Dear Dragons Den

Dear Dragons Den, (BBC1, Sundays @ 9pm)

I’m really glad to see you back, I wasn’t sure whether you would return or if you’d been merged with The Apprentice and the stinking, fetid remains dispatched to Channel 4 for use in Four Rooms, but here you are and a very welcome sight you are too. Please pass on my sincerest and warmest welcome to the new dragon Hilary Devey who, despite appearances, is bloody awesome.

Little did Cruella DeVille realise, but she was only going to be offered 20% equity in the dalmations...

I must admit that her being awesome was not my first thought upon seeing her. No, in all honesty my first thought was “They’ve replaced someone who occasionally tries to buy babies with someone who definitely eats them on a regular basis.” and whilst that still might very well be the case – I believe all the dragons to be beasts of the netherworld – she is far more interesting, intelligent and pleasant than her ‘she mistook Quentin Blake’s drawings in Roald Dahl’s The Witches for a clothing catalogue’ look would ever have you believe. I truly did judge this book by its cover, and I was wrong to do so. There should be a saying about how that’s wrong. I’m going to invent one now –

Do not try to ascertain the qualities of a work or an individual merely by virtue of their external appearance, for this will sometimes lead to an inaccurate conclusion.

A book you can judge by it's cover. Or can you?

Catchy don’t you think? I certainly don’t think it could have been put more succinctly or in a more memorable fashion. It’s accurate too, because on probably 50% of all occasions you can save yourself a lot of bother by judging people by how they look: If they look like they’re hiding an incredibly dark secret, like an urge to kill, then it’s probably best not to accept the offer of a lift; if they look like they have to wear a bib to eat and a nappy to bed then you’d do well to not make yourselves unelectable by making them your party leader; and if they appear to have a borderline personality and the propensity to jump into bed with anyone that says hello to them then you should probably trust that and not get into an 18 month relationship with them…

Okay, I’ve made this a bit awkward now. Maybe you’re friends with her, maybe you took her side, I don’t know, doesn’t matter. Pretend I never said anything. The point is that sometimes, roughly half the time, judging a book by its cover (some might call it instinct) is a useful timesaver, on other occasions it can leave you looking a proper tit – as it did with myself and Hilary.

So any way, how do you think you got on? Pretty well? I’d agree, it’s pretty much same old same old really isn’t it. Yeah, you’ve got a slightly jazzed up title sequence where all the Dragons are either:

a) Surveying all they own like a Middle Ages land baron, or

b) Contemplating suicide like a mid 80’s stockbroker

Either way it’s just as wanky as all the previous ones and will continue to feed us the same guff it’s been feeding us for years – Duncan Bannatyne proprietor of Health Clubs and the biggest misery factory in Scotland (and that’s really saying something), Peter Jones rich because of crap BT ads, playing tennis and being tall yada yada yada. We get it, they’re rich, they’re self-made – I think you’re labouring the point a little.

Then you’ve stuck with the peculiar Evan Davis hosting, which is fine, there’s nothing all that wrong with him, he just looks like he’s owned by one of the Dragons who keeps him locked away in a cellar, bereft of sunlight and feeding him just enough gruel to survive. Little else could explain his gaunt appearance or seemingly endless excitement at even the briefest moments of human interaction. Thankfully you seem to have done away with all those peculiar crash zooms that accompanied him (I think the proprietor of those now works on Neighbours) and replaced them with simpler cutaways that are a lot easier to take.

Evan 'relaxes' at 'home'

Staying with Evan for a minute, can you please ask him (or indeed order him) to stop asking me questions that I couldn’t possibly hope to answer: “Will that seeTheo make an offer?” I haven’t got the foggiest idea Evan, nor could I hope to have. I could hazard a guess, but what would be the point, it would only distract me from enjoying the show. Surely that’s the sort of question I – someone who wasn’t at all involved in the process of making the show – should be asking you, the host? It’s a nonsense. Whilst we’re at it, please tell him to buy a dictionary. This week he chose to describe the chairs as “infamous”. Now, I’m no expert on chairs, but I think

Have you seen these chairs? They're wanted in connection with the brutal murder of a sofa and the kidnap of a chaise lounge

I’d remember if a chair, or any item of furniture for that matter, had been found guilty of genocide, or even a lesser charge that might lead to it gaining ‘infamy’. I understand that part of Evans job is to use some ludicrous hyperbole to ratchet up the tension and add some fabricated jeopardy, and that’s fine when he’s trying to convince us that Geoff who makes kids toys out of dog shit might have a chance of getting investment, but when he’s misappropriating the English language to lend the props some social weight that they simply haven’t earned? Well that gets my goat sir. The only ‘infamous’ chair I can even think of is man Mao, and that’s not even a chair, but a Chinese dictator who uses chair as the first part of his name. Don’t do it again.

Everything else seems the same, to me at least, you’ve still got the same mix of brilliant entrepreneurs with excellent scalable businesses followed by blundering incompetents who, in less prosperous times, would have proudly worn the floppy hat and giddy face of the village idiot, larking around for pennies rather than proposing deals for tens of thousands.

