Alan Sugar Wants YOU

Ah, yes, there are few better ways to kick off a cliched knockoff tellyblog than to talk about what everyone else in the talking about telly world already talked about this morning; The Apprentice kicked off for a fourth bout last night on BBC One. See that? It was in bold, like in the papers and everything.

This year, Sir Alan appears to have obtained his wannabe apprentices from the books of a low-grade lookalike agency. Already, David "yah, call me Dave" Cameron, in his less known but even more toffy guise as Nicholas de Lacey-Brown, barrister, surname embellisher and suspicious facial hair grower, has been given the Sugary boot. Chief among his crimes, and let's not kid ourselves on this, was publically acknowledging that he was in school for longer than Alan "call me Sir" Sugar. Possibly the array of poshos paraded into the boardroom every year should be given a cheat sheet advising them not to bring up class, education or an inability to discuss football when defending their business decisions. I imagine mentioning shoddy electronics and ridiculous telephones wouldn't go down too well either. He'll never let anyone forget that he's got less education than a barnacle and still has zillions of pounds.

The best thing about the whole affair is the fact that this left-school-at-sixteen, done-it-all-meself, ain't-never-needed-nothing-from-nobody-and-anyone-who-did-is-a-sissy overgrown barrow-boy is so fond of his knighthood that he insists on having everyone else use it all the damn time. You'd think he'd do the courtesy of returning the favour and addressing everyone else by their formal titles, too, but does he fuck. It's all Raef this, Claire that and Alex the other, although in the latter case that's probably a blessing in disguise, because there'd be too much cracking up if he turned to the boys' team and asked Mr Wotherspoon* what went wrong. I look forward to the day he has a baronet or an honourable on or something, so's he can learn what a dick he looks when he gets people to massage his ego like that.

It's shaping up to be a pretty fun series, as it generally is, and I'm looking forward to Lord Snooty and his Pals being recreated before our eyes courtesy of the likes of Raef "hair like a tunnel into eternity" Bjayou and Michael "I *sniff* thought we were friends" Sophocles while the rest of the lads form up into an hilariously incompetent version of the Bash Street Kids. Possibly even the Jocks and the Geordies, should we manage to squeeze another schism out of them.

Raef for the win, incidentally, mostly because Sugar would quickly come to loathe having to work with him.

* - Anyone else picturing a chain of kuh-razy pubs, where everything is topsy-turvy and nothing is what it seems?