Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Apprentice joy

I watch The Apprentice on the telly. For those of you who don't know, or are lucky enough to live another country, it's a sort of reality TV show where 'contestants' are chasing a dream job with a major international company. They spend what feels like 244 weeks being 'interviewed' by way of a myriad number of tasks and challenges, all designed to test their business acumen, leadership qualities and decision-making skills.

Unfortunately, most of them are tossers.

OK, that's a little harsh, but I wanted to raise a laugh early on. None of them are tossers. Well some of them are. Actually most of them have an 'air of the tosser' about them to be honest. We're on about the fifth series now and I'm constantly amazed at the staggering levels of ineptitude, arrogance and well, tosser-ness which they manage to display. There have been some monumental examples of stupidity. One that springs to mind was from an earlier series:

"I'm outstanding in everything I've done," lawyer/artist/tosser (allegedly) Nicholas de Lacy-Brown assured us in the opening episode. However, Nick's wide and varied life experiences clearly didn't include selling lobsters - a grave omission that saw him offloading £20 crustacea for the cut-down price of a fiver in London's Chapel Market. He totally cocked up on his maths and flogged all this top-notch aquatic grub for practically nowt. And this was a man/tosser who was earning shed loads of cash in his chosen profession. How the hell do these people do it? Let's not forget that these people must have got their amazing jobs by either luck, nepotism or by shagging the boss.

I'm sure you all have your favourite examples of unbelievable idiocy from the show, but surely who could forget, as part of the Marrakech task when the two teams had to find items in the city's huge souk? A kosher chicken was on the list. Michael, who called himself a "good Jewish boy" on his CV, didn't know what kosher meant and bought it from a halal butcher before getting the Muslim chap to pray over it, thinking that would be enough. I'm sorry but the word 'tosser' leaps from my fingers and onto this blog once again. You have to laugh though don't you? And so from this plethora of simpletons, Sir Alan (Brillo-head) Sugar must pick a winner to become a part of his uber-empire. Well, Sir Alan, when it comes to choosing a brilliant new apprentice, I have to say:

"You're fired".

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