Time to point the finger and fire the Sugarman

TV Watch with Dave O’Connell

There’s a fundamental problem with the premise behind The Apprentice – why, if you were so successful in your own right beforehand, would you want to dispense with your dignity to fight for the chance to work with a megalomaniac?

And I’ll admit I’m no fan of it – so if it’s your kind of thing, perhaps it’s time to move on and avoid increasing your blood pressure.

But I tuned in last week to see if it was something missing in me that just didn’t get it – and I left secure in the knowledge that the Emperor indeed has no clothes.

For a start, ‘Lord Sugar’ sounds like the name of a Jamaican drug deal instead of a Cockney barrow boy who once hit it lucky with Amstrad, a computer that was to the IT sector what the old East German Trabant was to the motor trade.

His ego was already considerable given that the first three letters of his company – and indeed his personalised car registration – were his own initials, but millionaires may have earned the right to be self-indulgent.

His record in business since then however has been less spectacular – his purchase of Tottenham Hotspur was an unmitigated disaster, largely because he met an even wider barrow boy in Terry Venables – and the mere fact that he can devote so much time to The Apprentice would suggest he isn’t overly busy at the office now either.

The Americans found themselves an even bigger egomaniac in Donald Trump, a man whose hair defies description other than offering the observation that it’s incredible how much of the stuff you can grow on your back – and then comb over your forehead.

TV3 – as is their mission statement ‘to ape the other guys’ – tried to come up with their own Irish version of The Apprentice and found the nearest thing we had to a barrow boy, albeit it one with a Dublin accent.

Bill Cullen was another one-trick pony whose entire business empire was based on him being fast enough out of the blocks to ring-fence the Renault franchise for Ireland.

And being apprenticed to Bill would have been quite a rollercoaster from the outset, although in more recent times that rollercoaster would have been plummeting out of the clouds faster than a stone thrown off a cliff.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.