The Apprentice

By TV Grace - Alan Sugar? No thanks, she’s sweet enough

Since my knowledge of all things ‘business’ is based on the time when my chips were wrapped up in the Financial Times causing me to ingest a small piece of the FTSE index that got stuck to my chip fork, I shouldn’t really like The Apprentice.

But its success lies not in its theme or premise, but rather the vile and repulsive contestants who, quite literally, steal the show. If these hideous creatures are anything to go by, then I’m quite happy being illiterate in the art of business, but then again, it seems that these so-called experts’ knowledge is hardly fluent.

Take Syed, for example, whose departure from the series was bizarrely sad. This is a man (whose pristine dress-sense masks the fact that he is a COMPLETE IDIOT) being made to organise entertainment on a cruise ship for people who he’d probably cross the road to avoid in the ‘real’ world. It’s apparent that the last time he had fun was in the late eighties when he typed ‘5318008’ into his calculator whilst totting up his profit margins and realised that, if he turned it upside down, it looked like a rude word. Unsurprisingly, his ridiculous ‘Fun Day’ was a complete disaster. Given the fact that the fun consisted almost entirely of unwitting fools being made to run backwards around the deck all day.

The antithesis of Syed would have to be Paul. Clearly destined for great things at a Butlins Holiday Camp near you (unless you’re lucky then it’ll be not so near you). Paul’s incessant bum-wiggling seemed a bit too much for the happy, erm, cruisers. And his dayjob is a ‘Headhunter’. Ahem.

I’d actually grown rather fond of these two imbeciles. Sadly, the same cannot be said for Ruth (the fat one) who consistently made me have to suppress the urge to lash out at the screen. Her sickening smirk gives off the impression that she was the sort of girl who would spread rumours around school that you’d wet yourself going up the rope ladder in PE, or that you’d kissed the boy with cold sores who ate nothing but cabbage. Yep, you know the sort.

Ruth would be better suited replacing one of the judges in American Idol. If Simon Cowell’s ‘Big Bad Wolf’ persona transformed Pop Idol from a bland talent show to a farcical pantomime, then it does the exact opposite to American Idol. He’s the only thing that brings the show down to earth amidst Paula ‘Poor Man’s Teri Hatcher’ Abdul’s pathetic blubbering and Randy Jackson’s gangsta nonsense.

For those of you who haven’t seen American Idol, it’s like every stereotype we associate with the USA has been moulded into an hour’s entertainment, complete with gushing praise and obligatory thanks to god. They’ve even begun to cut off Simon Cowell with a sharp burst of the theme tune before he gets into full evil mode. Something MUST be done.

I have an idea: why not replace Paula Abdul’s saccharine appraisals with the real deal? Sir Alan Sugar would have a thing or two to say to the contestants, wouldn’t he?