Sir Alan Ballbags
And so the finale of The Apprentice came to a shuddering halt last night like a geriatric swinger whose heart has given out during an orgy. During the final decision, I realised that Surallen of Sugar no longer resembles Nookie the Bear, but more like a man whose scrotum has crawled up onto his face for some fresh air. Of course, Sugar was never no looker but my artistes impression above gives my visual rating of the series: it was a load of old sugar-coated balls. The finale was obvious – though I had an inkling that leather face Kristina “Grimey” Grimes wouldn’t win it, she was too reliable and had no energy or chutzpah. Winner, the doe-eyed Simon Ambrose resembled an estate agent as drawn by Walt Disney at his syrupy best and I kept expecting him to break into a chorus of “Zippee-de-doo-dah” or being surrounded by tweeting bluebirds a la Snow White.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Sir Alan. His gruff demeanour and rough around the edges personality speaks to me in volumes, but the whole series was a bit of a non-starter and it wasn’t the fault of old craggy features. Firstly, the tasks. Don’t get me started on the tasks. What a pile of unimaginative dross that turned out to be. Every week the teams just had to sell stuff…you know sell cheese to the French or start a business in 24 hours or market foreign imports or sell art. Sell…sell…sell… BORING!
Where’s the creative aspect of the business world. We only got to see a little bit of creative thinking during the trainer task and in the finale, where both contestants had to design a building. In the US version of the show, the applicants have to do real tasks: market real products, deal with global corporations. In the next series of the UK show, I can see this lot selling Benders in a Bun at the Brentwood Wimpy in order to win Sir Alan’s favour. For series four, some revitalisation needs to be injected into the task and they need not to be afraid to mix things up a bit.
Then there’s the contestants. They ranged from deranged to incompetant and one felt that they were chose to fail rather than to succeed. The two finalists were obvious choices from around episode six when most of the chaff was discarded and while it was nice to have genuinely funny folks like Tre Azam (surely he should change his name to “Shazam”?) and Uber-Bitch and serial shagger Katie Hopkins on board, neither were genuine contenders as they would never get through the door at Amstrad Towers in sunny Brentwood. So again, the producers need to be a bit more choosey in their selection and get some applicants who actually have a chance of working for Amstrad. In fact, I say that the BBC should open it up to the general public next season and see how well us “non-business” people do in the tasks. That would be a laugh riot, wouldn’t it?
But yeah, despite my whinging I stayed with the show to the very end and look forward to the early months of 2008 when The Apprentice US returns which usually clashes with The Apprentice UK and I have about 26 weeks of Apprentice-related teleivisual fun.
Man, I think I’ve typed the word “apprentice” far too many times today!