Lord of the unwise

THE APPRENTICE BBC1, 9pm EPISODE one of The Apprentice is one of my favourite parts of the series – when we get to meet the candidates and wonder at their ridiculous, vainglorious trash talk.

“I am a fine-tuned moneymaking machine,” raves Sajan.

“I used to be a debt collector,” says Elizabeth, pausing for effect. “My nick name was Scary Liz”.

Then Michaela: “In business I’m like a bulldog. If you mess with me I do have lockjaw.” I’m not even sure this makes sense, but then she actually growls.

And best of all, Jeff: “I’m going to throw people under the bus. I’m going to throw people over the bus. I’m going to get on the bus, take the wheel and get that investment from Lord Sugar.”

Hurrah! We love that people like this actually exist for our amusement. His lordship is back for this 13th series, aiming to give someone £250,000 to fund a startup. And he gives the 18 candidates the usual pep talk about how this is NOT a holiday camp.

Of course his terrifying henchman/woman are there to back him up – Claude “Nothing will escape my attention” Littner and Baroness Karren “I’ve got eyes in the back of my head” Brady.

Then, rather weirdly, into the boardroom troops a handful of previous winners for a brief Show and Tell. But we don’t really care about the winning. We want to see prize idiots flapping about and coming up with useless ideas.

We want shouting, running in heels, early wake-up calls, being unprofessional and anything that makes Lord Sugar say “shambles”, which he does a lot.

This all happens fairly quickly. Their first task is to make burgers, and it’s all handshakes and kisses and “Let’s smash it” for about five minutes... until it gets ruthless.