Blood, Sweat & T Shirts: Update

If you missed Newsnight last night (let’s face it - you did), then you won’t have seen the ghastly Georgina or the imbecile Stacey from Blood, Sweat & T Shirts talking with Paxman and a lady representing British clothing retailers. Unsurprisingly, Stacey was incapable of stringing a sentence together and Georgina rambled and blathered her way through whatever it was she was trying to say (I didn’t catch most of it as I only speak English).

What was fun though, was to observe that, even after spending six weeks living and working in the sweatshops and cotton fields of India, these two still arrived on the Newsnight sofa dressed to the nines in High Street fashions. At one point, Georgina explained to the Paxmeister that she still shopped on the High Street, only now she was much more aware of where her clothes came from. The problem for both Stacey and herself, she explained, was that it was terribly difficult for them to find out from clothes manufacturers where their garments were sourced. Oh? Wel,l that’s alright then.

So, despite knowing the pseudo-1980s rubbish she’s clobbered-up in is made by four year olds living in a puddle of dead dogs, rats, piss and shit, she still continues to wear the stuff anyway. Only now she’s blaming the clothes manufacturers for not clearly labelling their products.

“It’s so terribly hard to tell if your clothes have been made in a toilet by a little boy on 30p a year when the labels don’t say ’This item is made in a slum in Bombay by children’, isn’t it Stacey?”

“I fink, like, that … erm … yes, like, I fink it is, like, yeah?”

So … good to see the whole experiment wasn’t in vain, then.

The Apprentice 2008 - Ep. 7

Watching The Apprentice whilst pissed is a strange experience and one I don’t recommend.

For a start, if you’re meant to be writing a review about it the next day and attempt to make notes on what’s going on, you’re screwed. Events occur in a different order to how you note them and your notesheet ends up being a scrawled list of obscenities along the lines of ‘Claire is an interfering knacker-shit’. It’s not helpful at all. With this in mind, I’m only able to put down the stuff I remember with events all scrambled and probably embellished with a load of bollocks.

‘Oo’s next?!’ asked Alan after firing Jenny and Jennifer, the two inept ladies of similar nomenclature. The rest of them - Alex, Claire and Michael, looked at one another as if to say ‘how are we meant to know?’. It’s not their decision, after all.

It was, to quote Alan, a total disaster, but it was always going to be. I’ve never been to Morocco, but I’m sure I’d fare just as badly as our contestant friends in this task. Buying stuff from a list is hard enough in Ridley Road Market, in deepest darkest Dalston - so going overseas to some foreign clime would spell the end for me. I’d not only spend more on the items than they actually cost, I’d also lose my phone, my wallet, my dignity and my mind.

So I actually felt a twinge of sympathy this week, empathy even. Only for a few minutes though, up to the point where LEE MCQUEEN (the one who’s concerned) shouted ‘THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKIN’ ABAIRT’ - his new catchphrase. It must be his new catchphrase - he said it four or five times.

Sara, looking like a scared, smacked guinea pig, performed pretty well – but I could be misremembering that because I have a soft spot for the oval eyed beauty. Alex also performed his job admirably but ended up on the losing team – his efforts curtailed by Claire enforcing a boyfriend / girlfriend role play act in a feeble attempt to negotiate using acting skills in place of shrewd cunning. Needless to say, it didn’t work. When Alex managed to barter costs down, Claire would jump in as the concerned girlfriend and mindlessly force the price back up using sheer brute force. It was painful to watch.

On Lee’s team, for he project managed, things went better, simply because Jennifer - the other team leader – dived in head first with no planning whatsoever. All the same, I didn’t feel she deserved to go. She project managed two people who are complete dunderheads. Sophocles and Jenny, working as a team, managed to balls up every task they were given.

When fetching a kosher chicken, they approached a Muslim gentlemen who gladly pretended to bless the beast before slicing its throat open. That was fine, decided Jenny and Michael as they walked off with the un-kosher chuck, proceeding onwards to their next disaster – getting a tennis racket. Not only did they get the tennis racket, they also attempted to delay the stringing of Lee McQueen’s sports equipment in order to make him lose the task. ‘I thought that’d be the jewel in my crown’ said Jenny in subsequent interviews. She honestly thought that being a vindictive swine would endear her to people. But nobody likes a cheat, and she was subjected to the most casual firing since Lawrie Sanchez left Fulham. No ceremony – just a ‘you’re shit, fuck off’ type of hasty exit. On her 36th birthday as well. What a sod.

