It was only when today when I read a review of last night’s Hancock and Joan on BBC4 last night that I remembered why I’d intended not to start watching the new series of The Apprentice on BBC1.
But watch it I did. Lured by the promise of another batch of boasting blockheads, I quite enjoyed my schadenfreude fix when the first of the numerous abominable “entrepreneurs” fell flat on his face.
And now, like the fish the two teams struggled to sell on Islington market, I'm hooked. Well, sort of.
Star of the show, barrister Nicholas de Lacy Brown, (he added "de Lacy" to make himself sound more sophisticated he admits) was put in charge of pricing.
Our sophisticate failed to think twice about pricing a lobster at £5 and it was this that ultimately brought him back into the board room, alongside fellow toff Raef and team leader Alex.
Alex, a regional sales manager from Bolton, shared with viewers his concerns about being up against de Lacy Brown. How was he going to persuade Sir Alan it was not the team leader’s fault that they only just broke even when he faced Britain’s foremost talented barrister?
A rift had opened in the boys’ team, It was the educated versus the “gritty types” as NdLB put it, using his persuasive talents to the hilt.
Raef, "an artist of the spoken word" he insists, then bragged that he had the ability to get on with “prince or pauper”.
Alex didn't have to speak.
You didn’t need to be Margaret Mountford or Nick Hewer (the eyes and ears of Sir Alan, not respectively) to know which end of the socio-economic scale was going to get the “You’re Fired” finger.
Off scuttled the “outstanding” NdLB to go home to sunbathe and read in a bath surrounded by candles, one his interests. Now there’s a business idea, self-tanning tea lights for the bath - next stop Dragon's Den.
Was it class discrimination on Sir Alan's part? No, just common sense, something NdLB clearly lacked.
