Playing the Part

Denise Welch, one of the BBC's best loved actors, returns to her home town of Consett, County Durham to spend a tough week doing the job that, up until now, she has only acted on television. For one week only, she is going to be playing the part of a real teacher in a real school. Denise, who plays teacher Steph Haydock in BBC1's Waterloo Road, will find that in the real world there are no dress rehearsals, no script and no one to shout "Cut!" when it all goes wrong. She is on her own, left to sink or swim. Ms Welch will be taking over from Head of English at Consett Community Sports College, home to 800 students and the school that once gave an education to a certain Jacqueline Denise Welch. How will Denise deal with the day-to-day life of a teacher, involving lesson planning, marking, disruptive children and inspections? Over the course of the working week, we get to see just how far an actor's life really is from the genuine article.