THE passengers have disembarked, the luggage removed and the cleaners are, as we speak, replacing the sick bags, on British Airways flight 326 to Paris.

But don’t be fooled into complacency, folks. Strap yourselves in.

There’s a nerve-shredding race against time facing the ground crew and they’re really under the cosh, and in no way simply going about their daily humdrum routine.

Or so we were told by Anita Rani on Heathrow-behind-the-scenes Airport Live, an obvious fourminute time-filler for The One Show that BBC2, in its wisdom, decided to stretch to four hours in the hope this would be “event TV”.

So, rather than admitting honestly that the smooth running of the whole operation was, while impressive, ultimately quite dull, Kate Humble proclaimed at the outset: “You will never have seen this stuff before.”

Not unless you watched BBC1’s Heathrow-behind-the-scenes Airport (not live) anyway.

What we had here was Auntie’s latest pointless live crud-polish where even less happened than on its siblings, Volcano Live (four days of steam in Hawaii), Planet Earth Live (Kenya in the dark) and Lambing Live (live lambing in Cumbria).

But, bless, didn’t they try hard.

Or Die Hard, perhaps, with Dallas Campbell spending Tuesday evening at the business end of the runway frantically waving air-traffic marshalling ping-pong bats around, like Bruce Willis’ John McClane.

This was the same night Rani was overhyping BA flight 326’s preparations, which was the moment I stopped taking any of it seriously and just revelled in the series’ laughable sincerity.

Humble: “Earlier we saw Anita standing by a plane.” At Heathrow Airport too, of all places!

Campbell: “I’ve got to ask, the bed is very comfortable.”

And Rani’s dazzling array of dumbass questions: “What happens if you see a fault on the tyres?” (They change it.) “We’ve just seen the last piece of luggage go in. What was that?” (A suitcase?) “Will passengers be coming into the plane?” (No, Anita, they’ll be strapped to the fuselage for a spot of wing-walking, at 36,000 feet.) The other two presenters, meanwhile, were stating the obvious.

Humble felt the need to point out the air-traffic controllers she was chatting to were on a break, while Campbell declared: “It’s incredibly noisy when the planes go overhead,”

and: “When a plane lands, it’s vitally important for it to get out of the way for another to land.”

In the interests of fairness I must state that Humble was a lastminute replacement for Dan Snow as anchor. But even taking that into account, nobody who confesses: “I never like coming to airports, I find them a chore,” should host a show about an airport.

She packed Monday’s opener with bizarre dance metaphors, adding: “If you thought Strictly Come Dancing was complicated...”

I didn’t, Kate, but OK.

And by Wednesday she was asking for trouble: “There are two letters in the alphabet that air-traffic controllers don’t want to hear – C and B, which stand, rather oddly, for cumulonimbus.”

There are two others. Kand H.

Which stand for Kate Humble.

The “action” flitted between Humble doing an impression of whispering Bob Harris in the control tower, Rani getting in the way at the gates and Campbell smudging fresh paintwork on a passenger jet.

It was BA flight 326 to Paris, however, that summed up the week.

After all the false drama unfolding, they only went and missed the damn thing taking off on time.

Rani asked turnaround shift manager Joanna: “So is your job done?”

“Unfortunately not. We’ve now got the 596 to Milan due in.”

That was one sleepless night for me, I can tell you.

Spudulike awards

● Operation Snow Tiger.

● Dates.

● Justin Rose’s historic US Open triumph.

● The Apprentice invertebrate Jason Leech’s “Nest of vipers / Everybody here has blood on their lips” speech.

● Hilary Devey telling The One Show: “I’ve got a lot on the go with Channel 4.” Supplying their pallets, Hilary? Can’t possibly be another series of The Intern.

● C4’s The Greatest Shows on Earth, featuring Brazilian reality show Miss Bumbum, a “competition to find the nation’s best arse”, which in Britain is known simply as Prime Minister’s Questions.

● On the same programme, Daisy Donovan revealing the power of television in the South American country: “The president has just moved an election so it didn’t clash with the finale of a hit soap opera.”

Imagine that. EastEnders having a finale. Hurry up and call an election, David Cameron.

Spuduhate awards

● Corrie’s David Platt reverting to evil mode, like Furby if you squeeze its tail too often.

● BBC1 Wars of the Roses drama The White Queen turning out to be Bores of the Roses.

● BBC2 ditching Porridge for a procelebrity tennis match.

● Ideal World shopping channel flogging Christmas cards and gift wrapping at the height of June.

● BBC Question Time booking Russell Brand.

● The death of James Gandolfini, which rules out any more episodes of TV masterpiece The Sopranos.

As it should be. Bada Bing.