Sometimes when I drive to B&Q, I pass that little cafe where the losing Apprentice teams go to lick their wounds before the next firing. It is real enough, unlike Lord Sugar’s boardroom, which was purpose-built in a nearby studio; a cross between a Bond villain’s lair and the Starship Enterprise, it is like a stage perfect for a late-capitalist panto.
The Apprentice has now completed its 14th season. It is still trading on the cliches it created, still playing the bumbling venality of the contestants for laughs while trying to convince the viewer that something significant is at stake.
Last week was the one where the five finalists are grilled about their business proposals and exposed as incompetent, deluded and untrustworthy – one more chance to call someone a “prize imbecile” to their face. This episode was the final, the one where they bring back all the old numpties to cock up the presentations of the two hopefuls – in this case, Sian and Camilla – competing for Lord Sugar’s investment.
Camilla’s big idea was a range of dairy-free drinks made from nuts. Marketing-wise, her sensibility lies at the not-safe-for-work end of things, veering toward the sensual and non-consensual. She had been repeatedly advised to suppress this tendency, but when your product is called nut milk, the pitfalls are everywhere. Camilla impressed upon her branding team – Kayode, Tom and Jackie – the importance of staying just the right side of cheeky. In response, they came up with the slogan “Wipe your nuts”.
Sian’s range of upmarket swimwear has one USP: it is reversible. Sadly, her branding brain trust put together a digital billboard that not only failed to mention this, but didn’t even make it clear that the product in question was a swimming costume. Sian also wanted to keep it classy and they let her down badly. “That looked absolutely shite,” she said. “Let’s be real.”
That, along with two not-very-good 30-second adverts, a questionable logo and a nut milk packaging design that put vegans in mind of cows, comprised the weapons that Sian and Camilla brought to their final presentations in front of a bunch of industry experts at City Hall. “Let’s get on with it,” said Lord Sugar, perhaps echoing the sentiments of viewers who have stuck this series out.
Unlike the episodes leading up to it, the final always allows a few glimpses of actual expertise: Sian was quite good at making swimwear and Camilla certainly knew a lot about nuts. But these moments were fleeting – the camera was too busy lingering on faces in search of hurt, discomfort and resentment, or a disdainful look from one of Lord Sugar’s two lieutenants, Claude and Karren. It is never clear whether their eyerolls apply to the stupid thing just said, or whether they just save them up and sprinkle them about. By the end, Karren and Claude were singing the praises of the two finalists, an outbreak of regard that, in the context of all that has gone before, seemed to come from nowhere.
There was one final trip to the boardroom, including a last chance for the two contenders to slag each other off – a reminder that, in business, the high road is never an option. And then somebody won. I can’t tell you who, because they cut off the end bit of the preview version I watched. You will have heard by now; it was Sian or Camilla, if you were minded to care. Or maybe they both won, like last year. Remember that? Me neither.
The Apprentice franchise has a lot to answer for, not least for creating a false aura of acumen around a New York real-estate hustler sufficient to get him elected president of the US. The UK version managed to furnish us with Katie Hopkins. Once upon a time, the charmlessness of its contestants was its main asset – the viewer was made to feel they deserved what they got – but I have begun to feel sorryfor them all, for being made to look foolish, for the slimness of their chances and the paltriness of the ultimate prize.
The ratings for the show remain buoyant, so the BBC won’t be dismantling that boardroom set any time soon. But, for me, at least – it feels like time to turn off the lights. And wipe your nuts on the way out.
