What The Apprentice is sorely lacking is Baggs of charm
THERE is a simple way of judging whether it’s been a good series of The Apprentice or not.
You measure it against the level of resentment you feel about paying rent for the £17million London mansion the candidates have called home for the last nine weeks.
If, for instance, you want them hauled out of it, feet first, at 5am and rehoused somewhere “more synergistic with their skill set”, like the local landfill site, then I’d suggest it’s probably been a stinker.
That’s certainly where I’m at with the 16th series of the BBC1 show, where some significant changes were apparent right from the word go.
The most obvious was that human wallflower Tim Campbell “MBE” had replaced the injured and much-missed Claude Littner, who must be reinstated as a trusted assistant at the earliest available opportunity.
The second was the line-up itself, which could be fairly accurately described as “BBC diverse”.
That is to say, it featured absolutely no one from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but there was an American woman, Amy Anzel, and a bloke from the Irish Republic, called Conor Gilsenan.
At first glance, though, it did also seem to have the right smattering of authentic Apprentice characters. The essential numbnuts every series needs to thrive.
Most read in News
Candidates, I thought, like: Akshay Thakrar, who’s “nick-named AK-47” only in his own head. The heavily styled Nick Showering, who’s nicknamed “Nick Showergel” only in my own head.
And bus-throwing Amy, America’s answer to Bonnie Langford, whose business MO always involved volunteering some other sap for the job of project manager and then blaming them for every subsequent disaster.
Fairly quickly as well, the show established what looked like a pleasing pattern. Lord Sugar would ask them to go off and dazzle him with their business and marketing skills and the boys’ team would almost literally serve up a piece of crap by return favour.
Week one, it was a cruise-line logo that looked like something Bananaman had evacuated after a month on the Imodium.
Week two it was an electric toothbrush they’d christened “The Brown Wand”, which had a horrified Sugar threatening the boys with a psychologist, “if you bring me back one more thing that looks like a turd”.
But then, just as quickly as I’d probably raised expectations, something unthinkable happened.
The teams merged, the boys got over the toilet obsession, challenges were dulled by a combination of profit margins and product placement and The Apprentice became, by its own high standards, boring.
In the normal course of things, even a poor series can be lifted by the foolproof home-shopping channel task, on which the show established its greatness, back in 2005.
But this one was already too far gone by the time it reached that stage last night, meaning the episode just passed in a blur of solar-powered owl lights, inflatable flamingos and vegan-friendly snail gunk that was neither vegan nor particularly friendly.
Something, then, is clearly up and I have to tell myself it’s a simple failure of personnel and the reason this series hasn’t produced any great episodes is because it’s lacked any great characters.
Those so-bloody-awful-they’re-brilliant Apprentice legends you want kept in until the brutal interview round, like Saira Khan, Paul Torrisi, Syed Ahmed, Katie Hopkins and probably the greatest of them all, Stuart Baggs.
I say I have to tell myself this as the alternative explanation is The Apprentice has nothing more to offer. We have seen it all before and it’s done.
This would be a tragedy for the BBC, because not only is a bad series of The Apprentice still better than 99 per cent of its output, it’s also one of the very few programmes that doesn’t worship blindly at the fountain of youth.
Quite the opposite, in fact. It corrects their spelling (half of this year’s lot couldn’t even manage Arctic), hammers out all that unearned self-confidence and lets them know they need to offer the workplace something more than passive-aggression, buck-passing and an overwhelming sense of entitlement.
Good or bad series, The Apprentice still has the greatest unwritten mission statement on television. It is National Service for bellends.
Unexpected morons in the bagging area
THE Chase, Bradley Walsh: “The Battle For Britney is a documentary about which woman?”
Matt: “Margaret Thatcher.”
Bradley Walsh: “In Monaco, the Avenue Princesse Grace is named after which woman?”
Jo: “Marie Antoinette.”
Celebrity Mastermind, Clive Myrie: “What word for something or someone very large was the name of the elephant bought from London Zoo in 1882 by American showman PT Barnum for his circus?” Snoochie Shy: “Steve.”
Bradley Walsh: “What Charles Dickens novel is considered to be his most autobiographical?” Harv: “Moby Dick.”
Random TV irritations
BBC and ITV obliterating Tuesday and Wednesday night’s schedule with FA Cup football.
Peaky Blinders remaining the ultimate triumph of style over substance.
And the cretinously woke Football Focus devoting less time to the Ukraine invasion fallout (three minutes eight seconds) than it did to a discussion about the pronouns of non-binary footballer Caz Simone, whose contention that “it’s not the case you’re born male or female” was undermined by two things: All known science and the logo on her manager’s woolly hat – “Brighouse Town Ladies”.
’Struckism up to much
FOR all those many millions of us who’ve lost endless nights of sleep wondering what an Amish Beastie Boys tribute act would look like, ITV finally provided an answer at the weekend.
They would look exactly like Jack, Liam and Richard dressed as “Team Rag ’N’ Bone Man” on Saturday’s edition of Starstruck.
It’s a public service of sorts, I suppose, answering the questions absolutely no one was really asking, and probably the main reason why I cannot stop watching this damn show even though Sheridan Smith’s aggressive brand of sycophancy irritates the hell out of me and the singing is nothing to write home about either.
However, I do also enjoy the challenge of working out what the judges really mean when they tell yet another contestant: “That was so much fun,” (none of you can sing) and the endless torment of Adam Lambert, Starstruck’s only honest panellist, who threw me a bit when he told the final team: “You all picked out little isms Celine Dion has got.”
Professionalism? Egotism? Botulism? What the clattering f*** was he on about? I wondered. Until I remembered the introductory words of Celine 2, Esther.
“I take a lot from eastern spiritualism, I have three cats and enjoy making sound healing music with chimes, gongs and cymbals.”
Mentalism.
Roving reporter
ROVING reporter of the week? BBC2’s Forbidden America: Porn’s MeToo, Louis Theroux: “Typically, how many people would it be?”
Ex-porn star Jennifer Steele: “The most was 20 in The Mexican Anal Gangbang.”
“What was Mexican about it . . . ?” “The men were all Mexican.”
And what was . . .
Actually, scrub the next two questions.
Great sporting insights
PAUL MERSON: “The hardest job in the world is to keep it simple.” Robbie Savage: “Ageing teams get older.”
And Tim Sherwood: “1-1. What a poor result for United. Nil-nil it finished.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
TV quiz
Who said the following, this week: “Presumably it’s more like those dildos you work with every day?”
A) Naked Attraction’s Anna Richardson to sex toy tester Hayley.
B) The One Show interviewing Steph McGovern.
TV Gold
THE simple stampeding brilliance of Ant & Dec’s “Ding dong that’s my doorbell” game on Takeaway.
The Ukrainian woman, Olena Gnes, who livened up ITN’s Tuesday lunchtime bulletin by accurately describing Vladimir Putin as “a piece of s***”.
Gold’s Billy Connolly Does . . . reminding us he was, in his prime, Britain’s greatest ever stand-up.
Sky Documentaries’ Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes, which was the best thing I watched this week.
And Peaky Blinders’ birdsong tribute to the irreplaceable Helen “Aunt Pol” McCrory, which was by far the most beautiful thing I saw last week.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
Lookalike
THIS week’s winner is Kathryn Burn, off The Apprentice, and The Crazy Frog. Sent in by Craig Boyd, Leeds.
Picture research: AMY READING