Sugar: Music Hall Legend

The anticipation is building: 14 new contestants, sorry, 14 new candidates, all strangely desperate to work for Sir Alan Bloody Sugar, all hoping to be the next Apprentice. Last year, Tim Campbell, the youngest of the group at 27 won the chance to work for Sir Alan for a year, on a six-figure salary, beating predictably spiky, arrogant, esoteric, loud, er, arrogant, opinionated, confident, and brash competition to land the prize.

In the spirit of second runs, I’m expecting everything to be a bit more glam, a bit more over the top this time round. No doubt the 14 aspirants will be that touch more confident about how to win through, how to deal with Sir Alan and his board, how best to shaft their team-mates, and how best to land a successful media career after they get fired in week 4 for masterminding their team’s crushing defeat in that week’s task.

But how will Sir Alan approach his second bloody series? Without so much as a smile, a 20% profanity score, extreme glumness, and lots of tosh about straight-talking, not liking bullshitters, and generally telling everyone how cr@p they are is my guess. Sir Alan didn’t seem to get a lot of enjoyment out of the first series, but where Donald Trump is just offensively rich and ridiculously, impossibly it seems, coiffeured, Sugar is just the grouch in a suit, and where Trump is about glitz, and grand-scale projects, Sugar is out there pumping meager margins from mainstream, low-cost, low-expectation products. And where the winners of The Apprentice in the US had a choice of which exciting new large project they would oversee, poor old Tim had the privilege of working 70 hour weeks for a year to re-launch a product that had already failed once, and which most right-minded people would struggle to get too worked up about.

Trump: strange hair day

I’ll cut Sir Alan some slack, though, because the Amstrad CPC 6128 played a major part in my childhood, and also because out of him and Sir Clive Sinclair, at least he would have seen that the C5 was clearly not anything remotely resembling a good idea. Which is maybe why he’s still in business - interesting to read recently that profits or the share price have slumped 12% in the last six months, though (see, that’s one of the many reasons I couldn’t be on the apprentice: Sir Alan grilling me on which one it is and why don’t I know the numbers like that, and me responding with an Alan Partridge shrug, meaning “who cares, it’s not exactly good either way is it?”).

So, will Sir Alan get a makeover? Sadly, presumably not. I think it would help freshen things up, though: Sir Alan re-cast in a Dale Winton mode, shepherding candidates out of the boardroom with a perma-tan fake smile, tilt of the head, perhaps a kiss on each cheek, and a bad joke, with an affectionate ’sweetheart’ for the girls, and a ‘darling’ for the boys. No, we’ll get “you’re fired”, arm extended, finger pointing for maximum emphasis, and out the poor sod will go, for a final goodbye from the receptionist with the easiest job in the world (about 5 minutes a week, one, maybe two phone calls, and the same line each time - actually she could mix it up a bit, keep everyone on their toes a bit. Maybe sing her lines if she’s looking for a career on cruise ships, or just smile. Or just not answer the phone; stick it on voice mail, put her feet up and flick through that week’s Heat magazine for a few minutes, tucking into a family bag of maltesers.)

The candidates

Their profiles are on the BBC’s official show web site, I’ve read them all, and I can’t remember any names, ages, qualifications, careers, anything. (Tip for next year if you’re going on the show, wear a silly hat for your photo shoot, it’ll make people remember you. See, I do have business nous.) There’s 7 women, 7 men, some were lawyers, I seem to remember, but I’m rooting for ex-Millwall player, Ansell Henry. I say player, but it doesn’t look as though he made the first team. (He did get into a squad photo in 1990, though, even if it does look a bit like he snuck onto the end of a bench while everyone was distracted.) Still, better than the other 13 and their dreary office ‘ooh looky at me’ histories.

Tags: Brilliant, Television