Wednesday 6 October 2010

Synergy by name, not by nature

The Apprentice is back. Tonight, Series 6 sauntered into our living room to fill that gaping recess in the nation’s hearts.

It’s a winning formula that rightly hasn’t been tampered with. Take sixteen of the most misplacedly-confident, attention-starving “entrepreneurs” (just like Peaches Geldof is a “journalist” and I “read” Ulysses at university) and let havoc commence. It’s like shooting suited, shit-spouting fish in a barrel for Lord Sugar, Nick Hewer and new girl Karen Brady. You don't have to be a multimillionaire rags-to-riches success story to point out their shortcomings, but it helps.

The shit was flying before the start credits had even finished. The usual train station montage was interspersed with candidates saying things like “My first word wasn’t mummy, it was money,” or “Everything I touch turns to sold.” Alan Sugar? More like lines from a recession-era Alan Partridge.

Once given the task of buying, making and peddling sausages to Londoners and dispatched to Smithfield Market, the issue of team names came up. Apollo was cringe from the ladies, but it had more lift-off than the men’s Synergy. Apparently, shruggable boardroom jargon means something; maybe they’ve been watching too much 30 Rock.

The Herculean boasting and flexing of business brawn briefly shut down when it came to choosing team leader, and a tumbleweed silence drifted across both groups. Then, when the lambs for the slaughter volunteered themselves (Dan and Joanna), did they all start up again.

Having bought their woeful, orphan-grade meat to fob off on the capital’s unsuspecting carnivores, Dan soon showed the leadership style of Francisco Franco, assigning each person a role and bellowing orders, with the intensity and looks of Barney Rubble post-Betty-divorce.

The women won. They went for a mixture of flavours, higher quality meat, they didn’t mess up for quite as long as the men in sausage production and employed a more efficient selling and leadership technique. That wasn’t difficult when Stuart the Anti-Midas's method was wholesale harassment, and blue-eyed Dan had all the hallmarks of a mini Hitler, shouting down any objections to his iron rule. It was Synergy by name, not by nature.

Ah, Stuart. Down to the final three in the boardroom, 21 year old Stuart belied his years by displaying the obnoxiousness and misplaced arrogance of a truly veteran prick. His uber-confident boadroom argument was based around rewording “But how many did you sell?” to Dan over and over again.

The best bit was when he punched the numbers into an invisible calculator, looked at the imaginary “zero” and then screwed up his extremely-punchable crowing face to Dan, before claiming that he – sorry, Stuart Baggs, the brand - was “one of the best businessmen in the country, if not the world.”

Meanwhile, neither a massive twat or an Ayran-alike close to a violent, rampaging breakdown, Alex ummed and aahed, his hangdog expression giving at least a description to someone who looks like a real contender for The World’s Most Boring Man competition.

Fortunately for Alex and Stuart, because crazy eyes Dan had been too busy leading the group – ie. belittling them and marching around like a drill sergeant – to sell anything himself, he got the chop.

Back at the central London Georgian townhouse – why not, just once, give them Croydon Travellodge, for poops and giggles? - the women screamed in unison at the swimming pool (“We can narcisistically stare at our own reflections in the water! Eeee!”) and glugged champagne.

It’s early days yet, but there are already some stars waiting in the wings for coming weeks. Take token toff Raleigh Addington, whose parents were evidently Dallas characters with a penchant for cycling. The young graduate is clearly in way over his head, but had his own little pop at Dan, adding “It’s shameful!” and pointing with histrionic, J'Accuse intensity.

Then there’s Jamie and Chris. Footballer looks, intact senses of “hang on, this is actually bullshit” self-awareness and good timing? They’ll make it down to the last few.

Standing out from an outwardly nondescript women’s group, Jenny Éclair-a-like Melissa also had a little sniping match with the team leader. Too right; Joanna did seem more than a little makeshift, but with a narrow victory in the bag, the women postponed their cat noises and petty backbiting for a later date.

All in all, the Apprentice settled right back into the groove. A meaty start to what is going to be another good series.

Monday 22 March 2010

TV: The Secret Millionaire

First blog of the year? I must have been busy. Or gone soft. Or spent too much time eating pretzels and watching 30 Rock.

