I
am delighted to see the return of The Apprentice. It’s a bulletproof format and
they always find another batch of candidates who’ve apparently never seen the
show before. Or who have seen the show and decided that despite all evidence to
the contrary, the way to win is to behave like an arrogant bell-end. Because
the problem with all the people who’ve failed before was that they didn’t think
enough of themselves or try hard enough to resemble Lord Shaftsbury’s purple
helmet.
I
could never get bored of watching a cartload of deluded idiots who take
themselves too seriously being put through a series of pointless and impossible
stunts by a tiny, seemingly infallible scrotum-man. In episode one they had 24
hours to set up a business selling fish-based lunches to office workers,
despite having no experience in that field. Making any money would be an
achievement, as would managing not to take out hundreds of innocent passersby
with food poisoning.
But
from the comfort of our own home we are allowed to feel superior and pretend we
would be able to set up a competitive piscine catering company in under a day,
with a load of pricks that we’ve never met before and make more than £1.87
profit.
The
real reason the show works though is the riddle trapped in an enigma, stored
inside a melted Spitting Image puppet of Sid James’s testicle that is Lord Alan
Sugar. I am obsessed with this man. He is my hero, who despite making his
fortune largely through computing, will quite regularly go on Twitter and ask
his four and a half million followers what the current Spurs score is. Surely he
must be overwhelmed with responses and given that he is clearly on the internet
why can’t he check himself? Perhaps he’s using one of his Amstrad emailer
phones and doesn’t want to risk paying the tariff for going online? Or is it,
as I like to imagine, because he’s secretly very lonely and just enjoys the
human contact of five hundred thousand people telling him that it’s 2-1 to
Spurs.
I
also like Sugar because he can’t pronounce the word “resuméâ€, charmingly calling it a “res-oooo-mayâ€. Given
he works on a show that involves checking a lot of resumés this might be seen as a
drawback which would have seen him lose out on hosting the show. But he’s
overcome this disability admirably. I don’t think anyone dares correct him, because his finger has the power to
put them out of work. My theory is that whichever candidate shouts, “It’s
pronounced resumé,
you pillock!â€
will have passed the test and be given the keys to the Amstrad emailer phone
factory, like in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, (when Charlie points out
what Willy Wonka actually sounds like and Wonka resigns in shame).
And
of course Sugar’s bon mots (or as he calls them “bone moatsâ€) are worth the
licence fee in themselves. My favouritewas
when he told the new candidates “ You all look good on paper.... but
then so do fish and chips". It sounded like an insult, but when you
thought about it you realised it couldn’t be. Because generally if fish and chips look good
on paper, they turn out to be good. It would only be derogatory if he followed
it up by saying, “I don’t like fish and chips on paper, so what I am saying is
that you are all rubbishâ€. And he didn’t say that. So he must have liked them.
Watch The Apprentice. It’s genuinely the best
show on the telly.
I performed at the Royal Albert Hall last Friday. Alas I was
in the Elgar Rooms, whilst Cliff Richard was on the main stage, back from his
summer holiday. But it meant that Cliff
was heckling me throughout: “You’re just devil woman!†I
didn’t really have a comeback. “It’s so funny how we don’t talk any more,†he
continued. He was right, I had nothing. We made a great double act. But are we
Cliff and Richard or Richard and Herring?
