Ridiculous notions of superiority

Last night I watched episode 1 of series 9 (Jeez, that's about 7 too many!) of The Apprentice. Not because I wanted to, but because I read that the Radio Times would publish a review of it from the pile sent in by midday the following day (today) by us obsessive viewers.

So while it was on I banged out this nonsense: 

The Apprentice has become a tad stale and predictable over the last couple of series, as year on year the contestants have become more and more clichéd, and these days seem to be mere ciphers rather than real people.

The repulsively shark-like Stella English and her failed bid to part Lord Sugar (to me he is still mere “Srallan”) from some more of his loose change in return for no discernible effort on her part summed up how self-serving these attention-seeking meeja whore wannabes had become.

The franchise has gone from being comedy gold to veering between either repulsive or boring TV, and as a result I found myself not lasting more than a few episodes of the last series. Of course, what drives this show is the contestants, and whether or not we like or loathe them enough to continue watching to the finale, and to that end, what does the line-up for this new 9th series promise?

Will Srallan’s bullshit detector pick up on gems like “I take inspiration from Napoleon”, or “I’m half machine, half biscuit” or "I have plastic tits and the brain of Einstein" or "I will do felching, if he wants" or “I will do anything to win; cheating, manipulating, mass killing, I will do it”? Predictably enough he told the guy who came up with the Napoleon line that he would be his Wellington. (Ed's (that's me, too) note - some of these quotes may have been embellished slightly, and one of them may well be entirely fictitious) 

Watching this new preening bunch of neatly tailored and over manicured products of the system striding across the Millennium Bridge like so many surplus catalogue models one could almost smell the pungent aroma of too much shower gel wafting across the Thames, and out of the TV. Yeuch, I’m feeling queasy already.

And so to the first task; split into two teams each have a shipping container full of “imported goods” (low end consumer goods and tat) to shift, the one who sells the most wins. All a bit Del Boy, doncha think? The boys’ team leader is Jason, who describes himself as having an intelligence “like a machete in the jungle”, my first LOL moment of the programme. The too quick by half to volunteer Jaz is the girls’ leader, who seems so effervescent she’s in danger of going off at any moment like an over-excited bottle of Bolly.

A lot of the girls this time look more like hairdressers or failed models than business women, although I’m sure they’d bite my head off for suggesting that they may, at some point in their careers, use their sexuality to get on in life. There's folk in here with real jobs, too, believe it or not; we have Jaz the teacher, Leah is a doctor (what of I know not, but I assume medicine) who unfortunately is cursed with a really annoying adenoidal nasal voice, and yes, she looks like a hairdresser. Imagine being told you've got 5 days to live by a female Donald Duck with hair extensions. Jaz does not look like a hairdresser, she just looks like she needs one, with a pile of wild corkscrew hair flailing about, wild and untamed, a bit like its owner, Scary Spice reinvented. 

There’s some odd looking fellas too, Alex from Cardiff having been christened Dracula by a teammate, and not unfairly it has to be said. Fair play to the guy, he does make the first sale, and before breakfast, too. That's what the undead can do nowadays, beat you to closing a deal. There's another guy whose name escapes me who looks like he has a Mr Whippy (that's an ice cream, ya mucky pups) on his head.

Amongst the tat to sell was a job lot of loo roll, which Alex helpfully informed a potential customer was "not used", my second and final LOL interlude. After the usual bout of rushing about, shouting over one another and wielding large mobiles like light sabres, and some comically poor leadership and infighting from both sides it’s time to head back to The Boardroom, which, as we all know, is as fake as Uzma’s tan. The girls have called themselves “Salon”, the guys “Spanner”...if only, No, it was the more prosaic “Evolve” for the girls and “Endeavour” for the blokes.

The guys go straight for each other’s throats, probably not advisable when Alex is in the room. Jason was hopelessly ineffectual though, and deserved to be slapped down. The girls were slightly more united. 

The guys won the task by £58, and the gals retired to the greasy spoon to swap lipstick tips. I had hoped Srallan wouldn’t fire Jaz as she seemed to have more personality than about half the rest of her team combined, and she has very scary hair, as I may have mentioned. However, as a leader she didn’t have much clue, including starting off with a cliché ridden motivational speech, her charges staring at her gormlessly. She even took her part of the team to Chinatown to sell the ornamental lucky cat, the sort you see in Chinese restaurants up and down the land, at 9am. It was of course, closed - priceless.

Sugar homes in on the hopeless sellers in the team, and eventually Jaz brings back Sophie and Uzma. The leader attempts to steamroller the other two who seem to be the female equivalent of all mouth and no trousers, particularly Sophie who sold nowt, but looks cute, so Srallan kept her. Uzma did enough in the task to save herself, which meant the chop (suey) for Jaz...boo, hiss...so one good character and one good reason to watch again is already gone. Ho-hum. 

Will I stick with it? Possibly, particularly as in tonight's episode the teams have to come up with a new flavoured beer and sell it to pubs, guaranteed to get me shouting at the TV I reckon. However I very much doubt I’ll watch the whole series on this showing. It’s high time this tired old series is given its golden carriage clock if you ask me.

After re-reading that I was aware it would need a bit of editing before I could send it to the Radio Times, but not to the extent I realised upon finding out that they wanted 150 words max! 150 words! Blimey, some of my convoluted sentences are longer than that. Anyway I somehow manged it and a severely truncated and toned down version winged its way off late last night, no doubt to be ignored by the powers that be at RT. The things I do for this writing lark!