Funny, sarcastic, satirical, hilariously silly, scabrous, outspoken and great great fun. No, give me a break, not the actual battle of the bullsh***ers � but Adrian Child�s great little follow up � The Apprentice �You�ve Been Fired � where the week�s firee is affectionately mocked before a post-mortem panel to tease out further humour of embarrassment to amuse the nation.

The only rational reason for watching Sralan�s grovelling buck-passer auditions is so that you know just how stupid, just how mind-numbingly unpleasant the contestants are: so that you can enjoy to the full all the nuances of Aidy�s p*ss-take immediately afterwards.

The Nation has again been scoured to find the 16 (1 drop out) most obnoxious, up-themselves candidates so utterly self-deluded about their talent and competence, that we can easily dismiss our guilt at enjoying so much their embarrassment and humiliation week in week out.

Casting for the show, for it is casting not contestant selection, is as usual impeccable. It takes a special kind of auditioning talent to select so precisely 16 people so utterly psychologically and socially dysfunctional that they probably went into business because in 12 years of full-time schooling not one of them ever got picked for any collaborative or team activity whatsoever. Rightly. These are the �you-can-have-him/hers� of the playground pick-up with an odd number of kids. No one wants the odd one left to last � because you know they will be more benefit disrupting the other side than screwing up your own team.

Three series in and I am still waiting for one apprentice Apprentice, just one, having got on the show � to refuse to look like an idiot just because the telly people encourage you to. Ah me where is the first rebel on the Apprentice? Someone with the balls to call Sralan the bully he is and be good at the schadenfreude charades.

This week�s so-called �challenge� was, at what appeared to be night before notice, to exploit the contents of a couple of Del-Boy Trotter white vans containing various kinds of cleaning materials from dusters and shoe polish to women-unfriendly jet car-washers i.e jet car-washers. This �business� project had all the credibility of Rodders trying to flog Del�s hooky Russian video recorders the size of a suitcase on Walford market.

What followed was the genius of the Apprentice concept: set a bunch of intelligent people against one another, then give them a really dumb objective with no time to even think about it let alone do it: then stand back and watch. And it works every time. The boys �Empire� team having assumed that cleaning limousines must be a doddle because people without degrees or monumental egos do it for a living, took an hour to do a crap job on one vehicle. It was like watching the latest in the latterday Carry On series like Sean of the Dead and Hot Fuzz: jet-washing a Hummer Limo with the door still open while 3 or 4 other guys in white wellies bitch about each other.

Meanwhile back at St Pancras Station 3 of the guys set up a shoe-shine stall and charging what I would have thought was a prohibitive �4 a pop, start earning about �60/hour. So what does our self-elected team leader Howard do when he discovers the Marx Brothers Acme Cleaning Co are screwing up elsewhere? You got it � he closes down the shoe shining at a profit so they can all help to mess up car cleaning at a loss elsewhere. In a contest that was won with a total revenue of about �350, if the guys had put another shoe-shine team into another London station they would have earned well over �1,000 in 10 hours with minimal costs of polish and dusters.

The girls 'Ignite', great name for a car-washing team I thought, were certainly being enterprising � having first virtually told their top class car salesroom manager he was a liar and couldn�t be paying what he was paying for car cleaning � they took 3 hours to fail to clean four trial cars and lost the chance of 10 more in the showroom. Here their much vaunted, by themselves at least, entrepreneurial skills really kicked in: jumping out in front of cars at a shopping mall with enticing little sales gems like �have you seen how dirty your car is?� As darkness fell, their derring do still not done, they were soliciting family car cleaning clients by door to door canvassing � �you go and put your feet up and watch the telly.� they said patronisingly.

�Darling � put the kettle on will you � I�ve just got to call the police.�

So to the bored-room; sorry boardroom. Even Sralan didn�t seem to be able to crank up enough interest to bully anyone. After a few waffly comments about not having a �strategy� or a �business plan� for a day�s last minute shoe shine, he found an excuse to sack Anita. Poor Anita - doomed from the start having at least 3 Sralan phobic qualities: 1st she's a woman; 2nd she's not a dolly bird; and the clincher, she's not an agressive bitch. Knowing that they had a �200 limit on what they could use from the van, team leader �Moaner� Lewis asked Anita to ensure they didn�t go over the �200. As no one had any real idea how much equipment they needed for what purpose Anita did as instructed and just kept them under �200. Job done - as specified.

So Sralan sacked her because she supposedly didn�t understand the basic principle of business that you have to control your costs. It was a bit like blaming a traffic warden for a new motorway going over budget.

Anyway dear reader � I�m sure we have more ad hoc, zany lunacy to come: but seriously, watch Aidy not Sralan � you�ll see all the best bits and not have to keep a straight face.

(This and other reviews and writing are available free at ]http://www.zettelfilmreviews.co.uk)

Woo hoo, Zettel! You - and It - are back!!
Very much enjoyed your take. Mind you, this series is becoming a bit scary. There's something robotic about these contestants - something George W. Bush-ish (say that and persuade anyone you're sober). Something not-quite-there-behind-the-eyes. At the same time, I can see the sheer innocence of them too - they know this is a Big Chance, but they're not quite sure what to do about it, and, as you say, there's the Script.
I do love it, though. Moaner asking what the fluffy object at the end of the stick was, was a classic.
Susiex

Hey SusieA

Welcome back. Touch and go whether I can summon up the will to watch them all. Have to see. So far Paula looks interesting but maybe it's the hair (or me); Philip sounds like a contender but maybe its the big mouth; 'Rocky' has got to be kidding - check his birth certificate, sounds like one of those nicknames we make up for ourseleves then your mates always call you 'Ernie' or 'Eggcup'; as for the 'Cream-Puff'........

Come to think of it, there's a lot in what nickname your 'colleagues' give you. They should build it into the Game - make it a requirement that each team gives its members a nickname that they must respond to and carry till fired. Small enough humiliation among all the rest. I'll come back to that one when I now them well enough to be rude enough.

ciao

Z

Its harder to get involved at the beginning - too many people. Hope you stay with it though. Nowadays the 'At-the-end-of-the-day I-personally am simply an outstanding business entrepreneur and I'll strangle my hamster to win' has become part of The Script and so no-one really stands out until they begin to get knackered and their real characters start to seep through.
Susiex

I really enjoyed your review.

I'm a bit shameface to admit, but i was addicted to it last year and probably will be again this year.

Julie

Don't worry Julie this is sort of a Writewords Apprentice Encounter group. We get together to share our shame and self-disgust at watching.

Instead of allowing terrorist suspects i.e. any dark guy with a beard, to be taken off by the Americans and passed on to someone else to torture we should just keep them, lock them in a room and make them watch past series of The Apprentice until they scream for mercy and confess everything. Take about a day at a guess.

Z