Sophocles really should’ve walked. He lied about his heritage to get in with Alan: ‘alright, I’m half Jewish’. ‘Shall we pull your trousers down and find out?’ asked the big beardie boss. Now – amusing though this was, this was a trick the Nazis used to use to separate those who were to be sent to their certain death. Using it as a gag in a corporate environment, in the real world, would probably end in an industrial tribunal. It wasn’t in the best taste, I didn’t feel.

Remarkably, Sophocles stayed. ‘I remember what it was like being 23’ said Sugar, proving that age comes into the equation when he recruits. This makes a mockery of the recent change in age discrimination laws, frankly. You’re not even allowed to use the word ‘lively’ when describing an office environment these days, as it discounts doddering old farts from being eligible. So, nice one Alan, you’ve made a joke about pulling down pants to check a man’s willy for scars and you’ve also let someone off being a useless plank because he’s 23. Maybe he should just hire an 8 year old  with no pants on and be done with it.

And that’s all I can remember. So, in lieu of a decent report (and apologies for letting the side down), let’s look at who’s left and see what their chances are:

Sara
An outside chance this one might do it. She’s the wildcard who, like Simon Ambrose last year, has shown gradual improvement. The nation’s also taken her to their collective heart because she was bullied, and everyone loves an underdog – especially one with big puppy dog wide-eyes.

Helene
Not a hope for Jabba the Hut – due, I’d say, for a firing next week. She was pretty much absent this time around, and the show was better for it. Her mock exasperation and constant bickering with Lucinda does the nation’s nut in.

Lee McLee McQueen (concerned)
Shows flashes of brilliance, but his chicken impression and his abuse of Sara may put him out of the running. He’s a twat, let’s face it. That’s what I’m talking about? I’d rather you didn’t talk at all, if you’re going to keep coming out with that shit.

Alex
Hard to say. Is often shown in a sympathetic light despite constant moaning, stupid bad-boy hats, quivering lips and scrawny, lanky frame in superman jim jams. He’s all I’ve got left in the office sweepstake, so I’m rooting for a dickhead. He’ll make the final I think.

Raef
Constantly edited to look good. Like a charming statue, Raef stands there looking handsome with nothing to say, then strikes a deal with someone by blinding them with posh arrogance. Overtook Alex in the ‘one-for-the-ladies’ stakes in week two and hasn’t looked back – but he’s way to posh to be recruited, surely? Imagine him and Alan having a breakfast bap together in Brentwood – it wouldn’t happen.

Sophocles
Hasn’t got a hope in hell. From the sounds of it, he’ll probably make the final just so those nasty bastard mate’s of Alan can rip his caked-in-bullshit CV apart. ‘Nice Jewish boy’ indeed.

Claire
Evens on this one. One week is portrayed as  a cantankerous bullying cow, the next a shrewd business expert. She’s a buyer by trade, as Alan keeps pointing out as though she’s his own over-achieving daughter, so would probably wow the folks over in Brentwood. She’s an insufferable moaner too, which can only help her cause.

Lucinda
She fades into the background despite her ludicrous wardrobe. How that’s possible I have no idea. Despite having been a good project manager, she’s just to flaky and way too plumy mouthed to make the grade, so I think she’ll be ejected ‘with regret’.

If Sophocles gets the job - and I’m putting my arse on the line here – I’ll eat the biggest hat I own.*

 

*I don’t own any hats

Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6

Blood, Sweat and T Shirts

It’s actually quite difficult to know where to begin with this - with people who don’t know they’re born, who don’t know about human suffering and who don’t understand anything other than their own desultory, vapid existence - and even struggle with that.

This mini-series was made as part of BBC3’s Thread project - a worthwhile but not-very-well-publicised campaign for eco-clothing and fair trade. It’s not something I’m particularly interested in, as it happens. I describe my own style, my own personal sartorial vibe as ‘tramp de la jour’ or ‘affluent curmudgeon’. Basically, I tend to find clothes in dustbins and discarded in puddles so that I end up looking like a tramp who’s one rung up from rock bottom. Despite this detachment, it’s hard not to applaud any movement that attempts to grab those twats who spend two hundred quid in Primark every weekend by the shoulders and shake so much sense into them that their brains haemmorhage.

