope by a specialist surgeon who believes he can help.