"What I do is...well it's like...kids...birthdays...erm...ahh...money please."

Likewise you’ve still got the cruel rules that mean no notes can be taken in to help with your pitch (just like in the real world!) leading to situations like that poor cow who went on first. By God that was awkward – got to love it though, it may be false jeopardy, but it’s helped make you what you are. You’re still a very entertaining show, frustrating at times when you see the Dragons gang rape a brilliant business to get an extra 5% equity from the poor bastard who’s put their heart and soul (and savings) in to it for ten years, but you’ve stuck to another old adage – “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  – and that’s one that the likes of Simon Cowell must have wished he’d paid attention to.

As for the Dragons? Well, that’s a whole different letter – I believe I’ve found an ancient manuscript that reveals the key to success with them. I’ll write next week with it.

In the meantime I’ve got stuff to be getting on with, and for that reason…

I’m out!

R x

PS – I write Letters to Television Shows, I’d like £50,000 for 4% equity.

PPS – I’ve not made a profit, and don’t expect to.

PPPS – I just want some money. Thanks in advance.

Dear Show Me The Funny

Dear Show Me The Funny, (ITV1, Mondays @9pm)

First of all I’d like to say welcome, and thank you for trying to bring stand-up comedy back to the fore on mainstream British TV, the idea of it is very welcome and it’s so nice to see comedy presented in some way other than a panel show. So yes, thank you for trying. Sincerely. Now on to the multitude of reasons why you’ve already failed.

Enough about the Merengue, did you find the fluffy dice?

You know the bit in Strictly Come Dancing where the contestants go around Cheltenham on a scavenger hunt – desperately scrambling around trying to find a wooden leg, a ‘Kiss Me Quick’ hat and a rape alarm – and the first team back with all the stuff gets to choose between the Bolero and the Lambada (yes, the Forbidden Dance!)?

You don’t?

"If dreams were wings you know, I would have flown away from you, you bitch"

Well surely you must be familiar with the show ‘A Place in the Sun’ where couples who are desperate to flee Britain seek property abroad hoping to get away from their mentally unstable exes and believing, wrongly, that being in a sunnier climate will somehow rescue them from the misery their sham of a marriage has become? Yes? Excellent. Well you know the bit right at the beginning where there’s three couples and only the pair who manages to give the best performance of Kylie and Jason hit ‘Especially For You’ gets the free trip to Greece where they almost certainly won’t buy any property?

No?

I don’t know what to say. Oh yes, that’s right. You don’t know of these because they’re fictional. You see, for some reason the producers of these incredibly succesful formats have kept things simple. I know, buffoons eh? They’re under the impression that someone tuning into a show called ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ is, primarly, interested in seeing what the celebrities are like at dancing, sure they throw a bit of a training montage in there, but the general theme remains on the dancing. Likewise ‘A Place in the Sun’ tends to focus on the properties, with only a small dose of the general dismay at the route of the fleeing couples flight of fancy – there’s quite literally no mention of any of their duetting prowess.

Why am I waffling on about all this you’re probably thinking, well it’s because you lack focus. If you were focused the point I was making would have been obvious about 150 words ago.

Yes, so I tuned in, excited to watch ten working comics fighting tooth and nail to deliver the best five minutes of new material they could muster for their specific audience. “That…” I thought to myself whilst making a pre-broadcast cup of tea (white, one sugar) “…is a strong format. This…” I continued to think, having accidentally poured water from the kettle straight into the sugar bowl because I was thinking too much about your show and, ironically enough, not focusing on the matter in hand “…should be good.” then I stopped thinking and cleared up.

A nice cup of tea - surprisingly easy to mess up.

You can, I’m sure, imagine my surprise when the first part came and went without any stand up whatsoever. Fair enough, or at least it would be if you’d spent any time at all introducing these ten comedians to me (for the sake of accuracy I’m going to presume that I’m the only person in Britain that watched the entire show, so ‘me’ = your audience), but you didn’t do that did you? No, you paired them up and sent them on a series of dull and meaningless fools errands around Liverpool. Don’t get me wrong, if there was a show called “Shitty City Centre Shit Search” I’d Sky+ the bastard faster than you can hilariously say “Are you called Michelle?”, I’m sure that show would be an unending rollercoaster of excitement, lurching from one dull hunt to the next and looping the loop of banality.

There isn’t a show called that. There isn’t a show like that – and do you now why? It’s because even for those doing these ‘tasks’ it’s an exercise in utter futility, a waste of time and energy almost beyond compare. The fact that this shit storm took up the whole first half of the show was, at best, bewildering and at worst a cry for help from the producer. The fact that it was so arse clenchingly bad that I kept jabbing myself with a compass just to make sure I could still feel something – anything – is unforgivable. “When are they going to show the stand up? For God’s sake when?” I found I had carved into my forearm, losing quite a lot of blood in the process.

Thankfully I didn’t have to wait long for the answer: Never.