I remember the glory days when fashion would only take up a couple of pages in a newspaper at a maximum, once a week. Now it’s dripping off every current affairs periodical, with comment, discussion, adulation and piss-taking in every margin of every wretched page. I couldn’t tell you why. Fashion is the the most pointless of all industries. It’s people dressing idiotically in the vain hope they might catch another idiot’s eye for five minutes. And after that five minutes is up, the look becomes ’so five minutes ago’, making the whole exercise more transient than a transit van going at full pelt along an empty runway.

So - and I think we all agree on this - even a tiny smudge of a passing interest in anything to do with fashion is the mark of an idiot. With this in mind, let us look at the central premise of Blood, Sweat and T Shirts.

Six Westerners, all of them fashion victims, are sent over to India to see how their garments are made. The four parts take us in sequence from the higher class of factory in episode one (still paying workers a pittance, but at least hygenic and safe) to, as I write, part three which took our travellers to a cotton plantation where they picked the cotton buds from the source, before working to gather it and bundle it. Living conditions are very, very basic and work is hard, strenuous work. Part four will hopefully see them losing a hand in some rusty machinery because, to a man, these are the worst group of snivelling idiots you could ever hope to see. And three of them are particularly odious examples of the offspring our nation is plopping out.

Okay, so Georgina is just a little bit thick. Fair enough, Stacey is your unremarkable airhead, and at least she puts in a bit of work. I’ll admit that Tara actually appears to be learning something from the experience - so fair play for that. It doesn’t make them any more likeable, but I admire the fact they got involved.

Despite these three showing, at last, some vestige of being adjusted and functioning, the remaining three are grade ‘A’ arseholes. Irredeemable twats. Especially Richard. By Christ, especially Richard.

First off, Amrita is a spoiled little rich girl who I believe is of second generation Indian ethnicity. Ok, so that might be too distant for her to feel genuine empathy for people from her own background, but still it was surprising to see her slagging off the natives of the country where her ancestors were born for being ‘dirty’ and ‘rude’. In fact, I’ll go further. It was fucking disgusting and she should be beaten with a fucking stick for her callous twattishness. She’s a posh little devil who honestly thinks she deserves the priviledge she was born into. Last night, after working in the cotton field for five minutes, she was delighted her eczema flared up, meaning she couldn’t continue and had to go back to the flat they were renting to do fuck all.

Slightly less irritating, but only because he’s so thick he’s unaware of what his huge, farting gob is going on about, is Mark. Mark lives with his Mum and is clearly unable to do anything for himself. At times Mark has put some effort in but he tends to throw tantrums the minute anyone touches him. He also dresses like any clone who walks out of Next or Top Man and he talks in mono-syllables. Luckily, he’s quite easy to ignore. Unlike Richard.

Richard wants to look like Alex Zane (fuck knows why), and he pulls this off - he too looks like a berk. But where Alex Zane is presumably capable of logical thought, Richard is a toothy, weepy, fuckhead with nothing going for him whatsoever. Apparently he runs his own ad agency and is on fifty grand a year (must be a small ad agency then)  - but I refuse to believe this on the basis that he is utterly, utterly stupid. The world has never known stupidity like this. Seriously.

The object of this show is to replicate the experience of your average sweatshop worker - and even then I’m sure they’ve sanitised it somewhat. When Richard felt a little bit tired, in the middle of a crowded cafe, he began a tirade against the dirty, disgusting, rude, peasants he worked amongst (his words, not mine). He was so loud, he disturbed those around him, one man in particular took offence (and rightly so) and attempted to assuage the anger, only to receive more hot air from the stupid cunt.

Richard’s threatened to leave a few hundred times and I’m sure I’m not alone when I wish he’d just piss off and leave the others to it. He’s incapable of learning anything about Indian culture and he refuses to engage with the workers. His reasons for feeling no sympathy for the workers early on was that they, he reasoned, could surely find a way out of the slums. Citing his own climb to ‘the top’, he said that any man could make their own way in the world, forgetting that he comes from one of the wealthiest countries in the world and was surely given more than a leg up from his old man. Even the slightest bit of research would tell you that these people have no choice. You don’t even need evidence, Richard! Look around you!

