May 21, 2009 - 9:24 am

Sir Alan... you suck

I don't watch much TV. I like still less of it. One of the things that is sometimes on in our house - often causing me to leave the room - is the BBC's "reality" TV show, 'The Apprentice'.

Like all "reality" shows, it causes people to act in an unreal way. For our titillation, they set each of the contestants at the others' throats in a false and bitterly competitive series of contests. We are encourages to 'oooh' and 'aaah' at how nasty they get, when given the chance to bitch about the others.

Go ahead: try acting like that in the real world, and see how far you get. Pushed down the stairs, probably. Certainly not promoted. Nobody likes a brown-noser... and nobody likes a back-stabber.

But here we have ten (I think ten?) young people who are selected for their potential to be bitches and bastards, and who are converted into hate figures. Jade Goody in a business suit.

(Yeah, I know she died... boo hoo... but she was still an ignorant, bigoted, self-indulgent racist waste of skin and organs. And I bet that on some level, she loved her last splurge of fame.)

But you know what's REALLY stupid about 'The Apprentice'? You might not have noticed but...

It's all about selling.

Every week. Sell some wedding dresses. Sell some baby clothes. Sell some farm machinery...

This is expected to reveal the qualities of the contestants, but most of all it reveals a lot about Sir Alan Sugar. (Sugar? Can you think of anybody less sweet?)

He's a glorified barrow-boy. He sold things. Low-quality electronics for people who couldn't afford a decent hi-fi, mostly. His products were all garbage, but they were piled high and sold cheap. Back in the eighties when you could get away with that kind of crap.

So the 'apprentices' are required to emulate him, and sell, sell, sell.

That's fine, but it's also turning into VERY BORING TELEVISION. Because some people in management don't actually sell things. We're not all barrow boys; some people don't meet customers at all, but do equally important work in planning, finance, logistics, health and safety, copy-writing, purchasing, human resources, business law, dealing with customer complaints... and a million other functions.

Would the 'apprentices;' be any good at any of these things? Job functions that require long-term teamwork without back-stabbing? Jobs where you don't have to be photogenic and buzzwordy?

Of course not. Bunch of wankers. You wouldn't touch them with a barge-pole in a real company.

But apparently, this makes 'good' prime-time television.

Click. (That's the sound of my TV being turned off. Now go outside and play.)

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