Time for common scents

IS there anything quite as absurd as an advert for perfume? Po-faced, laughably vacuous, it’s surely the ultimate triumph of style over substance.The product of an industry, then, in which teams from THE APPRENTICE

(BBC1, 9pm) should feel quite at home.

Yes, the task Lord Sugar sets tonight for his six remaining twits is to create and market their own fragrance brands. Or, to put it another way, he’s expecting these people to make scents, ha ha.

You can only admire his optimism. If, like me, you were wondering why this year’s

Apprentice candidates – compared to those from previous series – devoted so little time to choosing themselves team names, tonight is when all becomes clear.

Clearly they wanted to hold back, to stockpile their precious reserves of hot air, waffle and empty-headed twaddle, ready to unleash these when they could be put to more profitable use. And yes, that moment has finally arrived.

One team, having lovingly concocted its designer pong, decides to call this product Captivation. Not surprisingly, the name doesn’t meet with unanimous approval.

“It’s what you would call ‘an uneasy verb’,” insists one team member.

She doesn’t say exactly what she means by this, but I’m guessing such unease would stem from the fact that it’s a noun.

Image-wise, Captivation’s packaging is certainly direct and forceful. “Feel The Power. Breathe In The Scent. True Captivation. Use Capital Letters For No Reason,” is what it says on the box, although admittedly I may have made that last bit up.

The other team, meanwhile, plumps for an even more brilliantly dreadful name: Determined.

The packaging for this one describes it as “a beautiful citrus fragrance created for indepedent woman who break the mould and live life on their own terms”.

Whether “indepedent woman” will love it as much as independent women it doesn’t go on to say, but then maybe it feels it doesn’t need to, any more than it feels the need to spell Eau de Parfum correctly on the front of its box. Still, nit-picking aside, this fragrance does contain excitingly rare ingredients such as “madarin”, so I dare say it smells jolly interesting.

Elsewhere tonight, in THE SECRET LIFE OF THE ZOO

Chester’s veteran chameleon Mr Parsons is about to meet two prospective partners.

But if his keeper is hoping to get the old chap in the mood, breeding-wise, he has a strange way of going about it.

“This is Julie,” the keeper announces, by way of an introduction. “She’s got a slightly deformed eye...”