I love Faking It, the Channel 4 show which recently scooped the prestigious (in journalistic terms every award is deemed "prestigious") Golden Rose prize at the Montreux television festival.

It is fascinating to watch a complete novice become proficient in a specialised job in a mere four weeks. Fascinating, but also thought-provoking. It reveals how, given the right tuition - and no distractions - anyone can succeed in almost any field.

Obviously some are able to pick things up more quickly than others, but they nearly all get there in the end.

Yet in the jobs market, the idea of faking it is not new. At least not to one group of people to which I belonged for three years back in the 1980s.

Away from the cameras, all over Britain temporary staff, more commonly known as "temps" are scuttling off to new jobs virtually every Monday.

True, most will have some experience in the type of work they are about to do, but many won't. And they certainly won't have the benefit of experts to coax them along.

The first time I signed up with a temping agency in Kent I was sent to a lemon meringue pie factory.

I was expected to empty a conveyor belt of pastry cases, discard the dodgy-looking ones and line the others up neatly on baking trays. Sounds easy?

It was a nightmare. The belt moved at the speed of light, about ten cases a second poured off it. Because I wasn't quick enough most went into the waste bin. And the baking trays, which I had to stack on to a trolley, were the size of Lilos and heavy as lead.

I should like to say I mastered the task and won the approval of my bosses.

But I can't. I lasted half an hour.

A move to the less physical environment of clerical work threw up different problems. Filing may sound a doddle, but believe me some companies have weird systems devised by crazy employees who clearly didn't want anyone else to find anything.

As a temp you're expected to master this within five minutes of starting.

I once made the mistake of mentioning my switchboard experience (an hour's lunch relief on a tiny board with only six extensions).

It was October 1987, in London, and the night before I was to start work the city was hit by the now famous hurricane. Because I lived quite centrally I was one of the few who scrambled over fallen trees to make it to work.

I was sent to a switchboard that resembled air traffic control at Heathrow. I remember sitting in front of this monster - serving several giant multi-national companies such as BP - having a five-minute pep talk then being left alone.

Thankfully, not many workers had made it in, but it was still quite busy.

However, I don't think I made a bad job of it. And the agency paid me an absolute fortune.

In at the deep end, they call it. When that happens most of us swim. I even bluffed my way to a stint in a commodity trading office and used mathematical skills I was repeatedly told I didn't have in the remedial maths class at school, to work out prices for grain harvests.

All this with virtually no training. By comparison, contestants on Faking It are on a cushy number.

I reckon they should try the lemon meringue pie challenge.

Updated: 10:52 Monday, May 26, 2003