Sugar sweet on slippery James
NIGELLA was talking about her caramel ice cream when she told us breathlessly: M.Ashbee of Etchingham wins £35 for that howler. Keep ’em coming to the address at the top of the page. WHY give snowfall in centimetres? It confuses half the country and ruins potential goofs. I’ll never forget the time Ulrika told a stunned nation: “I had a good eight inches last night.”
TV QUESTIONS: Why doesn’t Supergirl get super-PMT? When will Long Lost Family investigate the sad case of Corrie’s Andy McDonald?
And when the likes of Rick Stein pour fan worship on Ernesto “Che” Guevara do they ever pause to consider how many poor sods he executed?
LINDA Plant dismissed James’ business plan as “Fantasyland!” on The Apprentice.
“Lord Sugar doesn’t want pipe dreams and pie-in-the-sky bulls**t!” she added. Well, he had enough of that at Spurs.
James was the only bloke left at the interview stage, the episode where flakes and fantasists are exposed and egos ripped apart by Sugar’s corporate rottweilers.
He turned out to be as slippery as a snake in a sink full of sump oil.
Sacked from his last job for doubledealing, James had falsely claimed his recruitment company was recognised by APSCo, the top trade body for the industry.
Plant – who looks like the boardroom Joan Rivers and is nearly as savage – told him being fired put “a shadow over your trustworthiness”.
Claude Littner said his figures “scream ludicrous”. And yet he’s one of this year’s two finalists – up against Sarah, whose business involves repackaging sweets in a beaker with a ribbon on top.
She claimed it was “unique”, but Mike Soutar produced two rival firms’ confectionary packs which were identical.
“I don’t think they’re the same,” she protested feebly. “The bow on the top adds to the value...” Sarah has been in business since 2009 and her website didn’t work. No wonder Claude told her: “Well, we have found out about you…and you failed that test.”
If these are Britain’s brightest budding entrepreneurs then gawd help us. They’re not, of course. Michaela was clearly the most enterprising, but Sugar never takes chances.
Young Joanna was easily dispatched. “You don’t know how much you don’t know,” Claude told her. Umm, aren’t apprentices supposed to be trained?
“Exceptionally aggressive” florist Elizabeth had been kept on just for the ITV’s Bancroft was so heavily influenced by Line of Duty it could have been called Line of Xerox.
Tough DCI Elizabeth Bancroft, pictured, had a dodgy past as a vicious murderer and stopped at nothing (killing her old boss, destroying DNA evidence) to keep her secret.
Cop crime, corruption, cover-ups…Duty did all this better.
Sarah Parish and her scary new choppers just about made Bonkers Bancroft believable, but everything else was cheesier than Cheddar
Gorge.
Faye Marsay, inset, played Katherine Stevens, the rookie detective assigned by Ade Edmondson to the cold case investigation.
She was the cutest telly ’tec since Anna Lee, but Bancroft shot her and left her in a coma. Gulp. Even ITV weren’t Anna Lee retentive. Email me at: garry.bushell@ dailystar.co.uk or write c/o Daily Star Sunday,
10 Lower Thames Street, London
EC3R 6EN laughs. “Lord Sugar gave me a cheeky smile the last time he sent me back to this house,” she said.
“And I’m going to give that cheeky smile back to him and say, let’s take this a little bit further!”
There’s an image! Talk about ‘You’re Sired!’
In fairness, Liz had a terrific work ethic and can-do attitude but, Claude observed, she was “so overbearingly bossy it’s been a trauma to watch you”.
So a Loose Woman in the making, maybe, but no Apprentice winner. Sugar’s show is strictly about survival of the dullest. CHARLIE Murphy, Peaky Blinders, right ...Michaela Wain, The Apprentice... Blue Planet II. THE Orville, left – sucks like Klingon quicksand... Sinead’s unlikely Corrie love triangle – ITV’s turkey came early... Bancroft – barking.
SETH MacFarlane’s The Orville boldly goes where Captain Kirk went way better before. I’m not sure if it’s Star Trek: The Next Degeneration or The Worst Regurgitation.
Either way, it doesn’t work as comedy or drama. Keith Harris’s Orville had more chance of flying. KEITH Chegwin was a lovely, funny upbeat man but he was addicted to playing pranks.
We once did a TV show together called I’m Famous & Frightened, and shared a room in a “haunted” castle. Not a good move.
The scariest thing that weekend was the film Cheggers took – and thoughtfully posted on Facebook – of me, fortified by several buckets of red wine, snoring my head off. R.I.P. mate.
‘I just want it to get thickened...I can hardly wait’