To add to this, he also didn’t realise cotton comes from plants. Richard is the personification of our idiot youth - that percentage of our kids who are over-exposed, over-priviledged and who deserve to be flogged.

The final episode is next week. For editorial purposes, there’ll be the inevitable end of ‘the journey’ tears and a montage of edits wherein all the participants are shown to have learned something. Don’t believe it. Amrita and Richard in particular are learning fuck all. They haven’t got the capacity to see beyond their own material, pointless lives. They’re dumbed down dickheads and they should be left to survive in the slums. They haven’t an ounce of the dignity of the people they work around in this series, and if left to their own devices in that environment, minus camera crews and production staff, they’d be trying to eat their own shit and living in trees, so devoid are they of common sense.

You might be able to tell, this show upsets me a little bit. The final edit is trying to tell its own story - of six youngsters realising where their easily gained possessions come from. But the programme does more than that, as despite attempts to cover over the cracks, what we actually see is a handful of pig-headed twats realising nothing and revealing everything that’s bad about our throwaway culture. At least, for an hour per week, we get to see them suffer.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Christ, Tim Burton’s gone down the pan recently, hasn’t he?

After the fantastic Ed Wood and the ridiculously enjoyable Mars Attack, he went crazy on the remakes, failing to recreate Planet of the Apes and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with any flair and making the more original Sleepy Hollow and Big Fish to a universal ’so what?’

Now he’s remade a musical that nobody had seen in the first place. It also got an indifferent response from the critics. It doesn’t get a response from me at all, as it happens. It gets a deep, heavy snore. One hour and ten minutes in, I fell into a fantastic sleep and upon waking, it had ended. But what was the reason for my lapse into unconsciousness? Why did I plop into slumber? How could the work of this commercial auteur fail to inspire me?

If you haven’t seen it, you won’t know that half an hour of the film is devoted to Johnny Depp doing a sixth form impression of Bowie whilst singing the same lines over and over and over again. He sings to his razor blades that they are ‘his friends’. ‘His friends’. They are ‘his friends’. Instrumentation. ‘They’re my friends’. ‘His friends’. It never bloody ends! Honestly, the amount of time devoted to this section almost drove me to a monitor-smashing incident. Add the occasional intrusion of Bonham Carter doing her best Rada-actress-landed-in-Walford accent and fists become clenched and teeth get themselves gritted. It stinks.

Also repeated until it bores into your head is a song where the word ‘beeeautiful’ features a billion times. ‘Oh, she’s beeeautiful’ the young lad sings, until you’ve bitten your bottom lip off. ‘Beeeeautiful!’.

You just want it to end suddenly.

Even the bit with Sacha Baron Cohen fails to amuse. He arrives in the midst of heavy, intoxicating boredom, sings a bit whilst wearing tight trousers, then dies as quickly as he arrives. Even the bit where he gets his throat slit wide open is dull. The whole thing is as BORING AS FUCK.

*nods off just thinking about it*

The Baron

Drifting in and out of wakefulness and sleep, I was channel-hopping the other night. Obviously having some sort of brain matter I skip between BBC2 and Channel4 lest my entire universe is punctured by witless bilge on ITV, but that evening something happened…

A familiar voice? That can’t be Mike Reid - cockney national treasure lost to the nation a few months ago - stood in front of a crowd of windswept people telling them how they’d won (and ultimately fucked) his heart can it? It is! (or was)

To separate this bloke from his character in Eastenders (and for older readers, he even said ‘runarairnd’ at one point) is as impossible as wanking off a gnat with a hammer. There was no Frank Butcher, just Mike Reid talking his little red cockney barnet off…

Here he was again, looking heavenwards with a grimace, shaking his head at his shoes, perpetually removing his glasses to pinch the top of his nose, his overt sincerity shaking with emotion. Deadly serious -save a twinkle in his beady eye.

Needless to say the crowd thought he was gorgeous. Which was nice.

What the fuck was I watching though? (this is a now a rhetorical question, don’t write in). I checked the Guide. ‘The Baron’ it said, but no more than that.

Using my deductive powers it seemed that ‘celebs’ were trying to get voted into some sort of position of power in a small Scottish Island community. As far as I could ascertain there were three. Frank (I mean Mike), a small blonde person who used to be a poptart and now just has a fat arse and, the real reason I stayed watching, Malcolm McClaren.

