THE fortunes of a rookie police officer from East Lancashire as he trained with the biggest force in the country will be shown in a TV documentary tonight.

Mike Walsh was one of the recruits who joined the Metropolitan Police Service in October 1999. Raw Blues, to be shown on BBC, follows the progress of the recruits from their arrival at the Met training School, at Hendon, until they start pounding the streets 18 weeks later.

Mike, a former pupil of St Stephen's School, Little Harwood, and St Wilfrid's, Blackburn, said training to join one of the toughest forces in the country with the busiest patch was hard enough without having a camera crew there.

He said: "For the first couple days you really notice the cameras are there and they followed us virtually for 24 hours. But because they were with us so much you stopped noticing them after a while and got on with it."

Mike, whose parents Susan and Ian live in Copster Green, thought of joining the police while at Durham University, where he gained a degree in chemistry. A day with Met officers cemented his ambition.

Speaking from London, Mike said: "I haven't looked back since then. It's exciting and every day is something new and different, plus I love working with people. Put them all together and a job with the police was the obvious choice for me."

In the wake of the Lawrence Inquiry and accusations of racism and corruption, the number of recruits for the Met is actually dropping, although Mike never thought of joining up anywhere else.

He said: "Lancashire is too close to home and the Met is the biggest and busiest force in the country, which makes it best for career options. I love working in London and I know a lot of people down here."

The programme will show the tough regime faced by the new recruits.

Mike said: "There are dangerous aspects to the job. Quite a lot of calls have been to homes where firearms have been involved or where people are fighting in the streets with knives or hammers but we are trained and wear body armour."

Raw Blues is tonight at 10.35pm on BBC-1.