Morning:
8°c
We take The Apprentice as a personal insult in the Groskop family. Especially my dad, a salesman all his life. "They'd never get any repeat custom," he thunders, banging his fist on the Easter dinner table. "It's not real profit. In real life the customers would refuse to pay." The Apprentice is about hit-and-run money-making. Pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap.
Rake it in before anyone asks for a refund. It gives sales a bad name.
What I find most shocking is that the show masquerades as some kind of legitimate business guide when really it's all about greed, desperation and discovering your inner cowboy. It's not about anyone who has a genuine business plan. It's about finding people who are good at doing what Sir Alan Sugar has done all his life: spotting a gap in the market, exploiting it until the bubble bursts and moving on to the next thing. Oh. Hang on, doesn't that remind you of something?
Ah yes. Banking. Because if we worship and revere The Apprentice, how can we complain about this week's news of Goldman Sachs's £3.1 billion pay pool (after a £6.7 billion US government bail-out last October)? The lure of the get-rich-quick scheme is as powerful as ever. The Apprentice's continued cult following is proof that as a society we have learnt next to nothing over the past 12 months. The Apprentice and an unregulated City are two sides of the same greedy coin.
The "business" we see in The Apprentice is very much like the worst excesses of banking in that it's a legal form of daylight robbery. And I do often find myself wondering why the apprentices don't just rob a bank. That way they would definitely end up with the most money at the end of the task. Which is all Sir Alan ever cares about.
This was painfully obvious in the most excruciating episode so far, the one about the sandwiches and the canapés. The winning team served mise-en-bouches: prison food by another name. Their "cocktail blini" were vegetables wrapped in sweet pancakes. It was all inedible and hideous, masterminded by a team leader who claimed, terrifyingly, to run a restaurant. The corporate client agreed, reluctantly, to pay half the bill. And this was the team that won.
It's such spectacularly bad business that you have to wonder whether The Apprentice isn't secretly subversive, revealing the ugly, unpalatable reality of money-making. The gormlessness, inefficiency and overall woeful ineptitude of this year's candidates point to the truth about the pursuit of wealth: that it's a mug's game. Maybe The Apprentice can succeed where the anarchists have failed. Could Nick and Margaret be secretly plotting to bring down capitalism?
Let's not fall for the hype. The Apprentice is priceless car-crash television. But when its guiding principles of profit at any cost are applied to real life, we - the customers - are always the losers. Unless you like your cocktail blini served with soggy vegetables, that is.
Strip giggles are lost on me
If you'VE dreamed of seeing Lynda Bellingham's nipples, your time has come. The feel-good factor was on display in all its naked middle-aged glory at this week's West End premiere of Calendar Girls. Rarely have I seen a West End audience enjoy themselves so much. You'd have to be a stony-hearted snob not to giggle. That would be me, then. I snarled and growled at every cheesy one-liner and covered my eyes at the nudity. The actresses are not to blame. They not only have to strip but deliver jokes in one breath and
lip-quivering confessions the next. The coach parties cheered. An elderly man near me wept. I cringed. Is it me? Or them?
Puppy love? Not round here
“Look, mummy, Barack Obama's children have a dog.” Yes, darling, and your point is …? I could see where this conversation was going. For some time my children have been pestering me for a pet, preferably of the canine variety. A cat I can just about imagine. And thankfully my (exaggerated) asthma provides a useful counter-argument. The thought, however, of a Bo-sized mutt polluting the atmosphere of our cramped, over-mortgaged quarters with its doggy breath and stinking pelt turns my stomach.
Now the presidential seal of approval is seriously threatening the cast-iron domestic dog ban. I have tried pointing out that President Obama has a slightly bigger house. And a much bigger garden. They just argue for a smaller dog. I give up.
Reader views (3)
Here here Viv. Grumpy Old Men, and Women, is the only TV worth watching.
Talented Britain - more like Britain's have been given a hundred different ways of getting their 15 minutes of fame(?). Is this what they now call public service tele.
- Clifton, London, 17/04/2009 14:08
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Yes, just like all the other "celebrity" and "talent" shows that infest our once cherished TV schedules, this is just another route to humiliating people (although many of these "golden wonders" humiliate themselves).
Shame on you BBC
Stop transmitting all this trash now, there`s plenty of room for `em on the other channels.
Waste our hard earned money at your future peril.
- Darius Midwinter, London UK, 16/04/2009 13:08
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"Rake it in before anyone asks for a refund. It gives sales a bad name."
Blimey its taken you that long to work out.
I admit to watching previous series (missing odd episodes) but this series, I only saw last nights helping - the contestants are the dimmmer than ever before.
I can only think SIRRRRRR ALAN (as he likes to be called) doesnt like Brummies coz the idiots last night who should have been voted off were the two put in charge of the expenses.
And in the end - did anyone inspect "the soap product" for health grounds, some idiots take seaweed, mix it with wotnot and sell it to joe public ? Thats as clever as you are SIRRRRR ALAN.
BBC is just one big band wagon for those with money to advertise for free via this claptrap of a show and the other one - Dragon's Pen (VOMIT).
- Arvinder, Birmingham, 16/04/2009 12:06
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