MY heart sank – in fact, it 'logged off' for a while when I read another report that we in the human race are losing the ability to interact.

Driver-less cars, self-service shops ... face-less fast-food restaurants.

Boffin Sir Anthony Seddon told an egg-head conference that within ten years we are going to have teacher-less schools with 'Sir' and 'Miss' becoming classroom assistants.

All 'educating', he told the British Science Festival will be carried out by artificially-intelligent machines which will study gifted students and be 'extraordinarily inspirational'.

I hope this is one deluded prediction that is resigned to the history books as potty, prophetic propaganda used to justify cuts in manpower.

We need real caring, inspiring teachers - not robots.

At school, I took my blackboard monitor role too seriously because I took home the tatty duster and painted it.

Our head of science threw a packet of chalk at me in anger.

But I recall he understood I meant well when he set me a detention punishment – an essay on what I understood by the term 'logic.' 

I simply wrote my name on a blank sheet of A4 and put a question mark next to it and handed it in.

He passed me because he said I clearly didn't have an answer and it was the logical thing to do.

That's the real benefit of good teachers, they are the first people with authority we meet after our parents and leave a lasting impression on us.

I wonder how robots teach P.E.

I still shed a tear when I watch the film Goodbye Mr Chips about a well- respected schoolmaster dearly loved by his grateful pupils who go off into the world well equipped for life.

I don't want to see a modern day sequel called Hello Mr Computer Chips.

*

FOOD for thought for Jamie Oliver.

I once interviewed him and felt he would make a great social campaigner – an MP even.

He can certainly stand the heat in the kitchen and has taken on Governments with his fight against sub-standard school meals.

He told one tabloid that social media has changed everything: "You get immediate feedback," he said.

I believe he would be ideal to tackle one growing disservice to the nation's unemployed.

I hear more and more about disheartened jobseekers who have applied for vacancies but never receive an acknowledgement – not even an e-mail from their multiple applications.

It is disheartening being made redundant - it is demoralising when, to receive benefit, you have to prove you are actively seeking ten or more jobs a week.

Maybe Jamie could have a 'shell-like' word in the ear of a minister for Work and Pensions to urge HR departments up and down the country to reply to applicants one way or another and let them know that they are being taken seriously.

Is an e-mail reply asking too much?

*

CLAPPERBOARD ... Action.

Some journalists make credible on-screen stars.

Jeremy Paxman was as wooden as his University Challenge desk when he made a cameo in Bridget Jones' Diary.

But that can't be said of Granada's long-standing (or should that be sitting) anchor woman Lucy Meacock who appears as herself in the Royal Court's sell-out comedy play The Royal - a very funny fictitious tale about the closure and re-opening of the famous hospital.

Lucy is seen reporting from an impending demolition disaster at the site.

She confided to me at press night that she was very nervous and had not seen the finished video film.

When the moment came she threw her blonde head back in laughter after a wrecking ball wiped her off the screen.

Lucy, who has a Royal Television Society award, now deserves one of my Inferno Dafta awards.

A knockout, indeed..

* 

TALKING of turning the tables – here's a rock star playing a news reporter.

Thirty years ago Frankie goes to Hollywood split.

Guitarist Brian Nash embarked on a solo career in 1995.

On his fourth solo album 432:1: Open the Vein he made a video playing a sharp-suited BBC anchorman.

It is to promote his song about a real life politician called Gideon.

Brian, who has graced the stage for many Wirral Globe community events, told the Inferno he is looking ahead to his Evening with ... show at the Philharmonic on November 15.

He says his album is about "a man in his 50s viewing the world around him and putting it to music." 

*

THE Real mystery about two new Monday night TV thrillers is why the schedulers have put them both out at 9pm: Liar on ITV and Rellik on BBC 1.

This isn't fair on those viewers are fans of the work of the Williams Brothers who, ironically, have written both dramas which will be aired over six weeks.

I won't stay the distance.

Instead I will make do with shows like Lego Masters.

I hope Wirral's teacher Steve Guinness who is in the grand final tomorrow doesn’t go to pieces.

*

AND Finally ...

Who wrote the biggest selling novel of all time? How the Dickens do I know? I hear you say.

Correct: it is A Tale of Two Cities.

Written in 1859 and happily there’s not a word in it about Brexit.

Peter Grant