Don’t worry I won’t be revealing who lost or who was fired in this week’s episode so even you have a date with iPlayer booked you can read on.
In case you’ve somehow slipped into a coma, perhaps you watched the Budget, you won’t know that yesterday marked the return of The Apprentice. This is the eight outing for this now stalwart of the BBC One schedule. On the face of it this show shouldn’t be successful, after all on paper it’s an hour of watching a group of business people unsuccessfully selling printed T-shirts whilst being sneered at by the host of Countdown. Yet somehow The Apprentice is so much more than that, not just a reality show, but such a classy reality show that unlike with its ITV rivals you don’t feel like you need a wash even if you fully immerse yourself in it. I’m a full Apprentice fan, cancelling all my plans for 13 Wednesdays of the year (admittedly not that hard if like me you have no friends), and watching avidly through not only the main show but its excellent support show – The Apprentice: You’re Fired over on BBC Two. If I did this for any other reality show, I’d feel ashamed, I certainly would admit on this blog (even if it is read by approximately no people).
For me The Apprentice doesn’t feel like any of the other reality shows, I’m not quite sure why this is. Maybe it’s the high production values, maybe it’s the fact that there’s no telephone voting or begging for calls, perhaps it’s the fact that the contestants actually want a career that doesn’t make them a “celebrity” or perhaps it’s simply the fact that everyone is in a suit. I can’t be sure why but either way the format keeps me more glued to the telly than a documentary exposing how writers of excellent internet blogs make the best sexual partners. They do, it’s science fact.
Viewers of The Apprentice are much like armchair football fans or passengers on the London Underground, in that they arrogantly seem to think they could do a better job competing/playing/making all Londoners miserable than the people currently doing the job despite their obvious lack of experience, skill and qualifications. I take a different approach to the norm, I know full well that no matter how badly the contestants are performing I’d be doing worse. I’d be awful at The Apprentice, absolutely bloody awful, worse even than Germany is at World Wars. I’d fail at the first step, no not the first task, the first step – the purposeful group walk across The Millennium Bridge. The problem is in my head I’m sure I look like a purposeful power bastard strutting across the Thames, but in reality I look more like I’m power mincing across the bridge desperately trying to find the toilet.
The next step of failure is recording the cringe worthy sound bites, the bits where the candidates say something ridiculously stupid such as “I’m the reflection of perfection” or “I’m a business superstar”. In fairness the candidates are probably egged on by a t**t of a television producer – don’t you just hate television producers – right k**bs they are. However in my case I’d even fail here, I’d oscillate between either saying something ridiculously meek like “I’m, alright at business, as long as I don’t do anything involving selling” or saying something so ridiculously over the top that even the usually bulls**t-immune other candidates would point and laugh such as “I’m so full of business, I’m pissing cash up the wall”. Mind you given what was said this week I’m not far off the mark.
All of this abject failure and we have even got to the instructions for the first task yet, the first time you face Lord Sugar in the boardroom. I don’t know about you but if Lord Sugar was my boss, I’d s**t myself so much that the boardroom would soon resemble a particularly grim sceptic tank accident with Nick and Karen clinging onto each other in a desperate bid to stay afloat. A grim image maybe but a true one. I strongly believe that if commanded to by Lord Sugar, Nick Hewer would don a pair of leather gloves and strangle any complete abject failure before tossing their lifeless body out of the nearest window – there wouldn’t even be a taxi or anything. And for good reason that image terrifies me. Though in fairness if Lord Sugar did start talking about solving a Where’s Wally? puzzle or locating Lord Lucan I am more likely to laugh at his insane madness rather than open up my bowels.
With suitably random task set, the teams have two important pieces of business to deal with, firstly naming the team. This always results in a series of potential answers so pretentiously wanky you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d tuned into a toff’s special of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?. I on the other hand would play it somewhat more downbeat “Team Disappointment”, “Team Utter Disaster” I think would be more realistic choices, at least that way your results in the boardroom can only be an improvement on Lord Sugar’s expectations. Or how about “Team Kittens”, even the cold heart of Lord Sugar would surely not be able to fire someone from Team Kitten? No?
