Sugar’s show wasn’t sweet for Aleksandra

LAST week’s episode of The Apprentice (BBC1, Thursday) took place behind the imposing, black and white Tudor frontage of Liberty, the haughty, high-end emporium of swanky goods in the heart of London’s West End.

I found myself in Liberty once, and I remember feeling a bit like a serf who’d crept into the dining chamber of some feudal overlord to pinch whatever left-over scrags of venison had dropped from the ceremonial gorging table.

Maybe it was the way I shifted uncomfortably in my “designer” underwear – Kevin Klein, £3.99 a pair down my local covered market – or the way my cheap shirt’s non-breathable, man-made fibres were making me sweat like a glass blower’s backside.

But it was clear I didn’t fit in with their affluent demographic and quickly left, ditching the solid silver cutlery set I’d put inside my trousers for safe-keeping – I also needed to shake off the security guard who’d already chased me down three flights of stairs, through haberdashery.

Back to the matter at hand though, and the teams had to introduce a new product line to promote and sell in the store, with only two days in which to fight it out to see who could turn stock into a pretty penny.

They also had to run a personal shopping service for some of London’s most discerning shoppers – ie. hugely monied lemonsuckers who regard anyone who has not got a double-barrelled surname and a villa in Turks and Caicos as though they were a splat of pigeon poo on their Christian Lacroix jacket.

And, while this current run of The Apprentice has strangely failed to get me excited so far – dunno why, it’s usually one of the highlights of my viewing year – the retail challenge at least threw something new into the usual mix.

In something of a series first, business consultant Aleksandra King made the shock announcement that she was going to quit the process approximately five minutes into the start of the episode.

“I’m not enjoying myself,” she hurrumphed, having somehow missed that the whole point of the show is to flagellate yourself on-camera with a pair of Lord Sugar’s red power braces.

“I just want to get home to my kids and husband.”

Hopefully they’ll still recognise her after these few weeks away, so anonymous was she.

With a presence as tangible as gossammer in a wind tunnel, I very much had my doubts that even the automatic doors at Sugar HQ would bother opening for her.

In fact, she’s probably still in the lobby right now, clawing at the glass and drinking straight from the tap of the water cooler over by the ladies loos. Aleksandra King

THE Missing (BBC1, Wednesday) continues to go from strength to strength and even looks like surpassing series one in terms of tense, unflinching drama.

Don’t know what it’s doing for the sale of camper vans though.

Not much I reckon. Not everyone thrives on the pressure of The Apprentice