I'd fire you all

I watched The Apprentice for the first time this series last night. The whole format seems to be a bit laboured now and, if I'm honest, I only watch the task enough to be able to shout at the television when they're all in the boardroom. Shout and roll my eyes in despair, that is, because it does seem like the shortlisting process for applicants, of which there must be hundreds if not thousands, seems to be "Who's the most arrogant? Inept? Opinionated? Ghastly?" In other words, who is most likely to get people like me rolling their eyes and throwing my hands up in the air at the awfulness of them all. Rather than, let's say, who might actually make a good apprentice in Sugar's corporate world.

That's television these days, I guess.

There was a double whammy last night. Robert got canned for hiding during the task but then, stupidly, not hiding in the boardroom. If you're going to hide, stay hidden (like Stephen and Felipe, who seemed invisible all evening). And Scott got fired for being angry and intense - that's me reading between the lines, but it seemed to me that Lord Sugar was just glad to be shot of his aggression. And poor old Scott: I'm not going to do a separated at birth because the similarity was more to do with actions and manners than simple looks, but oh my, he reminded me of a young version of this guy, complete with chest-puff/chin-thrust move:

Mr Mackay in Porridge, confusingly played by Fulton Mackay

Scott McCulloch, an angry man, in typically modest mode

As the post title suggests, I wouldn't want any of them on my team, but if I had to nail my Apprentice colours to the mast, I'd go for Jemma Bird and Solomon Ahktar. Jemma seems relentlessly optimistic and tries to make the best of every situation, however bad it seems and, as yet, hasn't got involved in rows, back-biting and juvenile squabbles. But then it was only episode two. Solomon actually seems to have good ideas, and appears to be a guy you could actually work with, a criteria that is surely more important than grandiose CV padding. I wish these two well. The rest? You're all fired.