A smorgasbord of stupidity and an embarrassment to the BBC: CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews The Apprentice final

The Apprentice (BBC One)

Judgement:

For goodness sake, someone take this show and put it out of our misery. Stagnant, dying, stripped of imagination, humor or entertainment, The Apprentice now typifies BBC1’s worst programme.

When the series began in 2005, based on the American original starring Donald Trump, British presenter Alan Sugar was still in his 50s.

Now 77, he may be younger than America’s presidential candidates, but that’s about the best you can say about the old boy. As the finale dragged towards the finish line, Lord Sugar looked less like an aggressive entrepreneur and more like an unreliable head of the family, trying to decide which of his wily young relatives would inherit the remains of his pension.

The finalists, gym owner Rachel Woolford and pie shop boss Phil Turner, spoke to him as if a bit of false politeness could get them the first bite of the family silver in the cutlery drawer. That is always an unedifying sight.

In the end, Rachel was the winner. Last year’s winner also had a fitness company: Marnie Swindells, who later opened the Bronx Boxing Club. Maybe the show should be renamed Alan Sugar’s Next Gym

Phil could have pointed out that the model didn’t work out so badly for Jeff Bezos at Amazon – but why waste his breath?

As he announced the final and encouraged the contenders to choose their teams of ex-pupils, Great Uncle Alan looked more like Young Mr Grace in Are You Being Served?

He shuffled into the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, with Karren Brady and Tim Campbell on either side, posing as his business assistants, but possibly also as nurses. I’m glad I wasn’t there – the temptation to shout, ‘I’m free!’ would have been overwhelming.

When he tried to make a joke and summarized the confrontations as ‘pies versus pies-lates’, even Baroness Karren couldn’t muster a smile. The pun might have worked better if he had said “pie-lates” or just “pilates,” but either way, neither of those deserved to make the edit.

The real problem is that the generation gap between investor and aspiring entrepreneur is now too big. Sugar openly admitted that he did not really understand any of the companies in which he planned to acquire a 50 percent stake.

The growing popularity of gyms was “not of my time, but my children and now grandchildren go there regularly,” he announced. Someone should have warned him that it was no longer wise to parade your ignorance of current trends, around the time Supreme Court Justice James Pickles interrupted a trial to ask, “Who are the Beatles?”

Of course, it’s normal for companies to have a ‘sleeping partner’, but you don’t want someone who has dozed off in their armchair mid-afternoon with a plaid blanket over their knees.

Worse still, he completely failed to understand Phil’s business plan to start selling pies by post, with online delivery rather than High Street premises as the focus for expansion.

When the series began in 2005, based on the American original starring Donald Trump, British presenter Alan Sugar was still in his 50s.

‘By mail? “I don’t understand,” he said. “If you think you’re going to build an online business, it’s not going to happen.”

Phil could have pointed out that the model didn’t work out so badly for Jeff Bezos at Amazon – but why waste his breath?

In the end, Rachel was the winner. Last year’s winner also had a fitness company: Marnie Swindells, who later opened the Bronx Boxing Club. Maybe the show should be renamed Alan Sugar’s Next Gym.

Viewing figures for The Apprentice were more than respectable this year, with an average of almost 7 million viewers per episode, of which 1.6 million were aged 16 to 34 – the Beeb’s most coveted target group.

But Alan Sugar is no Attenborough, a national treasure more revered every year. If the show is to survive, it needs a figurehead whose business knowledge is more valuable than the £250,000 he is willing to pay.

Even that investment is a depreciating asset: Since the money first hit the table in 2010, inflation has reduced its value by about a third. A quarter of a million pounds back then would now be worth, in today’s terms, about £370,000.

Asif was sent on “inclusivity training” at the end of filming, after writing on social media that Zionists (i.e. Israeli Jews) were “a godless, satanic sect.”

With both the money and the guidance being worth less than they used to be, the only reason to pay attention is the personalities – and this year’s group was pathetic, a mixture of stupidity.

The cream of the crop was a dork named Asif, who kept reminding everyone that he was a doctor: “I have an extremely high IQ, I can bench press really well and, to top it all off, I’m pretty good. on the eye.’

Asif was sent on ‘inclusivity training’ at the end of filming, after writing on social media that Zionists (i.e. Israeli Jews) were ‘a godless, satanic sect’.

He doesn’t seem to have learned his lesson: yesterday afternoon he tweeted: “Pray for the children of Gaza orphaned by the bloodthirsty fascists,” and: “Their genocidal tendencies know no bounds.” The Zionist project is demonic and deplorable.”

Unsurprisingly, he was not among the ten participants invited to the showdown. His presence would have been a shame. But the whole show is a disgrace to the BBC. It can’t go on like this.