With The Apprentice now in its 20th year on air, the bar for its contestants is somehow both lower and higher than ever. Any pretence that the BBC One competition, which is basically the Olympics for bulls***ters with a strong track record in B2B sales, is a genuine recruitment process for potential business highfliers faded long ago. The selection criteria seem to be erratic at best: is it open to anyone who’s ever listened to an episode of a motivational podcast, I wonder? Or perhaps to those who self-identify as “entrepreneurs” on LinkedIn? And yet this programme now has such a glorious track record when it comes to corporate stupidity that, in order to really grab our attention, Lord Sugar’s latest batch of hopefuls need to be utterly, unapologetically woeful.
With each series, essentially, we need a stronger dose of idiocy – and delusional similes – to get the same results. The early signs in this opening episode are promising. “I am the human equivalent of a tank, nothing gets in my way,” promises Mia, whose business revolves around meal prepping. Not to be outdone, her fellow contestant Chisola describes herself as “like a lion in the business world – fierce, hungry and ready to devour my prey”. Carlo, meanwhile, can boast one of the best job titles to ever grace the series: he’s a “hair transplant consultant” who connects clients with transplant providers around the world. I’d hazard a guess that he does a lot of trade in Turkey.
