How the Apprentice girls excel in a bitchfest
The hit reality TV show is taking a pounding from the critics, but the ratings show we all love a good cat-fight. By Kim Bielenberg
Marching orders: Jennifer Maguire, who was fired by Alan Sugar on last week's The Apprentice
The female candidates in the BBC reality show The Apprentice have routinely been described as bitchy, grasping, arrogant and treacherous. To borrow a line from a Kit Kat TV commercial, they'll go a long way.
Bitchiness seems to be the essential ingredient of the latest series of the hugely popular show, and has become a hallmark of television generally. And as the in-fighting and sideswiping gets worse, the ratings seem to go up.
In theory The Apprentice is an extended job interview by the tycoon Alan Sugar, in which candidates are given a weekly task working in two teams. And at the end of each programme, one is fired by 'Sir Alan', usually in a stream of foul-mannered vitriol.
In practice, The Apprentice has turned into a weekly bout of cat-fighting, where the job applicants compete to cut each other up and knock each other out.
Last week, the unscrupulous antics seemed to reach a peak when one of the candidates, Jennifer Celerier, tried to scupper the opposition by bribing a shop assistant.
Curiously, it is the women who are shown in the least flattering light in the programme.
The men tend to be portrayed as somewhat lovable, somewhat ridiculous buffoons. Broadly, the chaps can be divided into two categories -- cheeky wide boys, and public school fops. The women, on the other hand, tend to come from the same mould, and seem intent on gouging each other's eyes out, metaphorically of course.
Last week it was the war of the two Jennifers in a market in Morocco. Jennifer Maguire, the Dubliner described uncharitably in The Guardian as looking "like someone frozen alive while chewing a wasp'', is a marketing consultant and former showjumper. She found herself captaining the losing team, as contestants were asked to buy a list of items in the market for the lowest price possible.
The programme turned to farce when Jennifer's team was charged with buying a Jewish Kosher chicken, but ended up confusing Kosher with Halal, and bought a bird that had been blessed by a Moslem. While one of the contestants, Michael, who described himself on his CV as "a good Jewish boy'', had to take some of the blame, the programme turned into a slagging match between three women, each trying to blame the other.
In the boardroom, Jennifer Celerier tried to shift the blame on to her team-mates.
Sugar responded by firing her and said: "You know what? It seems to me that you hang on every word I say then turn it on to your colleagues. No good. Sorry, same old story. You're fired."
He then turned his attentions to Maguire, who also tried to deflect blame. She was astonished to be shown the door. Even before the series started, Maguire was hardly portraying herself in a flattering light. She described herself as an "iron fist in a velvet glove" and said: "I am a success, totally."
Of her sales skills she said: "I can sell pieces of paper for £50. I rate myself as the best salesperson in Europe."
In a previous episode she told a rival selling ice cream: "We won't just kick your arses, we'll make history.''
Of course the pot is stirred by Alan Sugar himself, whose lines in the last week's episode were more barbed than a prison fence.
"If any of you are interested in staying in this process, you'd better start opening your mouth. I don't give a shit! I'll fire three of you! I'll fire all bloody five of you! You open your bloody mouth or I'll make some quick decisions now."
Incidentally, the bitchiness of the contestants is only matched by the vituperative commentary in the British media. Jennifer Maguire may have felt she was hard done by, but the criticisms levelled at her rival Jennifer were much more scathing.
One of Fleet Street's finest said she looked like a "beefsteak tomato in a headlong collision with Mr Blobby''.
Another commentator said she was "thick as two short planks, brash, cocky, rhino-skinned, and utterly lacking in even a trace of self-awareness''.
It was said of Clare Young that she "could be used to clear rooms and shorten queues through sheer disagreeableness''.
The regular outpourings of female aggression may make for entertaining television, but how relevant is it to the modern workplace? Piers Morgan, who employed hundreds as a former tabloid newspaper editor, said he would not be put off by such feistiness in a job candidate: "The best journalists were often the most difficult, vain, whining, drunken, aggressive pains in the backside,'' he said. "That's because they were driven by passion, stubbornness, determination, anger, a fire in their bellies, and a will to win.''
On the other hand, many critics in business believe The Apprentice has an outdated view of the workplace, linking success with being nasty, disloyal, greedy and selfish.
Luke Johnson, the entrepreneur and chairman of Channel 4, has said that "the very idea that Alan Sugar is seen as a business role model makes me sick''. Johnson described the show as a "clapped-out concept that ought to be consigned to the knacker's yard''.
Other detractors have been queuing up to accuse The Apprentice of fostering discrimination, bullying and harassment in the workplace.
One of the lingering mysteries of the series is why any intelligent young entrepreneur would want to work for Sugar, who appears to delight in insulting all-comers.
One should not forget that The Apprentice, like any other reality show, is ultimately about showbusiness rather than real business.
Ultimately, one suspects, the ambition of many of the candidates is to work as entertainers in television. When the cameras stop rolling the "bitches'' and the buffoons are probably all just good pals.
The Apprentice continues tomorrow on BBC 1 at 9 pm.
- Kim Bielenberg
