Apprentice: you’re fired!
Calvin posted this on May 26th 2008 under Business, Career Moves Column, Reviews, TV
Published in The Evening Echo on 26/05/2008
You’ve got to feel a bit sorry for Sir Alan Sugar.
Why feel sorry for a man who’s managed to accumulate a fortune of more than GB£800 million over his chequered career? A man who’s ferried around in a chauffeur-driven Bentley? A man who flies around in his own Lear jet?
Not a lot feel sorry for, you might think; apart, perhaps, from the fact that he supports Tottenham Hotspur…! But then you remember that Sir Alan has signed up with the BBC to do “The Apprentice”, which is now in the middle of its fourth series. And the poor man must be ruing the day he signed on the dotted line.
Sure, the programme has made Alan Sugar a household name, but at what cost… and does someone that successful really need to raise his profile anyway?
Never mind the fact that he comes across as an acerbic, megalomaniacal tyrant; or the fact that he’s forced to jab an accusatory finger at one hapless candidate after another as he delivers his “You’re fired!” catch-phrase every week (apparently it’s written into his contract; a legacy from the original American show format, featuring the equally megalomaniacal but frankly much more ridiculous-looking Donald Trump). No, the real blow must be that he has to actually hire one of these buffoons at the end of the series.
Why on earth would a man who obviously doesn’t need the money, and who doesn’t suffer fools gladly, decide to lumber himself with such a motley assortment of corporate misfits? Worst of all, he’s actually obliged to give one of them a job at the end of it… and based on their performance on the tasks to date you can’t help but wonder at the wisdom of that.
