Wednesday Night's TV (22/2/06)

The new series of The Apprentice was as wonderful and expertly edited as expected, crammed full of vacuous business types overusing the word "dynamic", and a particularly demented ginger woman who is going to be great value over the next few weeks. As is Syed. An arrogant, ambitious, self-satisfied James Blunt who utterly failed to recognise that "The 'A' Team" was an unsuitable and puerile name for the male team. Almost reassuringly it seems that it's the men who are going to internally destruct in the same way as the women's team descended into catfighting and backstabbing last year. I think we may see evidence for something I've long felt, that men are just as bitchy as women and just as capable of slagging one another off behind each other's backs. In terms of the women's team - "Velocity" - they wasted no time at all in employing their feminine 'assets' to make more money. They shamelessly fluttered their eyelashes and bore their cleavages around Spitalfields to procure as much free fruit as possible for the task. It took the last female team until halfway through the series to decide that this was a usable strategy. At that time, Sir Alan claimed that the debate over whether women should use their bodies in business caused division even amongst his closest allies (I'm guessing Margaret - she did not look impressed at Syra's flirty fishing), but he had no problem with any tactic which increased profit. This year, he looked sightly disgusted that they had flashed their bits so easily. Now I know Sir Alan isn't exactly at the vanguard of feminism but I didn't know he was a hypocrite - surely you either think it's okay or you don't? Personally, I'm with Margaret. But nothing can put me off Sir Alan, who actually said last night that he'd quite like to lose everything he has, just for the challenge of building it up all over again. What a guy, what a will, what fantastic one-liners. The Apprentice is the best thing to hit our screens in this millennium.