by Adam McCulloch
Many of us were glued to the box last night for The Apprentice. Of course we shouldn't have been, especially you social workers. After all, Sir Alan Sugar is just a vulgar bully, looking to instil fear and obedience in the naïve, optimistic and usually young business-hopefuls desperately looking to impress him and get one up on their colleagues. His style is out of step with modern management practice, he doesn't value qualifications, he blames people for making mistakes (gasp if you must), he uses, er, inappropriate language.
I know someone whose telly conked out six months ago but they rushed off to buy a new one just for this series (and the even more wrong Desperate Housewives). It's appalling!
And now Sugar has made some typically crass comments about female bosses. He says that in his experience they are harder on women with childcare responsibilities than men and more likely to weigh up their value to the business against their absence to have babies.
How the BBC has encouraged this kind of talk to go on is beyond me. But then they continue to employ Jeremy Clarkson.
I will watch the rest of this exploitative, lowest common denominator, ill-informed series for research reasons only. No wonder there's a credit crunch if this is representative of British business people. Lobster for £5 anyone?!
Past series contestants, where are they now?
I've spent the greater part of my working life in big corporations, and in my view the thing that makes the Apprentice candidates unemployable (and the programme unrealistic) is their total lack of scruples or loyalty to their team members.
I seriously doubt that, in the real world, Sir Alan would hire any of them for fear of a knife in the back.