We see Malcolm ambling over rugged terrain, urinating into a rock pool, his usual terse self, moaning and sarcastic, mumbling about turning the local church into a den of inequity, proposing ‘sin for all’. He wants to bring back the darkside, he said so himself, out of his mealy mouth, spat forth from his thin lips.

Before his speech Malcolm ‘met the community’. A group of little girls in leotards rushed up to meet him, probably because of the cameras. Malcolm stopped in his tracks. ‘You look ridiculous’ he said, sagely. The plump little Scottish dancers gave some gob back, Malcolm liked this.

It was speech day. Mike had done his skit (‘I grew up in ‘Ackney, we was bombed by the Germans, I lived in 4 diff’rent ‘owses in as many days, but this place, you lot, this is ‘ome this, you see me, right, you see me and come an’ say ‘ello… etc…). The poplet’s attempt was one long, blonde giggle and now it was Malcolm’s turn.

All the villagers had turned out, hundreds of them, fat smiling community people, farmers, fishermen with their wives and children. If you were to diametrically oppose the Sex Pistols then these people were it. These were good people, a dying breed free from the corporations and smash-and-grab attitudes of the West. Salt of the earth workers, churchgoers…

In went Malc. ‘What this place needs is more drugs’. Instant booing. Suddenly I perked up almost not believing what I was seeing. Was it 1977?

‘We need more sin and drugs. I suggest a bank holiday for debauchery…’ More booing and now anger directed at Malc. The shot cut to Frank. ‘Oh gawd, you can’t say that, you pillock’ he said, before looking heavenwards with a grimace, shaking his head at his shoes and removing his glasses to pinch the top of his nose.

Maintaining a smile of sorts, the MC went in to intervene, ‘come on he said, that’s enough, there’s kids here’ and attempted to usher Malc away, but Malc wasn’t going anywhere. ‘I must have my say - it’s my right’ he protested. The MC was now physically trying to persuade Malc to get off, but again, he was rebuffed by more coercive ‘I have my rights’ flannel and the MC reluctantly let him continue. By now the crowd were getting really angry and chanting aggressively.

Seizing this opportunity for one last snatch at glory he yelled ‘don’t you people know that Jesus Christ was a sausage?!’. I nearly vomited with laughter, but I was alone.

The MC snapped into a fucking rage. He grabbed Malc who was fearfully protesting this physical contact and flung him from the stage. A scuffle broke out, some of Malc’s bouncers materialised from thin air as the crowd came in for some too, it was getting nasty. It was getting nasty in only the way religious people get when you make a joke at the expense of their particular figment of imaginings.

The show ended (though I think there is more to this series so do look out for it) with Malc, some bouncers and a cameraman piling into the back of a car with Malc shrieking ‘They’re going to lynch us, Jesus, they’re coming, get in!!’

Priceless television - who’d have thought ITV would come up with this?

EastEnders: SUCCESS

If you watched Eastenders last night, you’ll know that the WWM petition started all those months ago has finally enforced a result. No longer is Winston, the CD vendor of Albert Square market considered a bit-part player. No longer will he smirk in the background at comical incidents, like when Minty inadvertantly revealed that he’d hidden a budgie in a garage. No longer will he simmer in the background over the fact his market stall got driven into once, a few years ago.

For last night, Winston got a line. He had a brief chat with Peggy Mitchell. 

What’s more, he followed it up with further dialogue as Gus left the square. The fact that this was the most unrealistic au revoir in the history of the Square is irrelevant. Winston proved himself equal to any of the other second rate actors that populate Walford - people like Jane’s gay brother, the small ginger child Bianca’s dragged along with her and Shabnam (who’s only there on looks after all).

But, my friends, this is not the end. This is only the beginning. We need to build on our success. With four signatures on the petition we have marked a change in British television history. It will take guts and determination to reach our target of one million independent signatures. From there, we can get Winston his own spin off series, ‘Winning with Winston’ about the ups and downs of a West Indian market trader in a fictional London Borough.

Let’s make it happen.

The Apprentice 2008: Ep. 6

This week, the tycoons of tomorrow (and the satellite installation men and bank managers) had to troop over to my manor - the glorious town of Hackney - where they all stood about looking smarter than they actually are. The main lobby looks a lot swisher than it did when I was there to pick up some important forms, I ought to add.

