Charlie Roebuck knows all about ''showbiz''. He's spent his adult life in front of the camera, an expert in the art of the condescending smile, a genius at appearing to give a damn. Be it grilling bent politicians or dissecting the personal lives of the great and good, it's all the same to Charlie, all grist to the mill. But when he is forced to front the last series of Pinches of Salt he fears the worst. For the past 30 years the show has been following five lacklustre individuals through their tiresome lives and every five years the TV company descend to pick over their bones. The trouble is none of them has amounted to anything, hardly fertile ground for good television, hardly BAFTA winning material.

With a minuscule budget he must call upon all his experience to try and make a programm that won't sink his ailing career and send him flat-lining to showbiz oblivion.

Can he pull off the impossible, can he turn five lives around and make them into something that will put see him back on prime time Saturday night television?

Well perhaps he can with a little blackmail, mayhem, and a never ending supply of duplicity and cunning.

Love him or loath him Charlie is a survivor and if he does go down then he will make sure he takes the company down with him to the glittering bowels of celebrity hell.