The candidates (l-r) Hibah Ansary, Rhys Rosser, Kirsty Cleaver, Hannah Cherry, Adam Eliaz, Jordan De Courcy, Tim Ankers, Arjun Rajyagor, Zoe Plummer, Emma Walker
Junior Apprentice
BBC One
Wednesday May 12th, 9pm
An historic Con-Lib alliance might have taken over the country this morning, but that doesn’t mean Labour have lost all their power … one life peer is still determined to push through a change in the law … the reintroduction of child labour … now that’s progressive politics, and television.
This ‘same but different’ format is sure to be an instant ratings winner and will have the producers at ITV scrambling their creative teams to come up with a suitably tasteless copycat formula … how about I’m a Foetus Get Me Out of Here™ , Sperm on Ice™ or the Conception Factor™ ?
Regular viewers of The Apprentice will be used to seeing those with a mental age of 12 or 13 vie to become Sir Alan’s bitch, so a bunch of precocious teenagers with delusions of grandeur is a refreshing change and can only be an improvement on the ‘grey-matter-o-meter’ for the candidates (you know who I’m talking about Kate Walsh.)
Whittled down from 28,000 sons and daughters of pushy parents, the final ten don’t know how lucky they are to have a mentor like Alan ‘Amstrad’ Sugar … no they really don’t … but Alan reminds them in a sermon near the end of episode one – I’m paraphrasing now: “If anyone takes the p*ss out of you for not winning, you just remember, whilst you were out trying to be a winner like Ruth Badger, your classmates were sitting on their arses eating crisps and playing video games … you can say you done it, and all that … you’re fiiiiiirrrreeeedd!”
Lord Sugar describes the show as “an education like no other”, presumably referring to the fact that there is a £25,000 prize, and you’ll probably end up crying … now you don’t even get that at Eton, apart from the crying, so I’m told.
In episode one, the boys and girls are split into two teams, under the watchful eye of ‘the man you love to see sneer’ Nick Hewer and lady football chairman Karren Brady (who replaces Margaret Mountford, Nick’s screen wife and Alan’s screen mother) for this micro-version of the show.
In true Apprentice style, the mark of a business brain is entirely determined by a simple arbitrage task – on this occasion selling cheese at the market. That’s too easy, when are they going to sell ice to Eskimos, or perchance, learn about any other bloody part of business beyond sales? Sorry for questioning you, Lord Sir Alan, sir?
On pain of death I’m forbidden from telling you what happens in tonight’s show, but expect a mixture of snotty little oiks shouting “I’m not a business boy, I’m a businessman” and at least one young girl properly balling her eyes out because she’s been cut out of a highly inflated cheese trade.
So who’s going to win? Well, as we know Lord Chippy (like all self made men) left school at seven (or something) to flog aerials out of the boot of a Ford Anglia so it’s unlikely he’s going to be impressed by a smorgasbord of GCSEs and AS Levels that these youngsters bring to the party. However, there is one lad, Adam Eliaz, who left school at sixteen and now sells camping equipment (maybe out of the back of a car), but more importantly he does it for himself.
Although I’m yet to find a bookmaker willing to take a bet on it … I’d say it was where the smart money should go.
The economic recovery starts here, and (thanks to the unique way the BBC is funded), it’s televised.
There’s lots of clips and all those good things at the official BBC Apprentice site
