What you get with Lord Sugar is faulty grammar

The lucky winner of The Apprentice should, however, watch the wording in his or her contract.

A friend of mine recently got Sugar to sign his autobiography What You See is What You Get for his girlfriend (the vice-president of an investment bank).

She is now the proud owner of a book which tells her: "Your Hired".

Journalists feel it's time to reach for the Sky

Sky News has apparently had about 10 applications to join its political team under Adam Boulton.

The vacancy is for the horrifically early morning slot. This was done by Niall Paterson until his recent promotion to defence correspondent.

There are about five internal Sky applications, one from the BBC and a couple from newspaper lobby hacks, including one from the Daily Telegraph.

The polls say Matt for X Factor

According to pollsters Survation.com, despite the hype about boy band One Direction (or One Dimension as they are affectionately known in our house), it is painter/decorator/public school boy Matt Cardle who is set to win this year's X Factor by miles.

Soulful Liverpudlian Rebecca Ferguson (an obsession of Harper's Bazaar editor Lucy Yeomans) is coming second but by some margin. 70% of X Factor viewers are female which goes some way to explaining the Cuddles phenomena.

Based on Saturday's show, Survation reckon Matt has 55% of the vote, compared to Rebecca's 21% and One Direction's 11%. Unfortunately, this mean's TV's most irritating woman, his mentor Dannii Minogue, may have a winner on her hands.

Open season at the Guardian

An apocryphal story from the Grauniad? Word from King's Cross has it that employees have got used to the "sound of popping" in the office from "a man who goes up and down the canal taking pot shots with an air-rifle in the direction of Alan Rusbridger's office. Motivation unknown." Does he have an open window policy?

Desmond and his radical approach

Morose faces at Channel 5 where new proprietor Richard Desmond has introduced a new approach to expenses — pre-booking.

Rather than putting something on expenses after you've done it, my mole reports: "If you want a cab, fill the form in, send it to Mr D, hopefully get it approved and THEN get your cab. If indeed you've still got a meeting to go to by then."

Let's hope it doesn't catch on.

London's media family

And finally: it's the Midwich Media Babies. Times editor James Harding, Times columnist Giles Coren, aforementioned Express proprietor Mr D and Charles Dunstone (non-executive director of the Mail) are all expecting children within about a week of each other in February. What an interesting crop of playmates!