June 11th (Weds)

So today is the final of the Apprentice. Ever since some enterprising young commissioning editor realised that it was both easier and cheaper to make telly with people dragged in off the streets than to actually pay highly strung "artistes" to strut around on set getting precious every five minutes, the floodgates opened, and at times it seems that there's little else to be found on the box. It permeates the whole spectrum of 9 milion available channels, and as the share of dosh available has to be divided amongst more and more participants, the more attractive the option has become, and the more desperate have become the premises on which this dross is rolled out.
There is one shining exception, and one I have toyed and dallied with in the past, but have now thrown in my lot with. It is of course, the Apprentice, and it reaches it's current culmination ce soir.
Which is fine, and I'll be watching, and of course noting that if you want the production that sets the standards for the rather grubby genre, then naturally you look to the Beeb. Sadly the old showbiz adage "leave em hungry for more" has not filtered through. The show in istself is fine, but today this is not enough.
Immediately it ends every week, it is followed by another, studio based discussion with the evictee of the week. Not only do people waste their time tuning into this, which generally consists of a match of the day style dissection of the episode everyone has just just seen (in case the complexities of the event went over their head), but unbelievably a studio full of people are persuaded out of the pubs, bingo halls and domination parlours to assist in person.
Then throughout the week come literally dozens of other programmes in a similar vein
It is felt necessary to holistic understanding of the event to interview the relatives of the candidates (one of them suffered badly from athletes foot in his youth was one priceless gem gleaned in such a transit), their work colleagues. Then interviewers are sent onto the streets to weedle out the opinions of the man on the Clapham omnibus. I have no idea how many times such programmes appear, but it seems to me that every time I try to record something on Sky Plus, it's a wasted button push as the hard drive is full of programmes about the bloody Apprentice. Not content with this, every time you switch on live TV of any description their is Sugars gnarled and ugly mug glowering out at us teasing us with possible outcomes.
The presenters then have their five pennorth "Oooh I thing Lee has really got something" . The fucking weatherwoman is even persuaded to forget her occluded fronts to dwell on the vital matter of the day. Enough? Are you joking? Let's drag in last week's loser to see what he thinks. It's been six days since we saw him after all. And why stop the retro at last week? Yes, we've last year's runner up, the year before's first semi final casualty, and then in a final, classic twist, the Beeb drag out big Dunc. Yes it's Duncan Bannatyne, the would be Sugar from the Beeb's other scare the would be captains of industry to death reality fest, the Dragon's Den. Presumably we can conclude that this series will shortly be hoving into view into the vacant berth left empty by Sugar and his entourage of oddbods. And of course this process is not confined to TV, but fills hours and hours and fucking hours on every talk radio station in the country, and no doubt acres of red top newsprint, the point of submission for me arriving when Sugar pops up on the fucking Today programme.
On a more trivial note, Brown's fixation with banging people up for 42 days before reading them their rights squeaks through the Commons thanks to nine votes purchased from the Paisleyites. Odd one this. A measure very popular with Joe Soap (lock up the fuckin Pakki bastards) and very unpopular with MPs, including strangely the Tories, who as I recall in the time of the likes of Waddington were pretty keen on this sort of thing. Had Brown lost it could well have hastened the end for him, the beginning of the end now far behind us. Sadly for Gordon the affair will not add a percentage point to his popularity ratings, with the Labour party now struggling to keep ahead of Cleggie's boys in the polls, the Cameroons having long ago advanced away from them towards the horizon. And for God's sake, should you really need to pay the Orangemen of all people to deliver stringent anti terror legislation. Can anyone really conceive of the crazed Dr P, even dressed in is new orange sheep's clothing, solemnly explaining to us all why he delivered his Shankhill irregulars into the opposition lobby given his once or twice repeated views on the matter of terrorism and how to deal with it?