\u2018Is The Apprentice set to be axed?\u201d asks a headline, and I expect you are all now anxious. \u201cI can\u2019t sleep worrying that I might no longer be able to watch ghastly show-offs with appalling personalities pull a small wheelie suitcase while saying things like, \u2018In business I\u2019m like a bulldog. If you mess with me I get lockjaw,\u2019\u201d said one reader who cannot be named because I just made her up.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is devastating news. Tell me it isn\u2019t true,\u201d another didn\u2019t say. \u201cWhere else will I watch an over-edited reality show featuring wazzocks who say, \u2018My worst nightmare is getting to age 40 with a \u00a350,000 salary and a four-year-old Toyota,\u2019 and who claim to be CEO material yet turn out to be so useless they couldn\u2019t find their own bottom with both hands and a headtorch?\u201d<\/p>\n
Controversies that have dogged The Apprentice over the years may soon make it untenable, say \u201cinsiders\u201d. I presume they mean contestants such as Thomas Skinner<\/a>, who, it turned out, was convicted in 2011 of handling \u00a340,000 worth of stolen goods, and Dr Asif Munaf<\/a>, who was recently struck off after being accused of making antisemitic and sexist posts. A new series starts soon and already a \u201cproblem\u201d contestant has been identified: an HGV driver who many years ago made (now deleted) posts referring to Muslims as \u201cdirty\u201d and women as \u201cslags\u201d.<\/p>\n \u2022 The Celebrity Apprentice review \u2014 surely it\u2019s time the BBC ended this<\/a><\/p>\n Well! Who would have thought that if you actively recruit arrogant motormouths to create friction on the show to make headlines you run the risk that they might actually be motormouths in real life? Amazing. And now a former candidate has gone to the press saying that when he appeared on it they manipulated the results to ramp up the drama. Never!<\/p>\n I reckon The Apprentice, now in its 20th year, will be OK for a good while, as it happens. But do I think it is high time it was put out to pasture, sent to sit in the dismal losers\u2019 caf\u00e9 blaming the project manager? Hello? It\u2019s now more tired than Dick Turpin\u2019s horse.<\/p>\n It was great for a while but the formula has long needed a reboot, just like Alan Sugar\u2019s jokes (Alan, there must be better pun writers). It perpetuates the dated stereotype of the power-suited boardroom ballbuster strutting in stiletto heels in an age when really people work from home in their underpants. We all know many of them aren\u2019t interested in business anyway. They want to become influencers.<\/p>\n But then the show is not as lame as some. Such as, ooh, let\u2019s see now, Mrs Brown\u2019s Boys<\/a>, which is to me about as funny as standing barefoot repeatedly on an upturned plug with my wet fingers in the socket.<\/p>\n \u2022 Dean Franklin: My last big expense? The \u00a3700 tux I wore on The Apprentice<\/a><\/p>\n How has it survived so long? How does it get the Christmas Day slot year after year? The scripts are so lazy one viewer wrote, \u201cI\u2019d rather watch reruns of Nicola Sturgeon\u2019s daily Covid briefings,\u201d which I do understand. They might be marginally less painful.<\/p>\n What else would I axe? Definitely I\u2019m a Celebrity\u2026 Get Me Out of Here!, which I recently wrote in this newspaper was a pig\u2019s scrotum of a show<\/a> that provides all the cultural nourishment of a plastic joke shop dog poo. Obviously Love Island and Big Brother and Dating Naked because the upholstery must be an absolute horror show. Oh and the BBC\u2019s Stranded on Honeymoon Island<\/a>, whose premise, that two people marry after meeting for only a few minutes on a speed date and are then sent off on a deserted island together, is fake because the marriage isn\u2019t even legal. Pointless.<\/p>\n Speaking of which, Pointless could also do with a refresh. I am fond of it but, I don\u2019t mean this unkindly, it is quite boring. And Celebrity Mastermind. Get rid. Not the normal version; that\u2019s an institution. But the celebrity version is so insultingly dumbed down that it asked one celebrity last month which domestic pet makes the noises \u201cwoof woof\u201d and \u201cbow wow\u201d. Mind you, this may be the legacy of David Lammy, who once appeared on the show and when asked which \u201cMarie\u201d had won the 1903 Nobel prize for her work on radiation, replied \u201cAntoinette\u201d.<\/p>\n \u2022 Read more from Carol Midgley<\/a><\/p>\n Positive thinking\u2026 no thanks<\/p>\n