Old Alan made a very clunky speech regarding births, marriages and deaths. ‘I was registered as being born here, in 1852′. ‘My marriage was registered here and, most probably, my death’ll be registered here after I’ve ‘ad you lot in the boardroom one too many times!’ Ho ho! The Apprentices smiled the smiles of a classroom of scared children.

The task was as follows: come up with a theme for a greetings card, make five examples on that very theme and then pitch it to buyers. Tesco, Celebrations and Clintons being the big fish expected to take the contestants’ dangling maggots.

Old Man Alan put Michael ‘It’s Gore-tex’ Sophocles in charge of one team, guaranteeing hilarity. This was compounded by his making Kevin ‘Nails’ Shaw the leader of the other. If laughs didn’t follow, the show’s raison d’etre would fall apart. Obviously it didn’t and we were subject to ineptitude and incompetence on a grand scale.

Sophocles was a sulky, confused kitten throughout and basically delegated everything to Raef, who rose to the challenge, despite a couple of hiccups. We were reminded of Sophocle’s vox pop - that he would manipulate anyone to get to where he’s going. In this case, manipulation appeared to be asking people ‘can you do this?’ so that he didn’t have to. His first idea, which he really tried to push, was a plastic surgery themed greetings card. Along the lines of ‘Congratulations on your penis extension!’, one assumes. It didn’t go down too well, despite the fact that Raef championed it, stating that the women he’s met what’s ‘ad ‘em done are always only to happy to pop them out on request, so would love a card. I think that says rather more about the feminine company Raef keeps than the fairer sex.

Instead, Raef piped up later on with a brainwave. Let’s do a National Singles Day! Or a National Singles’ Day… With an apostrophe, somewhere. Or not. Does it have an apostrophe? They took four hours to work it out. They called the Editor of a national newspaper. They ummed and aaahed. They didn’t come up with a definitive answer, despite Raef declaring earlier that words are his tool…’ He’s got skills in that field ‘to… er… ah….you know… full capacity.’

The actual answer, fact fans, is that you can either have the apostrophe or not. It’s up to you. It can be the national day of many singles, which requires no apostrophe, or it can be the national day belonging to singles, which does require one. Bearing in mind, from a marketing perspective, the public is a bit thick, best to go without punctuation. It only confuses people. If in doubt…etc…

Before all this was going on, a proof-reading frenzy no less, the photographs were being shot by the stony-silent Jennifer, mute and still smarting from last week’s humiliation. Doing all the work on her behalf were the loggerheaded Lucinda and Helene - two women who can’t be in the same room without arguing. And we all know what that means, right lads? Sapphic sexual tensions! Next week they’ll be lezzing up with the best of them, mark my words… ‘Nobody’s telling me what to do’ said the alien life-form, Helene. Lucinda diplomatically responded by calling her ’sweetheart’ in that patronising posho voice she does so well.

Kevin fell into a similar trap as Michael - allowing a stronger contestant to take the reins whilst floundering. ‘820%’ Kevin said he was going to give, which I thought was pathetic. Why not 830%, Kev? Up the ante! It turned out that Sophocles was lucky his rein-man was Raef. Jenny, the red-headed goon was the architect of Kevin’s downfall. The scary part is that neither of them realised they were working on a really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, SHIT idea.

Greetings cards to remind people to be ecologically sound. A ‘Save The Planet’ day. I think that’s what it was going to be called. They wavered between that and ‘Save the Earth’, without actually settling on one. Later, Kevin even said - after a pitch went spectacularly badly - ‘with that kind of attitude they aren’t gonna be saving any planets’. So I’m not even sure it was Earth he was babbling on about.

With two hours to go before the pitch and with scrawled handwriting on the walls, Kevin started flapping his feathers and bottling the pitch. Jenny and Claire refused to do it, with there only being two hours prep time left, leaving Kevin to pitch himself and dig his own grave. All credit to him, the boy is sure handy with a shovel.

There were echoes of the time, a couple of series ago, when Nargis pitched a kitten calender. Remember that? Well this was ten times worse, given that Kevin has an amusing accent, a small boy’s face and gets very aggressive when queried. At one point he instructed the buyers that not buying the goods would be equivalent to America ‘not caring about pollution’. Quite a claim.

