The saintly patience shown to all patients

AMBULANCE BBC1

STANDING in a supermarket queue, it takes approximately 30 seconds before I’m shuffling feet and glancing tetchily at other checkouts.

Why didn’t I pick THAT one? Does that guy REALLY need to know how much is on his festive savings card right now?

And my blood boils even faster than a nearly empty kettle when I get recorded phone messages telling me they’re experiencing an especially high volume of calls and they’re sorry for my delay.

The bottom line is, if patience is a virtue, I’m as far from virtuous as it’s possible to be.

This was brought starkly home as I was humbled by the saintly levels of patience shown by paramedics and control room crews in Ambulance.

The three-parter has shown the high drama and life-saving magic of our mercy crews.

But it also showed the other side, the mundane moments where they dealt with the old dears who only needed a kind word and old fellas whose wobbly pins had let them down.

They dealt with them all with unfailing courtesy and compassion. And the muchpressured despatchers never lost their cool, even with the ridiculous timewasters.

This was London but you just knew this patience was being shown, minute-by-minute, the length and breadth of the country.

After seeing the worrying shortage of crews to deal with a long night shift, last week’s final episode showed what the roadside angels of mercy had to deal with when weekend partying got out of hand.

We should all raise a glass to toast our 999 crews patiently saving our bacon.

THE APPRENTICE BBC1

Every year you think they can’t get any worse, more annoying, any more like cartoon caricatures of buffoonery.

Then Lord Sugar calls up another batch of wannabe business partners . . .