The truth about 'The Apprentice'

No, *you're* fired.

Possibly the worst Sugababes lineup yet. [BBC]

In the EJECTOR SEAT series, usually I watch the first episode of a show and ask myself (literally) if I want to watch more. This week, a gear shift: The Apprentice.

So, The Apprentice: a reality/talent/slapstick/gameshow that’s been running for… twenty years in the UK. I thought Ejector Seat concerned itself only with analysing pilot episodes? Are we going back to watch the first ever episode?

Nope, we’re having a mid-season format change. I feel I can no longer continue my life without a withering analysis of a show I loathe with every fibre of my pathetic being, so I’d be grateful if you’d play along and keep the questions coming.

So the UK version is helmed by Alan Sugar, a mogul with digits in innumerable pies, and the show’s original intention was to find him his next dogsbody… sorry, right-hand man or woman, with – in the earlier series – a guaranteed job at his company and a pet project to deliver. So far, this is sounding like one of a million Noughties reality format launches, back when you couldn’t move for delusional hopefuls vying for recording contracts, life-changing cash prizes, or a wedding, shown live on ITV and inexplicably witnessed by light entertainment’s cyanide, Shane Richie. You loved The X Factor (until 2009), so why are you so anti The Apprentice?

It feels like a relic of a much nastier age, harking back to Victorians poking the inmates of Bedlam with a stick.

A nastier age? Than now? Have you not seen a newspaper in the last decade?

You know what I mean. Nasty on TV without consequences, without the duty of care that would be expected now (even if it isn’t always delivered upon). Its vibes are rotten.

Crip along in a crap. [BBC]

Again, I think you overestimate the strides reality TV has made over the last few years but never mind. How long were you watching it before your conscience – if we can call it that – began to sound an alarm?

I missed the first ten years or so. Since then, every episode I’ve seen has been against my will. My partner is a big fan, and when he used to watch I’d go to a different room and write a novel. The Last Romeo’s existence is down to the fact I’d rather nail my tonsils to the Big Dipper at Blackpool Pleasure Beach than watch an episode, but it’s sometimes unavoidable. (I wear headphones when he watches it now – ditto The Traitors.)

You don’t watch, but you know you don’t like it. Sounds like… you’re an idiot.

I’ve never eaten a dog turd, sweetheart, but I have more than a hunch I wouldn’t be a huge fan.

Whew. Okay. Let’s assess this hatred piece by piece. Let’s start with the contestants.

The Apprentice’s intake usually features a few of the following:

– A man with magician-like facial hair
– Someone who never rewound the tapes before returning them to Blockbuster (and is also old enough to remember this decaying reference)
– Eva Braun in Cubitt’s specs
– A part-time nail technician whose business plan projects earnings of £1.2m in the first year
– Someone whose big idea is to sell midget gems for over £20 per portion
– A man in a flammable suit with the tailoring elegance of an acrylic coffin
– At least five women wearing bodycon dresses in Play-Doh colours
– A man who talks like he’s cutting someone up at traffic lights
– An amiable, average lad, with a whole tub of Dax in his hair, who coasts to the semifinal before everybody turns on him
– A sales manager who earns more than the prize money but is here for ‘the experience’ (they will be ejected in round one)
– Someone with the emotional bandwidth of Siri
– A debadged prefect who never got over their GCSE results
– Someone who became a parent aged 16 so talks to the other contestants like a trauma nurse offering hot sweet tea to someone emerging from a coma
– Someone old (over 35)
– A man who immediately makes you want to put your hand over the top of your drink every time he comes on screen

ABBA Voyage, but make it BUSINESS. Probably preferable to the real thing. [BBC]

They sound like… a spirited bunch. Don’t you need a few ‘characters’ to make a TV show worth watching? You can’t have twelve accountants every series; people would switch off in droves.

I know. Perhaps this is why I can’t watch reality TV anymore – those who apply to go on it are the type of person you would cross seven lanes of the M1 to avoid.

And the contestants all live together, don’t they? So it’s a bit like Big Brother without the dreary ‘shopping budget’ chat? Sounds ideal!

The brief scenes in the shared house do add a tinge of humanity to proceedings, but there’s something barbaric about them too. I know it’s likely fake that the participants are a) rudely awoken at 5am and b) given 15 minutes to get ready (some of the women have full salon-quality blowouts), but the early starts and needless pressure ties into the poisonous lore around CEOs, like those creepy, robotic profiles in the Sunday magazines. That to get ahead you must rise when it’s dark, push yourself to breaking point in the gym for two hours, before breakfast: a lemon-scented wet wipe with a grape on top. It’s a cynical attempt to make business people appear superhuman when all it does is bring to mind that clammy middle-aged bloke who drinks his son’s blood to stay young (or something), yet still looks his actual age, only sweatier.

What about the tasks? They’re entertaining! Number-crunching, dummy marketing campaigns, and high-pressure sales pitches to weed out future tycoons from the time wasters.

