The Apprentice returned to our screens last night after a week of hype across the press and promises by Sir Alan Sugar this would be the best series yet.
Well did it live up to expectations? That depends what your expectations were. Last night’s first episode was certainly entertaining, but unfortunately confirmed The Apprentice is more aligned to Big Brother than big on business.
From the minute Sir Alan croaked “Mary Poppins I am not” and “I’ll fire the bleedin’ lot of you” in true reality TV fashion we were simply waiting to see who would be evicted, sorry, fired, first.
There was no shortage of pantomime villains for us to heckle and urge Sir Alan to cull, either. Surely the producers asked this year’s rabble of egotists to just make the most outrageous claims about their ‘talents’ for the opening ‘get to know’ sequence?
“I rate myself as the best in Europe.”; “I am a natural born salesman.”; “I am quite happy to cut people out of my life to succeed and be a winner.”; “There is something inherent in me which means I have to get to the top.”; “My strategy is to not only beat the other candidates but thrash them.”. And it didn’t end there.
Of course, one and all spectacularly failed to live up to their own billing. Charged with selling fish from a market stall, the girls just edged the boys who took three hours to set-up, failed to label or price their items correctly, then proceeded to bitch, argue and negotiate down the sale of the remainder of their stock from £130 to £50.
Comedy toff Nicholas de Lacy-Brown paid with his limp-fringed head after feebly attempting to shift blame for pricing lobsters at a fiver a go. Yes, lobsters – not that the rest of the team’s great thinkers questioned it.
Sensing Sugar’s pointed finger lingering he then grabbed his 15 minutes of fame in a scene again reminiscent of Big Brother’s exit interviews where evictees tout controversial soundbites in a bid to secure tomorrow’s headlines.
I mean, waging a class war with northerner Alex Wotherspoon by stating he was marginalised for being educated and ‘I like art and can’t relate to people who talk about football’ was never likely to wash with a cockney who started out at 16 selling from a van, was it?
“You wasn’t outstanding was you?” was Sir Alan’s less eloquent reply. He’d clearly put more thought into his own trademark moment though and came up with a cracker. “You were distraught when you got a 'B' in GCSE French so you will be distraught with this big 'F' I’ve got for you. YOU’RE FIRED!”
Pure entertainment, but business? Well only if you consider lessons in how NOT to do business. But then I guess it wouldn’t make sexy TV if we were to see Sir Alan actually passing on his sales knowledge as opposed to derided others’ lack of it.
Similarly it looks like we’ll have to make do with more wannabe Katie Hopkins’, who reportedly made more from tabloid interviews in the first month after last year’s series than winner Simon Ambrose earned in his first year under Sir Alan’s employment.
How long before Jade Goody applies?
