The Apprentice: time to fire or hire for next year?

Business bluster is blethered, enormous egos are paraded and cream-souring looks are exchanged one last time.

And the man with the big, pointy finger reveals his choice.

Yes, after 11 long, cringeworthy, watch-from-behind-a-cushion weeks, it’s The Apprentice: The Final as candidates Joseph Valente and Vana Koutsomitis go head to head.

But has the value of Sir Al’s stock fallen? Should this be the last year for the series? Our writers have their say…

 

Chae Strathie: It’s still a valuable lesson in how not to be a preening, gibbering nitwit

I’M fascinated by Alan Sugar’s head.

Every year it more and more resembles a coconut with the face of an angry Sid James painted on it. And that alone is worth tuning in to The Apprentice every time a new series hits our screens. Well, it is for me.

There are other reasons, of course, why the show is still great fun.

Where else can you watch a gaggle of deluded egotists cut down to size each week and shown up as being useless, gibbering nincompoops? (Someone just suggested the televised Prime Minister’s Questions, but I couldn’t possibly comment).

Here we have a gang of money-worshipping, go-getting, management-speaking goons essentially doing the business version of slapstick comedy for our entertainment.

What’s not to like?

These are people who think they are superior in every way to the ordinary Joe. We mere mortals couldn’t possibly aspire to the heady heights of their business brilliance or match them for swagger, vision and ruthlessness.

But once they’ve been seen paying £200 for a joke plastic bahookie that should have cost £1.30 or up to their elbows in goose giblets that they have to turn into a high-end beauty product (I just made those up, but you get the gist) the shine rather fades from their ridiculous posturing.

So in this way The Apprentice performs a useful public service – reminding full-of-it diddies that they ain’t all that.

That’s why everyone loves the interview round best. There’s nothing quite like seeing a puffed-up, preening nitwit being crushed mercilessly by a series of normal people – albeit very scary normal people.

That episode is real watch-through-your-fingers stuff. It makes you wince as much as laugh – and it’s still one of the reality TV highlights of the year.

Tellingly, in the end, it’s usually (though not always) the relatively pleasant, most down-to-earth candidate of the bunch that wins, so in that sense The Apprentice is an education to us all.

Don’t put yourself on a pedestal, don’t look down on your fellow man, don’t promise what you can’t deliver. Be decent, honest, reliable, determined and speak like a normal human and you’ll do OK.

For that reason, the show is still well worth a watch.

That and the fact it’s fronted by Sid James painted on a coconut of course.

Ali Kirker: Sir Alan now looks as bored as the contestants look desperate

THE APPRENTICE has surely had its day.

I was once its biggest fan, but the rot has set in.

And I can tell you when it started – when lovely Margaret Mountford decided to pack it in so she could concentrate on studying ancient Egyptian manuscripts.

The day Margaret and her permanently-raised eyebrow that spoke 100 words decided to fire Sir Al, was the day the show started going downhill.

Karren Brady is just not a patch on Margaret and her withering look. And when Nick Hewer also decided to quit, things went from bad to worse.

Because we all know the contestants are much of a muchness.

We all know they’re a bunch of deluded egomaniacs who will be edited to look like they couldn’t run a kids’ party.

In fact, in this series, indeed they couldn’t even manage that.

In Nick’s place, we got Claude Littner.

He’s Sir Alan’s trusted sidekick and is a ferocious interviewer. His soft voice somehow makes him all the more sinister.

He’s like a Bond villain, except one that examines boring business plans, rather than fighting on the roof of trains with British superspies.

But when he’s following the hapless wanabee tycoons on their tasks, he’s got an air of boredom.

In fact, not unlike his mate Sir Alan.

There have been times this series when he’s given the impression he’d rather be watching paint dry than dealing with the useless goons in front of him.

The number of times he ends a discussion with disinterested “hmm” goes up every episode.

He occasionally manages to ham it up like he’s in panto. But most of the time? Bored.

The only time he looked vaguely interested this series was when BOTH teams managed to sell not a single thing and make not a penny in profit.

And still the BBC insists these are the brightest young business brains in the whole of the country.

Really?

That must surely mean we’re all in serious trouble.

Maybe I’ve just had enough of the candidates being in it for showbiz reasons.

How many of them really want a business career with the frankly unpleasant Sir Alan?

And how many want a reality telly career?

Like The X Factor and I’m a Celebrity, The Apprentice needs to take a wee holiday.

Just for a year or two.

Then come back bigger, better and brighter.

Sir Al – you’re fired.