Raef pitched quite well but came across a couple of brick walls as Sophocles had put his singles day date at February 13th - the day before National VD. What a plank. Fortunately, by the third pitch, that was changed and they fared better. At one point, the most unlikely scenario possible happened when Lee McQUEEN saved Raef in a boardroom as he stumbled over the plums in his mouth.

And so, to the boardroom.

Wally Bazoom, a regular on WWM, mentioned to me the other day that I should imagine the sound of a toilet flushing as Old Alan emerges from behind the frosted glass to judge the contestants. Now I can’t shift it from my head, and it detracts from the gravitas, to an extent.

Sophocles was grilled and he responded with petulant looks around the room, like a kid who COULDN’T BELIEVE he was being told off. ‘Don’t get impatient with me, young man’ said Alan. Then the bearded one turned on Kev. ‘I just wanted to learn how to pitch’ said Kevin, squeaking rodent-like.

When the scores were read out, Kevin lost by some margin. Sophocles, in one of the funniest boardroom moments I’ve ever seen, shouted COME ON!

Not once, but twice, whacking his fist into his palm. In a crafty edit, Margaret responded with amazed revulsion. Sophocles was reprimanded then sent off to listen to Myleene Klass banging away on an old Joanna. Raef smiled at him, lovingly.

Like the fool he is, Kevin resisted making Jenny part of the instant death trio and took Sara and Claire. Claire, it should be pointed out, worked harder than when she was Team Leader. Sara, it ought to be pointed out, was only there because Jenny bullied her and Kevin made a huge tactical error in thinking he could swing Old Alan round to believing she was at fault. He didn’t, for one moment, stating that he was old enough to know when someone’s being ‘ganged up on’. A rare victory for wisdom in The Apprentice and an even bigger victory for those of us who think Sara is a smashing looking lass.

The end sequence was, I think, a first for the format. We were treated to extended highlights of the two saved contestants returning to the house where LEE MCQUEEN discarded any public goodwill he’d gathered by shouting at Sara like he was on the fucking footie terraces, in the 80s, pumped full of Skol. As Alex joined in with a whiney beep, Raef, to his credit, stuck up for Sara, who looked on the verge of tears. Thankfully, before it all went Big Brother on us, it ended - leaving us hungry for more poison. A brilliant episode.

Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5

EastEnders

What on earth have the writers of EastEnders got against Gus and his elderly dog, Wellard? Over the last few weeks they have decided to hand him over to monstrous psychopath, Sean - a cartoon character that belongs in a low-grade horror movie. Why?

Gus, who regular viewers of ‘Enders know as a happy-go-lucky, poetic road sweeper has been prodded, poked, imprisoned, and now tortured by Sean. His dog, Wellard, has been threatened with a stick, yanked around the square in a way you just shouldn’t treat old dogs, and locked in a cupboard without food or water for what seemed like the best part of the day. This has bewildered me.

Have the writers been taking their cues from Hostel or the Saw movies? Who thought this horrible, uncomfortable, and downright nasty storyline was right for an early-evening family soap opera? “Things have got stale in the square,” someone says, “let’s torture Gus.”

In the twenty-odd years I’ve been watching this show, there have been plenty of dreadful and unpleasant storylines: Stella’s bullying of Ben that left you feeling dirty after watching it, the disasterous Ferera family of Asian stereotypes, Kevin being gut-punched by the engine block of a Ford Focus, Pat naked in bed with Frank, but Gus’s trip down the rabbithole of Sean’s one dimensional psychosis takes the biscuit.

This storyline is vile. It interrupts the flow of the show. It lands in peril two minor characters that you felt assured weren’t there to be put in peril. And certainly not by brutal shitbags like Sean - the most badly handled character the show has ever produced.

I don’t want to see Gus being tied up, beaten, bullied, and imprisoned. I feel cheated by the EastEnders writers. I was so angry with the treatment of Wellard, I wrote the BBC a letter. That’s right - a letter. Good, if ultimately useless characters like Gus aren’t there to be shown the instruments by bad and completely useless characters like Sean. They’re there to attend stag nights, fill out the numbers in the Vic, and drink the health of more important characters when they either marry, or die.

What next? Phil battering Keith and Ghenghis to death with a pool cue?