TweetThe Apprentice Episode 1 – the circus comes to town After she’s got over an ear-bending from the owners of The Dragons’ franchise elsewhere on the Beeb, for plagiarising their format, the Producer of the Apprentice must be spitting blood. Doesn’t the Good Lord! Sugarlump get it yet? We schadenfreudians, devoted, long-serving crew of the […]

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Tweet The Apprentice Week 11 – now only two can play Sir Alan Sugar in government? It is rumoured tonight that SAS has been offered a job by Gordon Brown. Given the rest of the news, this is a bit like the captain of the Titanic inviting you on a cruise. This invitation, if true, […]

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Tweet The Apprentice Week 10 – intelligent, thoughtful, skilled team-player, good listener, good manager – you’re fired. If Sralan Sugar had been in charge of the European Champion’s League Final this week they’d still be playing: he moves the goalposts so suddenly and so often no one could ever score. Last week the high-ticket Rocking […]

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Tweet The Apprentice Week 9 – Getting Real This was my come-uppance week. Sralan had a good show and even Ben showed a bit of the self-knowledge one despaired of him ever acquiring. It is a troubling aspect of The Apprentice that everyone later on The Apprentice You’re Fired (TAYF) suddenly becomes more likeable, more […]

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TweetThe Apprentice Week 8 – Margate Mission Muffed Sugar’s increasingly capricious firing decisions and inconsistent rationale for them invites analysis. The promising Rocky Andrews was fired in week 2, partly on the argument that he was ‘too young’; yet the strikingly immature Ben, just 22 remains after some of the crassest remarks and dumbest behaviour […]

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Tweet The Apprentice Week 5 – Parrots, Pirates and Pants The penny finally drops: when deciding who to take into the boardroom, the losing team leader must ignore task performance, personal animosity one or two-way, disruptiveness, charmlessness and most especially the unshakable solipsistic egoism shared by all the apprentice Apprentices. No: the implacable rule is […]

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Tweet The Apprentice Week 4 – ‘Sh*t of the Show’ winner – with still 8 shows to go. Yale Psychologist Stanley Milgram July 1961: “I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental […]

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Tweet The Apprentice Week 3 – getting serious Damn. It’s so much more fun to take the p*ss. OK there was the usual playground bully hubris from Ben “I’m the best looking man here” Clarke; and routine autocratic obscenity from Debra “I’m the f**cking Project Manager” Barr. James McQuillan’s verbal diarrhoea continues though thankfully we […]

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Tweet The Apprentice – week 1 – Schadenfreude Returns Funny, sarcastic, satirical, hilariously silly, scabrous, outspoken and great great fun. No, give me a break, not the actual battle of the bullsh***ers – but Adrian Child’s great little follow up – The Apprentice –You’ve Been Fired – where the week’s firee is affectionately mocked before […]

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TweetThe Apprentice – Week 10 Mystery solved. 4 million screams a week of why? why? why? finally answered. The reason Sralan kept the unspeakable Michael Sobollocks on board and in the boardroom is because he was willing to do absolutely anything to win: lie, cheat, grovel, beg, plead, dupe, you name the device and Michael […]

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