Less sugar for me…
Saturday, June 7th, 2008
Above image from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/apprentice/videos.html
Warning: this post has nothing to do with photography. Yippee!
I think I am losing respect for Sir Alan Sugar. Throughout the previous three series of The Apprentice, one of the most enjoyable and stimulating programmes I have ever watched, I have always trusted Sir Alan to act as God on Judgement Day to pluck out not only the unworthiest candidates in the business sense, but those who have literally acted as Judases.
The Apprentice clearly works in black and white: those who make money, and those who make less than the other team; hence who has ‘won’ and who has ‘lost’. Alot of the time, characters who have contributed to a task in non-monetary ways are fired because their performance didn’t translate into direct cash. Those people may include highly-emotional people, certain women who have stumbled on the emotional side of the experience (such as Adele in the first series) or men who simply desire to make their efforts more ‘artistic’ than simplistically hard-sell. I’m thinking of Raef from the current series, fired a few weeks before the final.
However, the first three series impressed me because Sir Alan always managed, through the eyes and ears of Nick and Margaret, to dispatch the ugly-minded and intolerably arrogant candidates; some of those candidates who may have fared well up right up the final, but whose selfish intentions suddenly become exposed in the last stages and trip them up before the boss himself.
The final of the current series see four business people, three of which I am hugely disappointed to have made it, making a three out of four chance that I will be thoroughly unimpressed with the winning ‘Apprentice’ next week. There is the cocksure and overly-defensive Alex, whose habit of referring to himself in third person makes my skin crawl. For the record, he most definitely does not win my female ‘he’s gorgeous’ vote as other gigglish women viewers seem to be doing, so much so, that I would go as far to count Nick as a more attractive specimen of manhood. Besides, what’s being attractive got to do with it? This is The Apprentice, not Big Brother. A carnal attraction to Simon in episode 3 made the viewing a little more pleasurable for me, and it was pleasurable enough considering that episode was the photography task, but it was the fact that he wasn’t an arrogant plonker and that he preferred to practice rather than preach, that made me disappointed that he didn’t get anywhere near the final. Sir Alan seems to have (uncharacteristically) ignored the schoolboy-like tact Alex took up in the last episode when he petulantly exposed Lucinda and the doubts she aired (in confidence) to the others during the interviews. Neither was I impressed when a few weeks ago, Alex joined in the verbal gangrape of Sara (Zara?) following her escape from the firing line. Only Raef had a streak of gentlemanly conduct in him and came to her defence, and yet Raef was fired for making a subtle one-time mistake with the advertising task. Contrast that to the many chances Sir Alan decided to give Michael ‘I’ll trod on anyone!’ Sophocles , and I’m even more baffled.
Lee McQueen (who also sinisterly refers to himself in third person, and who was also part of the aforementioned verbal gangrape) is also in the final. He narrowly escaped losing the respect of Sir Alan when it transpired he’d lied on his CV last week. Somehow he got confused and, erm, couldn’t remember whether he had spent 2 years, or four months , at university. I dislike his shouty mouth-spitty manner, slightly insane expression, and most of all, his sales technique in the car task. Saying ‘Help me out here’ in order to close a sale with a customer is pretty pathetic in my book! He’s not the worst candidate but certainly not as impressive as I found the likes of previously-fired Raef.
I’m not quite sure what Helen Speight is doing in the final. To my sister during conversation I like to refer to her as Helen Speightful, as my impressions of her had been fixed during the photography task when she bullied technophobe Lucinda into working (or not working) a laptop whilst mulling round with a cup of tea as a self-professed technophobe herself. Not only that, but what exactly has she done during the series? I have only seen her mull in the shadows of tasks, sucking figurative lemons, coming to the camera only to swear her ugly Northern mouth off (I am Northern so I can say that, ha ha) about making her way in a male-dominated environment and how she takes no nonsense from anyone. Don’t all women have to make their way in a male-dominated environment, me love? Highlighting a supposed personal difficulty, one that is part of every woman’s experience in the world, is weak.
Then there is Clare. She is the only one I did expect to see in the final, and the one I don’t mind winning, unlike the rest. To me she is a strong candidate, in the Ruth Badger sense (her from Series 3), only with an eternal squinty smirk on her face and the slight smudge I see on her character from being a slack twerp in the first three episodes. Since then she has improved, as everyone can see. However, I’m a bit bored by the constant accusation that she talks too much. Her voice might be droney with that mono-intonation but there are times when her mouth’s been clapped shut and Sir Alan still manages to throw the Clare ‘motor mouth’ cliche at her.
Watching something like The Apprentice makes watching Big Brother a bit like drinking diluted Robinsons after having a glass of freshly squeezed orange. I have to use an analogy there that not only sums up how The Apprentice is a much more wholesome and substantial programme, making the watery meaninglessness of people-who-have-done-nowt of Big Brother more obvious, but I also want to express how unhealthy and less enjoyable a programme like Big Brother is compared the business lesson one receives whilst watching a reality programme with probably just as much enjoyable bitching.
So, Sir Alan, your godly gaze upon your contestants may be as strong as ever, but please do not direct it toward the ones cannot even swell up a vestige of modesty to be the one next chosen to sit at your right hand side. I’ll watch the final through the gaps between my fingers…
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