Why are our licence fees funding Lord Bighead’s birthday ego trip?
ENteRPRISe! Initiative! those are the qualities Sir Lord alan of Sugar desires in his next ‘ business partner’ on reality show The
Apprentice (BBC1).
Perhaps that’s true ... if ‘ enterprise’ means buffing the baron’s huge ego like a shoe-shine merchant with a vigorous cloth, and ‘initiative’ is wafting warm air up his trouser legs.
alan’s admiration for himself is famous, but this time he scaled new heights of smug narcissism, as he sent his acolytes out to buy his 70th birthday presents.
the episode was an exercise in self-praise. It began at his primary school, ended at the house of Lords and required the dim-witted disciples to buy nine items that marked ‘some of the milestones of my life and career’ — such as a Spurs scarf and a computer from amstrad, the company he founded.
an uncharitable reviewer could have fun listing nine items that represent a less flattering portrait. how about the amstrad emailer, which was meant to combine a landline phone with an email account when it launched in 2000, but charged a premium rate?
Or an iPod . . . apple’s worldchanging gadget that alan claimed, in 2005, ‘will never take off’?
and why no place on the list for the very first electronic device he marketed, the amstrad 8000 amplifier, supposedly designed to play music? Possibly that’s because even he admitted it was ‘ the biggest load of rubbish I’ve ever seen in my life’.
By the end, he was bursting with self-love. the winners were sent for drinks in ‘a bar that celebrates the 1940s, the decade that I was born’.
Maybe it’s curmudgeonly to begrudge Sir Lord Sugar his warm glow . . . except that our licence fees are paying for this self-aggrandising twerp to have his vanity tickled.
If ego is the essential ingredient for success in business, all the apprentices have what it takes to succeed — especially Ross, who was so conceited that he got himself fired.
Like the rest of them, he can barely speak english: asked to purchase scarlet doeskin (soft leather as sported in the house of Lords), Ross wondered, ‘Do you wear a doeskin type thing when you get lorded?’
that didn’t stop him declaring himself ‘an official genius’ according to IQ tests, adding that in any room he was ‘statistically’ the most intelligent person present. how he expected that to win over Lord Bighead, I don’t know, but then I’m not a genius.
It doesn’t take a genius to realise that lack of sleep can make you grumpy, or that yoga and mindfulness can reduce stress, but documentary series Trust Me, I’m A Doctor (BBC2) was in the business of highlight- ing some very obvious findings as it investigated mental health.
We were told too that fresh veg is better at raising long-term mood than cheap junk food, while exercise and laughter are good because they release endorphins, the feelgood chemicals.
No surprises there. But this show, fronted by Dr Michael Mosley, succeeds because of its pace and knack of throwing new information into the mix. If it was just wall- to- wall revelations and cutting-edge research, it might be overwhelming — but the blend of stuff- we- know with fresh intelligence makes it engaging.
hidden in the show was the startling news that one variant of schizophrenia is really an auto-immune disease, like lupus or multiple sclerosis. that has led to radically different, and highly effective, treatments.
We also discovered that prison studies show convicts behave better when given B vitamin supplements and fish oil. Maybe we could reduce the crime rate with tablets from the health food store. It must be worth a try.