TV: The Secret Millionaire

Several girls have told me that it is life-changing, sob-inducingly beautiful, superb television. No, it’s not BBC pondlife programme Snog, Marry, Avoid. I’m talking about C4's "The Secret Millionaire". I had to watch it, if only to see if I too would shed Notebook quantities of tears.

Before the show, I had imagined that the millionaire would be the stereotyped monnied, upper class twat who would normally be lynched within five minutes of walking into an anything-other-than-Sloane-Square scenario. But, by wearing an Adidas shellsuit, shortening his vowels and eating four Greggs pasties a day, he blends seamlessly into the rank and file. There’s got to be a baddie in the piece, after all, right, so why not make it the rich man in a worldwide recession?

But the whole piece is carefully crafted, and the millionaire is accordingly cast with great thought; it's not C4's remit to be so anti-capitalis, anyway. Last week’s wealthmonger was Iranian-born Jahan Abedi, who looks just like the offspring of a Bond villain and Asian Telly Savalas (who loves ya baby?). They show him cavorting with lovelies in one of his Welsh bars at the start, but this is a red herring. It materialises that he’s not a thoughtless knob; quite the opposite in fact.

Then they take him to downtown Leicester and drop in a rancid apparetment that looks it’s been ransacked. It's a fate I’d only wish on my worst enemy. And Katie Price. Which is maybe one and the same. But despite being out of his comfort zone, despite being without his butler, despite being in the Midlands for Christ's sake, he takes to his role with great purpose, visiting care workers, volunteers and the like.

Gradually, over the course of show, he comes over as a genuine, caring and down-to-earth man who has worked hard to make his riches. 

He comes off both genuine – surprising in an act of made-for-television philanthropy - and likeable which is important when some of disenfranchised in this piece can be victims of society’s ills, and it's easy to transfer blame onto the upper class (just see my second paragraph stereotyping, for instance).
I felt no resentment for him, just for the fact that he has a million times more money than I do. And that he wore more obscene amounts of black clothing.


The show is, of course, utterly contrived and unbalanced, designed not to tug at the heart-strings so much as yank on them like a classroom of sugar-overdosing kids let loose on a bell ringing session. DING DONG, DING DONG; it's 48 minutes of pure emotional assault.

First, we meet a kind and generous volunteer worker (aww!) who needs a minibus, then a landlord who lets houses for shafted immigrants (bless!). And, to top it off, there’s John, whose wife of 40 years died a few years ago. Now, he spends almost every day volunteering at a hospice in her memory. They might as well show a film of an Andrex puppy crying or Bambi’s mother being killed. No wonder women lap this up, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Weepy, hormonal fish.

Throwing money at life’s problems is not presented as the cause to the problems; after all, the problems here are not flimsy or insignificant, and will not be solved by the money. But through his brief window of interest and whopping cheque, the millionaire provides unquantifiable emotional recompense to the most selfless or unfortunate beings.

It could be patronising and corny, but with Jahan Abedi, the undeniable sense that he does care is always there. And so, the woman gets £3,000 for a minibus, the millionaire feels slightly better about hoarding all that cash and the reader’s heart isn’t so much warmed as exploded. It's win, win, win.


I defy you to not smile at the moment the millionaire reveals his riches (although starting a sentence with “I haven’t been completely honest with you…” is usually ended with “ … about my new status as a post-op transsexual with a Nazi sex penchant, honey.”). Sweeping background music plays, the lovely John cries as he remembers his wife and treasures the cheque which means he can go to Cyprus, the couple's last holiday destination. And you can almost hear a million housewives simultaneously weeping at the sheer loveliness.

Of course, I didn't cry. Or even punch the wall at the difficult, difficult feelings I was experiencing. But there was a lump in my throat. In finding the unheralded gems in the country, it’s brilliant entertainment surprisingly life affirming (just don’t think about that one too much, as life affirmation and money are argumentative bedfellows), an all too rare offering of positivity in the weekly telly schedule.


Well, next week, no wall whacking, no life changes, no disenfranchisement. I’ll watch Sophie Dahl food porn on the BBC. The only moral dilemma I’ll have is whether masturbation over a food programme is ethical. No worries.


To watch it: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-secret-millionaire/episode-guide/series-6/episode-9

The Secret Millionaire
Season 2, Episode 4
First broadcast, Monday 15 March 2010