APPRENTICE: THE FINAL
Alison Rowat’s verdict on the rejuvenated reality TV show
The Apprentice: The Final BBC1, 9pm
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IF television shows were measured in dog years, The Apprentice would soon qualify for a birthday message from the Queen.
Yet this 14th series, which ended with an all-women final last night, has seen the show rejuvenated.
Must be something in the water, or the air. Instead of the usual wall-towall numpties, producers opted for a cast studded with good-looking, genial types, several of whom clearly fancy the Calvin Kleins off each other. For Apprentice 2018 think Love Island with spreadsheets.
Sex still sells, then, but not always, a lesson that finalist number one, Camilla Ainsworth, the nut milk queen, has been slow to learn. Last week she was told off for advertising her vegan dairy substitute in ways that would have made Hugh Hefner blush.
This week the 22-year-old from Lancashire convened a meeting to name her product. Daniel, one of the sacked crowd brought back for the final, had clearly failed to get the memo about naughty not being nice. “Love nuts” was his first suggestion, followed by “grab my nuts”. Lord Sugar’s lieutenant, Claude, gave Daniel a stare so hard it could have cracked walnuts.
Competing against Camilla for £250k of Sir Alan’s money was
Sian Gabbidon, a reversible swimwear designer (she is not reversible; the swimming cossies are). Would she like to call her brand Bikini Hut (“like Pizza Hut”), or Bikini
Bitch? Curiously, the 25-year-old from Leeds did not. She settled instead for SYO, “style your own”, and asked Kurran Pooni to direct the television ad. In a previous attempt at such a task, Kurran turned out to be more Mr Bean than Mr Spielberg, but to everyone’s amazement he made a decent job of it, even if he did later compare himself to Scorsese.
Both Sian and Camilla’s products were the sort of thing people might actually want to buy. This was another bucking of the Apprentice trend. Carry on like this and who knows, this year’s victor might be heard of again. Usually the winners disappear into the television equivalent of the witness protection programme.
After the pitch to industry professionals, it was on to the boardroom for the last time, and another miracle: Sir Alan cracked a joke that was on the same continent as funny. Spying Kurran, he teased: “You got back from Hollywood okay then?”
It came down to this: Camilla had only been in business for three months but her product could potentially bring in big profits. Sian had obvious talent and a proven product, but the market for swimwear was overcrowded. Lord Sugar went for the safer bet, Sian.
The Apprentice may be to real business what Peppa Pig is to the farming industry, but Lord Sugar does not mess around with his own money. That’s why he has so much of it.
With on the night audiences averaging seven million, The Apprentice still manages to hover around fourth or fifth in BBC1 weekly rankings.
As this series has shown, there’s life in the old dog yet.