The Apprentice

I cannot recommend strongly enough that you should be watching "The Apprentice" on BBC2. This is the only reality show you can watch without checking your brain at the door. Watching a bunch of cocky, business-bollocks talking muppets getting cut down to size by Sir Alan Sugar is one of the few highlights of modern television.

The concept is simple: 14 people are taking part in what is essentially one long interview process. Each week, the group is split in two and given a task. The losing team leader selects two people from that team that they feel should be fired, and the three of them each defend themselves against Sir Alan. One team member will be fired. The last man/woman standing gets a £100,000 per annum job.

So, a simple idea but endlessly entertaining. Watching these people fly apart under stress is car crash television: you simply can't look away, even when you can see what's going wrong.

To give an example, tonight saw two very different styles of management. As usual, the teams were divided according to gender, but with a team leader from the opposite gender. So each leader was dealing with a group of people he hadn't worked with before, and who were going to resent them. Fantastic!

The challenge was to run a food stall at the Thames Festival. Each stand had to be themed. Each team has a £2000 budget. The team bringing back the biggest profit wins. Easy as that.

Leading the boys team was Alexa. Alexa was nearly fired last week, and rapidly showed she had all the management skills of my left testicle. She was thoroughly overwhelmed by the egos on legs that form the boys team. Even when supposed restaurant expert Syed announced he'd accidently blown the budget by ordering far too much food, Alexa said nothing.

The team was aiming to make 500 pizzas. They made 90 pizza bases, leaving them with huge amounts of toppings they couldn't use.

Leading the girls was Mani. Frankly, a bit of a twat, but he did seem to have the right approach to this task. Despite complaints from Michelle that she was being ignored, Mani was in fact focusing on getting the job done, rather than wasting time listening to each persons opinion and making sure everyone knew exactly what he was doing. Of course, it didn't help that Michelle could only whine that she didn't like what was going on, without going into specifics. I also suspect that walking out of a business meeting with Sir Alan to go and have a bit of a cry wouldn't go down too well, so I suspect she may not be the winner of the contest.

So, who won? Mani's team spent about £1200, and made a profit of about £350. Alexa's team spent all their budget bar £6, and made a loss of around £1200. Bummer. Alexa took Syed and Tuan into the boardroom with her, and all three were roasted over the failure. Alexa went, but only because the rules don't allow more than one person to be fired at a time. And it was the right call. Yes, Syed and Tuan screwed up, but the total lack of any management compounded any bad decision made.

For example, Syed's over-ordering, and the team only producing 90 pizza bases, meant each slice of pizza would need to sell for about £4.70. Alexa was happy for them to start selling at £3 per slice. It doesn't take a maths genius to see you're not going to turn a profit. Personally, with the £6 left, I would have sent Syed out to buy as many bread rolls as he could, then use them with the surplus toppings to make sandwiches. Sure, it wouldn't have saved them, but it would have minimised the loss. Of course, I would also have got Syed to try and return a lot of the surplus to the wholesaler, and idea that didn't occur to these business geniuses.

Over with Mani's team, as mentioned, there was criticism of his leadership. The girls resented him leaving them to prepare the ingrediants whilst he went off to negotiate with drinks suppliers. The thing is, I agree with this decision. As the man in charge, he's responsible for any deals reached, so even if he sent someone else to do the dealing, they'd have to report back to him. It makes far more sense for the person who has to make the decisions to go do that whilst the staff get on with the tasks that need no management input. I think it made a pleasant change from the "everyone's input is valuable" pseudo-democratic approach that has seen the women's team lose twice before this.

Of course, what do I know? I'm just some monkey what flits from place to place, but it's scary to see how inept some of these people can be. Anyway, watch The Apprentice. If you haven't been watching it, go to the website, where you can watch all the episodes to date. Enjoy.