Second on the to-do list is to select a project manager, a job which often has less willing volunteers than a Jeremy-Kyle-snog-a-thon. As admirably demonstrated by the boys this week if you asked for those willing to project manage to step forward, the entire room would shuffle back faster than a group of parents confronted by Mothercare’s new paedophilic range – don’t be disgusted, worse ideas have regularly been pitched on The Apprentice. In fairness to these people, they are right to be scared of project managing, in Week 1 it is invariably suicide to project manage – there simply isn’t enough time in that first week for anyone else to f**k up enough to out f**k up the simple fact that you project managed the losing team. If it was up to me, I’d vote Karen to be the project manager, how could we possibly lose?
Next it’s onto the project, this week saw the teams printing t-shirts, bags and teddy bears to sell. I am going to say something shocking here, unlike the millions of people sitting at home confident they could do better, I can exclusively reveal that I have no idea how to run a printing business – not a clue. By the end of Day 2 I’d most probably still be sitting in the introductory boardroom position, dribbling and burbling loudly whilst internally wishing I’d paid more attention in my reception class on potato printing. Mocking the actual candidates for missing the finer points of cost-benefit analysis, choosing the right location and harassing people in shops sounds funny now, but I would never have got anywhere near those. I’d still be wondering if a print of man entering his earlier thirties hanging himself would be appropriate on a baby’s T-shirt. Then there’s the selling part of the task, somewhere else where I wouldn’t excel. In a sales-based situation I have all the imposing dominance of a piece of belly button fluff, my sales’ pitch is something on the lines of “Would you like to buy this? No?! Ok.” – meekly whispered with all the authority of a struggling supply teacher who has just been locked in the stationery cupboard by a load of 17 year old bullies. I’m just not pushy enough, I’m exceptionally British, I could make awkward flailing an Olympic event – though I’d never be forceful enough to get to the top of the sport.
After a horrid two days, I’d return into the boardroom to have everything I’d done ripped apart by Lord Sugar – and fail to get any customer service support for my Amstrad computer I owned back in the 1980s when computer games had to be loaded off a tape over a period of approximately fourteen working weeks. Predictably the boardroom discussions on this week’s show turned into the shouting version of last year’s London Riots, where a selection of gibbering morons shouted at each other so well that they could probably replace the House of Commons and no one would notice. Again I wouldn’t contribute well here, I’d be sat in the corner, raising my hand politely waiting for my turn to speak. When confronted by an angry Lord Sugar wondering why I’d lost £600 of money that probably wasn’t his on a ridiculous task that would be a far less effective way of raising money than just begging on the street, I wouldn’t be able to robustly defend myself. I’d probably just mumble something about wishing I’d applied to be on Pointless instead of The Apprentice.
At this point understandably Lord Sugar would fire me, because let’s face it the boardroom chair I’m sitting on has done better in the task than me. Here at least I would have the common decency, unlike all the other applicants, to burst into tears throw a tantrum and slap Karen round the face. None of this “thank you for the opportunity Lord Sugar” c**p from me – the biggest piece of bulls**t anyone on that show says. Though at this point Lord Sugar probably wouldn’t order me a taxi, and instead I would have to get the night bus home, and then get stabbed by a drunken man as I pathetically ranted about what a terrible mistake Lord Sugar had made and how one day he would regret it. He won’t.
I imagine none of this year’s contestants will do as badly as I would, though it would make a difficult interview for Dara O’Briain on The Apprentice: You’re Fired as he desperately tried to ask you where you think you went wrong as you bled out of several new orifices happily carved for you by a drunken man on the N67. And on that grim note I’m offer to hand my resignation into Lord Sugar just in case for some reason he does decide to hire me – apparently Nick Hewer is a known stapler thief and I can’t bear to work with people like that!
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