The Apprentice

Lord Sugar showed us his true nature last night in "The Apprentice": an East London stall-holder with a bullying manner and a penchant for blaming other people for his mistakes. I suppose many people watching the programme over the last few months were hoping that someone would give Stuart "The Brand" Maggs his well deserved "come-uppance". Well, last night they'd have been pleased because he got it in spades. First from the rottweiller-like interviewers who grilled him like coppers in B pictures of fifty years ago; the only thing missing was the table lamp shining in his face. Then from Lord Love-a-Duck Sugar who went at him full fruit-seller throttle. Baggs was, to put it succinctly and crudely, equivalent to a bucket of shit. It was a disgusting performance.
It was also unfair to the young man. The week before, Sugar had fired a very sweet young woman, Liz, instead of Baggs. Now, it was evident he was regretting having done so. But instead of admitting to it being his own fault, he went at Baggs blaming him for the dismissal. That was not only unfair but it was ungentlemanly and crass to say the least.
Lord Sugar, everyone had begun to think, was gradually evolving a more relaxed and engaging personality: he actually smiled a few times in the past few weeks, but now under that veneer of almost-charm came, like the Alien from John Hurt's abdomen, a creature that seemed to tell us a truth about the "noble" personage: that he had got where he'd got by a bullying ruthlessness and penchant for blaming others for his mistakes.
Chris, one of the two finalists in The Apprentice created a new cliched metaphore last week when he referred to a spat (almost a fist fight with F's flying around the place) between he and The Brand; he said "it was nothing really, just Handbags at Dawn, that was all". He should win. Why? He's creative, that's why. But he won't: he's got a degree and once studied A level Theology - and passed - while not believing a word of it. Sugar doesn't like people like that. And he's a bit posh too.