I've just worked out how TV executives plan their schedules these days. When they spot a gap in the schedule they don't bother commissioning a new drama or hunting down a classic film. Instead, they take a trip to the basement of Broadcasting House where sits a wheel of fortune and a bin bag filled with scraps of paper.

"Okay", says the producer, taking a handful of names out of the bag. "We've got Rebecca Loos, Jimmy Krankie and the ginger one from Biker Grove. Now spin that wheel." Multicoloured activities spin in a kaleidoscopic frenzy. Where will it land? Naked Morris dancing? Pipe-lagging? Colonic irrigation? Leader of the Labour Party? Only fate and the increasing penchant for C-list celebrity self-abasement can decide.

Given the permutations available with this format, we really should be thankful that we only have to watch Ron (loose lips) Atkinson, Esther (loose teeth) Rantzen and Marcus (er, who?) Brigstocke learn a new language in the BBC's celebrity reality TV programme Excuse My French.

Transported to Provence to spend four weeks living together while they learn to speak French via the immersion technique (they don't get any hot water until they can ask for it), the trio must master enough of the language to successfully carry out their day jobs.

So, Brigstocke must perform stand-up, Atkinson has to comment on a football match and Rantzen has to find a French bean in the shape of a man's private parts.

Just kidding. Rantzen's task is to appear on TV in front of millions, which should be a cinch, her command of the lingua Francais being rather less alarming that her burgundy Zur Alors! hair do. Meanwhile Brigstocke struggles to raise laughs in another language, though he does do good beret.

But, naturally enough the car-crash factor comes from Atkinson. The former football manager is an intriguing choice by the BBC: recalling his live-on-air cock up involving an undetected mic, a black Chelsea player and the use of the unthinkable "n" word, it does seem dangerous to enlist him for anything connected to race-relations.

Still, he's a dead cert to provide that Englishman abroad' stereotype and he doesn't fail to deliver. On this week's programme his teacher was becoming concerned that, while he has mastered some French words, Ron's sentences seem to make no sense whatsoever. This made Ron mad. And no wonder.

A quick look back at some of his most lucid utterances ("Well, Clive, it's all about the two Ms movement and positioning"; "Beckenbauer has really gambled all his eggs"; "If Glenn Hoddle said one word to his team at half time, it was concentration and focus";) shows that this is just the way Ron talks.

With this, plus the former manager's old-man dogmatism, appalling grasp of the French Highway Code and fluency in the international language of grinning at everyone and offering them booze, he's set to become the star of the show, if not of France itself. Spin that wheel, BBC. I want to see him on a float at Notting Hill Carnival next year.