Fear and Loathing on the Learning Curve: Observations on Life, Tech and Web Design from a Slightly Misanthropic Mind

The Bloody Apprentice, S07E01

My view­ing of the first epis­ode of the new Apprentice series was con­duc­ted under an assump­tion, rap­idly for­mu­lated dur­ing the first ninety seconds of the show, that these people can­not pos­sibly be real; that such a con­cen­tra­tion of  frantic­ally self-aggrandising, mas­turb­at­ory gawpers can­not pos­sibly exist — out­side of fic­tion — in the space of one board­room without the entire city of London dis­ap­pear­ing up its own back­side in an enorm­ous implo­sion of bull­shit. Once I estab­lished that premise, the show imme­di­ately became sev­eral times more watchable.

Be ye warned: this post con­tains spoil­ers. By which I mean I will talk about which use­less shaft got fired last night.

I speak, of course, of this year’s “con­test­ants” in the Lord Sugar Brown-Nose Superbowl. I nearly had an aneur­ism dur­ing the last series, as glob after glob of bull­shit fell from the mouths of such luminar­ies as 14-year-old school uni­form model Stuart “The Brand” Baggs, as he attemp­ted to froth and thrash and blub his way out of being sent home with a note, but some­how that has already been eclipsed by the new series, which after a mere minute and a half had me stuff­ing a wet towel into my own throat to make the pain stop.

The format is a little dif­fer­ent this time: instead of scratch­ing at each other’s eyes for a chance to make Sugar’s tea (har), each con­test­ant now attempts to insert their tongue the fur­thest up his ZX Spectrum in the hope that he will deign to invest in their own busi­ness, and prof­fer the odd bit of fath­erly advice. Which, as it’s Sugar, will prob­ably extend no fur­ther than, “shut up and fin­ish your bloody homework.”

We’re intro­duced to the lucky few — “it’s the deal of the dec­ade,” says the empurpled nar­rator — in a series of guff quotes and fast cuts of people walk­ing through ser­i­ous busi­ness loc­a­tions like, you know, a fea­ture­less cor­ridor; a tube plat­form; the toi­lets of Waterloo sta­tion. Each can­did­ate, filling the screen, deliv­ers a self-synopsis so vapid and cliche you wander if they’ve got a gun to their head, an off-screen inter­rog­ator demand­ing they say the first thing that comes to mind. “Don’t tell me the sky’s the limit if there are foot­prints on the Moon,” says plastic-face Melody. “I’ve got plenty of cha­risma and yeah, I’m not bad-looking,” says Vincent, a strange deriv­at­ive of Nic Cage with Ron Jeremy’s mous­tache. Tom, a Michael Sheen lookalike, the­at­ric­ally removes his specs and warbles, “under­neath… these glasses… is a core of steel.” Alex: “I am cold and hard.” And Gavin, with a hunted look in his eyes, man­ages to gasp, “fear of fail­ure drives me every single day.” The poor sod.

And then out shuffles the Grand Scrotum him­self, his trade­mark scowl per­meat­ing the fros­ted glass door of whatever wanking-cupboard-type arrange­ment that is at the back of the definitely-not-a-studio board­room long before his chubby fir­ing digits reach it. He’s back, but this time he wants you to beg for his help. And for most of these ego-strokers, the only help worth giv­ing would be to hold up a mir­ror con­nec­ted to a loud­speaker sys­tem play­ing their own absurd pro­nounce­ments on a loop until they threw them­selves under the nearest bus. “Afternoon,” he grunts. “Afternoon, Lord Sugar,” they chorus. One chap nods enthu­si­ast­ic­ally as he mouths the words. He’s got the right idea.

Their task is to take £250 of Sugar’s pocket money, buy some fresh pro­duce, add value to it and sell it on for a profit. And so as the day unfolds we’re treated to the sad but amus­ing spec­tacle of two gangs of snake-oil mer­chants try­ing to outdo each other in a game of Who Can Be The Most Serious Business Person as they argue over strategy, mar­ket, budgets and how to juice oranges quickly. Everyone tries to assert some dom­in­ance early on, but by a strange pro­cess of shout­ing and ignor­ing the busi­ness strengths of their team­mates, Edward and Melody are “elec­ted” pro­ject man­agers. Melody talks like she’s speak­ing to an infant and men­tions the Dalai Lama within a few seconds; Ed is an account­ant who hates his job so much that he for­gets everything he ever learned while doing it and attempts to com­plete the task by bluff­ing, guess­ing and going a bit red.

The task isn’t that remark­able. Some early char­ac­ter traits start to become appar­ent, though — pocket-size Susan will almost cer­tainly be the first to cry, prob­ably in the next epis­ode. Jim is a good sort, get­ting on and being sens­ible, and deploy­ing his highly effect­ive situation-defusal tech­nique (of say­ing “I’m defus­ing the situ­ation” while bund­ling one of the aggressors away) to pre­vent a fight among the empty orange halves. Ellie is a bruiser of a lass from Yorkshire who can’t spell “veget­able” and con­siders pasta to be cul­tur­ally bey­ond her. Edna is a ter­ri­fy­ing battle­axe of a woman whose iron grip on the purse-strings will likely be mis­ap­plied to someone’s throat before the series is done. And there are quite a few people we still haven’t heard a peep out of, which will prob­ably be used as jus­ti­fic­a­tion for silently off­ing one next episode.

The adven­ture in food pro­duc­tion winds up and Ed’s com­plete fail­ure to be at all use­ful pre­dict­ably res­ults in his team pla­cing last. He blusters his way through the board­room mud fight by abandon­ing rel­ev­ance and blam­ing Gavin for being “spine­less” in the way he tried to volun­teer for PM. All very odd, though per­haps he’s angry that Gavin didn’t work harder to save him from him­self. Sugar gives him the boot, along with a gentle word about hav­ing no shame, which he cer­tainly seems to have already taken on board. In the wait­ing room, he gives the other two the silent treat­ment, and 16-year-old walk­ing fringe Leon prac­tic­ally falls over his fel­low sur­vivor in their rush to escape the awk­ward­ness. Ed goes home, pre­sum­ably to watch people from his flat win­dow and stop washing.

The vic­tori­ous Team Venture cel­eb­rate with cham­pagne and more exal­ted tales from Melody’s star-crossed life. There is some­thing very strange about her indeed, like she’s speak­ing from within the con­fines of strong hyp­nosis. Her lines are prac­tised to per­fec­tion; one must won­der if they must even­tu­ally run out. What will she say then? If we’re lucky, her trap-door of a mouth might fall open, and a small creature might tumble out, just like that one in Men in Black. Ah, a man can dream.