WHAT’S HOT TO WATCH TODAY
IS there a finer hour of entertainment throughout any TV year than the penultimate episode of THE APPRENTICE – INTERVIEWS (9pm, BBC1)?
This is the never-less-than-hilarious interview round, where the final five candidates, whittled down from the original 16, are given an absolute roasting, with Lord Sugar’s ruthless advisors pulling apart their business plans as ferociously as hungry lions feasting on the carcasses of… of… erm, whichever animal’s carcass a hungry lion likes to feast on. (Sorry, I lost confidence in that analogy half way through.) Before they go in for their grillings, this year’s five – Sabrina, Sian, Khadija, Camilla and Daniel – are briefed by Lord S himself.
“There’ll be nowhere to hide,” he warns them (I’d be putting my hand up at this point and going: “Er, what about the desk, Al? Could I not hide under that?”), “so you’d better hope you’ve dotted those I’s and crossed those T’s.”
Of course, the fact is they can check their punctuation all they like – there’s still no escaping the flaws in the plans themselves. One candidate is told: “Your ideas are all based around sex.” (I believe this is intended as a criticism).
And another is asked to read aloud an extract from theirs, to which the interviewer’s verdict is: “You sound like a prize imbecile to me.” ELSEWHERE tonight, dear old pals Terrance and Bert, chums for 70-odd years, have sadly had a bit of a fallout. And it actually turns physical. They’re tortoises, featured in this week’s episode of THE SECRET LIFE OF THE ZOO (8pm, Channel 4).