The Apprentice (UK)
From Frikipedia
Hit BBC1 TV show, based on a far bigger, and frankly better, American show where budding brown-noses attempted to brown-nose their way into amusingly-named buisnessman Donald Trump's empire.
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Premise
In the UK version, for Trumpy, read Sir Alan Sugar, the red-faced and rather furry owner of Amstrad, who make crap phones for offices and plasticky Sky set-top boxes.
Sir Alan sets a series of vaguely business-orientated challenges for the chosen set of dubious potential apprentices, who then proceed to make a massive cock of everything. At the end of the series, the person who has consistently been able to blame their failings on other members of the team the most wins a stupidly well-paid job combing Sir Alan's facial hair.
Throughout the show, cut scenes show aerial views of the Quarf and other impressive-looking areas of London. It is unclear why however, as Amstrad actually operate out of a small warehouse somewhere in Essex.
The Candidates
Friki has always been vaguely dubious about the quality of candidates on The Apprentice. It rather assumes that anyone worthy enough of doing a job such as that on offer would either already be earning more than is being offered, or would rather actually go through a proper interview process instead of putting their career in the hands of the fickle grasp of reality TV.
To back up Friki's point, these are some of the roles that former Apprentice hopefuls across three series have formerly been employed in:
- A mature student.
- A hotel manager.
- A former army lieutenant.
- A car salesman.
- A quantum physicist. (?)
- A housewife.
The Result
Through a series of eliminations, in which anybody with anything approaching a personality/from the North are removed from the show after having had everything successfully blamed on them, Sir Alan eventually ends up with his apprentice. Who then shakes Sir Alan's hand and smiles until the TV cameras disappear, and is then quietly shuffled into a corner to prepare coffee for the rest of their career.
