He really should have fired the 'bloody lot'

The BBC, alas, is stifling the programme with its habitual formulae. This is the fourth series and there can hardly be anyone in Britain who does not know the plot, yet every week watchers must endure a protracted introductory sequence. More minutes are clipped from the hour's length by a reprise of the previous episode, and more minutes still in indulging the director's conviction that we have the attention span of infants and the retention span of the senile, and the cameraman's irrelevant claim to be creating a televisual work of art of which shots of sunsets, rural vistas and "stunning" architectural locations are essential props.

Time and again the sane man, sick of these stale conventions, the driving shots, the aerial shots, the combatants crowded on staircase or escalator, shouts at his set "Get on with it, get on with it!" for surely there must be more solid pudding than we get in this show, more internecine scheming, more perfidy and guile, more downright treachery. Surely more must happen in their lodgings, for these apprentices are compelled to share rooms for the duration of the shoot. How do they manage such intimacy with rivals whom they loathe? Are there as many bathrooms and lavatories as candidates? - are there no opportunities in selfishness with these to thwart their rivals? Why is all this so rarely on camera when it must condition attitude and performance within the tasks set for the teams?

In the current series we see a little more of the parts played by Margaret and Nick as Nicklaus to Alan Sugar's Hoffmann, white-haired worthies offering advice, providing him with information on matters that might otherwise not be confessed. Hitherto they have been largely book-ends at his magisterial appearances, but now we see them with their notebooks, shrugging shoulders, looking aghast, eyes raised heavenward in the manner of a Raphael martyrdom. Programmes are much the better for their prominence.

Without them Sugar might not have known this week that the Renaissance team had, by bribery, attempted to sabotage team Alpha - "a cheap shot', as Nick succinctly put it, nor that Michael, who described himself in his CV as "a good Jewish boy", did not know the meaning of kosher and thought a chicken killed for halal meat would do - supported in both these endeavours by Jenny, a vicious, bullying, horse-faced harridan. But not one in their team knew the difference - and that is what I mean by their lack of education, their lack of awareness of the larger realities of life.

Not knowing kosher from halal is symbolic of not knowing Israel from Palestine, Jew from Arab, Jewry from Islam; it suggests that these would-be moguls of industry and commerce are wholly ignorant of what lies behind the seething politics of the Near and Middle East and, given the opportunity, would set up shop with pork pies in Jerusalem and pork scratchings in Baghdad.

As for Michael's being Jewish, I sensed a deep anger in Alan Sugar's soul - anger that here was a creep who, sensing imminent danger, made matters worse by claiming that only one of his parents is Jewish, a creep who had been too lazy and indifferent to learn anything of the Jewish ritual and rule because they are only half his heritage.

"I'll fire the whole bloody five of you if I have to ..." was his verdict on Michael's duplicitous, dissembling and deceitful team. I cheered. At last Sugar has seen that he must junk the rules even if this wrecks the rigid framework of the programme. I pray that he will go further, and rather than let a team win by a margin that amounts to petty cash gained by luck rather than good sense, make a moral judgment of the remaining aspirants.

With alacritous contempt he shed the mendacious Jenny, but brooded awhile over who too should be sacked: "There but for the grace of God go I" he said of Michael and relented, firing instead the second Jenny, the hapless leader of the team - two female asses at one blow.

I don't care who wins. Simon the soldier, the only decent man - though idiotically boastful of his high IQ - went weeks ago, his downfall pupped by confidence and ignorance; and of the girls, only to Lucinda, dressed always like an amateur French tart, and the fundamentally decent Sara would I give the time of day.

With its embarrassing selection of shallow braggarts who know nothing - not even the price of fish - the BBC insulted Sugar and made his choice too easy. Only of Simon, with his instinctive loyalty, could Sugar have made an apprentice in any meaningful sense of the term; he might still find something whimsical for Sara or Lucinda, neither of whom is an unremittingly boastful bitch; but in the rest he must have recognised, almost at first sight, characters of nothing but useless and talentless opportunism. If it runs to a fifth series, let The Apprentice become a battle between equals worthy of their aspirations, worthy too of Sugar's interest and respect; let us see more of the evident regret in his dismissing Simon - "I'm sorry, my friend ..." Let the old tyrant's choice be difficult.