The Apprentice (TV3)

The Apprentice: You're Fired (TV3)

Beyond The Berlin Wall (RTE1)

Frontline (RTE1)

At the start of The Apprentice, Breffny was obviously a bit different. A bit of a plonker, if truth be told.

Yet we have seen him growing as a character to the extent that last week he became the clear favourite to become Bill's apprentice. And the Irish business community, though it is in a bad place right now, will be feeling just a little bit more hopeful today, knowing that the future is in the capable hands of young men like Breffny.

Through the difficult weeks, Breffny had a strange likeability and an air of mystery -- even of madness -- which kept him in the game.

Sam the teacher was even stranger, but without the likeability.

And after her presentation last week to the corporate heads at Cadbury's, for which she had the lads in her team dressed up in funny yellow and pink costumes performing a little play she had written, her stock has probably not risen greatly with our business leaders.

Then again, our business leaders are in no position to be judgmental these days. Bill could look any of those guys straight in the eye, and based on their recent performance, he could say: forget about Sam, you've been a bit of a plonker yourself, old son.

And they in turn could eyeball Bill and remind him that he has declared that he wants to be the first Irishman in space, which by any standard, and even bearing in mind his many other abilities, must make him a bit of a plonker too.

Bill is actually losing his grip on the title of Top Man in The Apprentice, with Brendan O'Connor forging ahead of him, on The Apprentice: You're Fired, and Breffny ranging up behind him.

Breffny, who represents perhaps the last best hope for Ireland. Breffny, the coming man.

GEORGE LEE, it seemed, in the early phases of his new role, was having a touch of trouble with his manhood too.

He was coming over all unnecessary at times, looking angry and out of control.

Last week on the Vincent Browne show, he had apparently calmed down a bit. Perhaps he is now getting over the initial rush of excitement which any red-blooded individual would feel when they join Fine Gael.

And we also saw the start of his RTE series Beyond The Berlin Wall, which was made when George was just a regular celebrity economist.

This was a grand programme, really, ostensibly with no agenda except George's own obsession with life on both sides of the Berlin Wall. Unlike his newsroom colleague Charlie Bird, George was not asking us to accompany him on a voyage of personal discovery down the sacred river Ganges. It was a more straightforward deal than that, on the face of it.

And yet a celebrity psychologist looking at this would have been nodding sagely at George's deep interest in the Wall -- for how long had George himself been contemplating the prospect of escaping to the other side? Having pledged his loyalty to the crumbling old system in RTE (or The East) and having achieved a high rank in the regime, had he become utterly institutionalised, or could he turn his back on all that in order to taste the extravagant but uncertain pleasures of life in Fine Gael (or The West?).

How long, George, has this been going on?

BUT the man of the week, the top, top man, was Pat Kenny. So energised is he, by Frontline, and by his emergence as the broadcaster that we always wanted him to be, it seems as if he can do nothing wrong. So when Jack O'Connor, the Siptu majordomo, made a reference to trophy houses, and Pat pressed him as to what he meant exactly by trophy houses, O'Connor quipped most unkindly that he probably meant houses like Pat's.

Mistake Jack. Big mistake.

Because Pat isn't taking it any more. Maybe if he was still on the Late Late, and fretting about what the proverbial mother-in-law might think, he would have laughed it off through gritted teeth.

But that Pat is gone, to be replaced by the Pat who, with controlled fury, informed O'Connor that he had built his "trophy house" in 1988, and he shouldn't have to take this "crap".

It was a remarkable thing to see Pat losing the head, without losing the head, as such. O'Connor, sensing the depths of Pat's anger, apologised for offending him, and said he didn't mean to do that.

But Pat had moved on, and deep inside that vast brain of his, he was probably already preparing a few supplementary questions for his interview with Noam Chomsky in part two.

Not Peter Andre, or the stars of Emmerdale, but Mr Noam Chomsky. And Pat. Two guys who have it all figured out.

- Declan Lynch

Sunday Independent