The tasks are pointless now, with no true measure of success; they serve only as filler until we get to the boardroom for the firing. The tasks usually include something like:

– Making a game with graphics on a par with a 1987 episode of Catchphrase and a plot about as taxing as looking at an ultrasound
– Selling dim sum for the price of a new car on a makeshift market stall to disassociated office workers
– A sales presentation to a bunch of po-faced buyers who yearn for bear-baiting to come back into vogue
– Catering a middle-managers’ conference in a First Division football ground
– A debrief in Billingsgate Market at 3 a.m.
– Acting as tour guides at a local attraction second only in the allure stakes to a still operational cooling tower in a power station
– Designing a logo that either looks like a flaccid member or contains unsuitable subliminal messaging
– Devising a new kind of baby food that must always include an ingredient that no earthly child would ever eat, like samphire or a Fisherman’s Friend
– Promoting a method of transport that either nobody can afford or nobody would travel on unless terminally ill and needing a reminder that perhaps dying wasn’t so bad after all

And throughout, Sugar’s boardroom minions, Karren Brady and Tim Campbell (the first ever winner) lurk nearby, pulling a cat’s bum face.

Nutritional benefit: death. [BBC/Reddit]

Then they get fired, right? Fun to watch incompetent people get what’s coming to them, no?

Is it? The firing now inhabits the bulk of the show and is an opportunity for the participants to become BUSINESS C•NTS. They develop selective amnesia, dismantle any alliances or friendships formed, fling blame everywhere, and embarrass themselves. Sugar, meanwhile, reminds them they’re useless and cracks humourless jokes, at which they dutifully honk with laughter. It’s all a bit sad and mean-spirited. The best outcome would be to seal the room and fill it with lava.

There are worse ideas for primetime TV circling commissioners’ desks right now – but how would you transport the lava to Sugar’s office at Canary Wharf?

Sugar’s office is in SLOUGH. The glam aerial shots of the City and Docklands might as well be the opening titles of Dallas for all the relevance they have to the show.

What about the interview stage? Load-testing the robustness of the unfortunates’ business plans and assessing their suitability for operating the vending machines in the Amstrad canteen.

It ends up being something else entirely. A bizarre face-off between four hatched-faced, millionaire interrogators and there wretched candidates, as evenly matched as a three-legged kitten and a T-Rex with irritable bowel syndrome and no key for the accessible loo.

‘And to the left, ladies and gentlemen, if you peer down into the gutter, you will see all my hopes and dreams. [BBC/YouTube]

Isn’t it the contestants’ fault for presenting flimsy business plans?

There’s a distinct whiff of days-old haddock about this. Almost all the business plans contain at least one catastrophic mistake, so either unseen ‘producers’ have selected ropey business plans on purpose – a strange thing to do if we’re setting up Sugar with a new copilot – or there is no vetting of candidates. Either way, the interviewers’ savagery is exaggerated. They talk about bootstraps and grafting, glossing over the toxic work cultures they benefitted from and perpetuated, not to mention the unfortunates crushed underfoot en route to untold wealth. They are raging not at the young hopefuls, but the dying of the light (and their tax bills). The posturing and snarling cloak their own insecurities and inadequacies. You learn nothing of the contestants, and come away with zero wisdom other than ‘be a sociopath and live long enough and you too could end up in an Eames chair with raging lumbago, while a 27-year-old marketing graduate (2:2, but still) weeps their heart out in front of you’.

Aren’t you falling into that trap of assuming that just because you don’t like something or have stopped watching, it should be whisked off air immediately?

I have hardly watched it and never liked it. It’s been on air two decades so nobody could accuse me of a knee-jerk reaction. It will survive. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a horrible show.

You’re not going to start going all ‘The Apprentice is directly responsible for the downfall of society’ are you? Because you can say about almost anything, aside from Double Decker chocolate bars.

I’m not saying The Apprentice is directly responsible for the downfall of society. But I’m not saying it’s not played its part, either. Go check out the alumni of the show. Watch people talk into their phones on speaker in that really annoying mid-task way the contestants do. Regard the continued attention given to the programme’s horrendous lead personnel on both sides of the Atlantic. The show is cursed.

Fine. So here comes the killer question blah blah blah – eject, or stick with it?

I have long since ejected.

Well you better clean that mess up.

The Apprentice screens on BBC 1 on Thursdays, and is available on iPlayer, and is the worst show on television.

Exactly. [BBC/YouTube]

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ONE-LINER

Every week, in the lead-up to the publication of the paperback version of my latest novel LEADING MAN on 17 April, I’m posting one random line, picked from every 25 pages or so, to build up what we might kindly call excitement. This week: p.150:

There was only one slot for a gangly cardigan enthusiast in this mob.

What does it mean? Luckily there are several ways to find out! Buy the hardback, or preorder the paperback, out in April. Preordering can make the hugest difference to a book’s success and the longevity of my career. That’s about the size of the current situation. If you prefer ebooks, the Kindle is down to £2.99 now.

BLIND DATE

Reviewing the Guardian Blind Date two weeks in a row? Don’t call it a comeback! A great one this week, featuring 🌈, 👞, and 💖. READ NOW