The Apprentice is back

It’s Wednesday night, and there’s a load of loud mouth, arrogant wannabes, shouting on your TV. What does it mean?

The Apprentice is back!

I love the Apprentice, it’s great entertainment and one of my favourite programmes, but does it really have any relevance to the world of business anymore?

Every series starts off the same, the group of contestants, bigging themselves up, talking loud but saying nothing. You take an instant dislike to them and look forward to them making idiots out of themselves.

Admittedly, as you go through the series some people start to become quite likable when you scratch beneath all the hype and bravado.

Despite the entertainment of the arguing, bickering, and board room interrogation by Sir Alan, I'm not sure it has any real lessons on the world of business.

Probably as a result of the editing, a lot of contestants come across as complete idiots. If you learn anything then it's that you don't ever want to work like these people in any business environment.

The Apprentice is suffering one of the problems that Big Brother had. They both started with a set objective, Big Brother was a social experiment, and the Apprentice was about finding the best and brightest talents to work for Sir Alan Sugar.

Things start to change for the worst when producers start picking more extreme characters to boost the entertainment value.

Last week the first contestant to get the sack was Dan Harris who must be one of the most ridiculous contestants yet, to have appeared on the show.

He seemed to spend the entire show barking out orders and intimidating his teammates whilst contributing nothing of any real value to the task.

He showed a total lack of communication and people skills, and zero emotional intelligence. How can anyone succeed in business without such skills?

Great television to watch, but are we meant to believe he or his type represent the cream of this country’s business talent.

Would many of the brightest entrepreneurs feel the need to look for some form of validation or approval on a tv show which is the impression you get from watching a lot of the contestants? Probably not is my answer.

And besides is Alan Sugar even the most exciting and innovative figure around in business. He’s hardly set the business world alight in recent years.

Despite these thoughts I still intend to watch the entire series like I always do, I know it’s going to be entertaining.