The art of getting ahead
WEEK eight of the THE APPRENTICE (BBC1, 9pm) and Lord Sugar wants his remaining candidates, AKA the Weak Nine, to become art dealers. Hence he’s summoned them to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow.
Not that he’s turned up himself, mind you. “I’m sorry I can’t be with you today,” he announces on video, “but I’ve been called away on some very urgent business.”
What this business is he doesn’t say. I’m guessing someone’s made a multi-million-pound bid for budget airline Jet Pop, launched so memorably by Team Terrifyingly Clueless a couple of weeks back. It was only a matter of time.
“Now, the global art market,” he continues, getting down to this week’s business, “is worth a massive £47billion…”
(Hang on, what exactly does that mean? How does he come up with these figures? He never explains)
“…and art dealers are an important part of this lucrative sector.
“So for your next task I want you to sell the collections of some up-and-coming contemporary artists.” By this he means picking one artist each to represent, then trying to sell their work at a gallery do.
That, and dealing with a corporate client who has money to blow on something arty for their business.
Jasmine (right) is the unanimous choice to head one team (sorry, I’ve long since lost track of which side is which) while Jackie convinces the other lot she should manage them this week.
“I minored in fine art,” she proudly points out. “I actually did a bit of post-modern impressionism.”
(Disappointingly, nobody replies: “Wow, that’s great. Go on, do your Donald Trump.”)
So anyway, all that remains now is to see if the candidates really have an eye for art and, most crucially, for its saleability. Daniel certainly shows promise in that respect, delivering a particularly well informed critique of one artist’s work.
“If someone’s got a house or a flat,” he remarks, “could you really have a big structure of a duck with his a**e in the air?”
Elsewhere, talking of ducks, there aren’t any on THE SECRET LIFE OF THE ZOO (C4, 8pm). However there are some meerkats. Sorry, I was struggling for a link there.
Excitingly, one cute meerkat couple are due to become parents very soon.
For now the role of the male, who for some reason is called Beagle, is to do that familiar meerkat thing of standing up on his hind legs and peering around for potential predators. The role, meanwhile, of the meerkat mum-to-be, who’s known as Huskie, is to cry out: “Er, that’s awfully sweet of you, dear, but you do realise we’re in Chester Zoo and not the Kalahari Desert…?” Also tonight, in the latest heat of MASTERCHEF: THE PROFESSIONALS (BBC2, 8pm), three of the contestants must begin by tackling a particularly demanding skills test devised by no-nonsense judge Monica Galetti. Namely, to serve a dish of “broccoli in three different ways” – and at no point ask what on earth for.