Your human senses might not be sensitive enough to detect it, but this is actually the film we saw of Alfie Moore's act

Yes, technically you showed a bit of each of them: An intro from the opening act that clearly was not ‘all new material’; nearly a minute from the pretty woman; the opening line from police officer Alfie (who I’ve seen, and I know is funny) and a few lines here and there from others – some clearly written for this audience, others clearly not – and then a long and painful stint from the Fred and Rose West of comedy (i.e. they spotted comedy on the street, took it home, made it watch whilst they performed unspeakable sex acts on one another, killed it, buried it in the garden, and somehow got away without capture for years) Prince ‘being London-centric is funny, apparently’ Abdi and Ignacio ‘couldn’t gauge the mood at an autopsy’ Lopez. I’d like to say that these two were comfortably the worst, but I don’t know because:

a) I didn’t see enough of the others to make any kind of judgement

b) I actually heard more from Jason ‘can’t believe he used his own twitter account’ Manford, and

c) I’m not prepared to take Alan Davies word for it when it comes to stand-up

So before I knew it the stand-up had come and gone, two we didn’t really see got praised, two we didn’t really see got chastised and marginally the lesser of two evils got given a belt, a stool and was sent back to his cell to ‘have a think’.

That was it. I looked everywhere, fully expecting there to be something more, and found nothing. A whole TV hour about stand-up comedy, featuring 10 of the best ‘undiscovered’ comics in the country and it featured about five minutes of people standing up and telling ‘jokes’. Look in the mirror and tell me that you’re proud of that. Seriously.

Jason Manford (pictured here as the more talented Peter Kay) is surprisingly quite good as a host

ITV have given you a big pot of cash and (I think it’s fair to presume) a pretty blank canvas and said “Go forth, brave Chief Big Talk, and bring me some comedy!” and this stinking, confused pile is what you manage? Pardon my French, but how fucking pathetic is that? You had not only an amazing opportunity, but a responsibility here and you blew them both. Here are your faults and their solutions. It’s nothing insightful, it’s all obvious, and how you managed to miss them is a mystery to me.

Fault – The Tasks – nobody cares. They’re pointless. People did not tune in to this show to see a shitty watered down version of the worst episode of The Apprentice.

Solution – Just let them draw straws to see who goes where. Or take it in turns. Nobody cares. Immediately I’ve freed up about 25 minutes that you could spend letting us get to know the people or, I don’t know, making us laugh.

Judge Alan Davies in his stand-up days

Fault – The ‘Specific’ Audience – this one’s two fold, because firstly we don’t actually get to learn enough about why the comics are going to find it difficult (we get snippets, but that’s not enough) and secondly because it would seem that some of the comics can just choose to ignore the “Write a new 5 minute set” and just regurgitate old stuff.

Solution – Spend some of that extra time with a bit of a tutorial on why audiences are difficult to write for, how routines get written and worked on and so forth. On the second point, any comic who doesn’t show sufficient focus to new material should get a yellow card – three yellows and you leave the process (I went to the Graham Poll school of refereeing)

Fault – The Performances – surely the main point of the show? No, clearly just a minor inconvenience to you, showing – on average – about 20 seconds of each routine.

Solution – Lose all the superfluous crap that litters your show like dog shit pn a football pitch and show more of the routines. Show at least one in it’s entirety and actual highlights (at least a full minute) from each of the others. It’s why we tune in. It’s what we’re interested in. It’s what will have people at home picking their favourites and caring in the slightest about tuning in again. Mores the point it’s what the show is about. Stand up. Comedy. People telling jokes. Jesus, this is simple stuff.

Judge Kate Copstick seems strangely familiar

Fault – Jason Manford – normally this would be followed by some snidey comments about how he annoys me, which he does, but there is no question that on this subject he knows his onions, and his insights on the process were not only interesting and informative but also very welcome. So why have you made nothing of them? Why is he lurking by the stage door like a middle aged Take That fan hoping to stroke Gary’s crotch as he hurries passed?

Solution – It’s a simple thing that you might have heard of, it’s called structure. Throw a VT or two into the show where Jason and/or Alan and possibly even old Chopsticks tells us a few of the tricks of the trades or some of their anecdotes from their many years as professional comedians. That’d be brilliant.

So it’s either do some of that, or change the name of your show to “(We’re Not Going To) Show You The Funny, Here’s Some Pointless Crap Instead”

I deserve better, stand-up deserves better and the nine remaining giant balled bastards who put the very centre of their being on the line every time they get up on that stage? Well they deserve a hell of a lot better than you’re giving them.

Seriously, get your act together.

R

PS – I had a Ploughman’s lunch the other day. He wasn’t very happy. (Tommy Cooper)

 

Dear Lovely Tom (Yes, it’s another Apprentice one, what of it?)

Dear The Apprentice, (Not on any more, finished for now)

So you were reading! That’s a relief, I’d started to think that I must look a little peculiar, but as you followed my instructions in the final – practically to the letter – there can be no doubt that you saw my advice as sage and onion, sorry, was just thinking about roast dinners. You clearly recognised sage advice when you saw it and acted accordingly. If only I’d been around when you invented the emailer.

Any way, looking back over the course of the series it’s actually been clear from the off that you were going to choose Tom, a cynic might even say that the entire series was a 7 minute Dragons Den segment extended to a quite remarkable 12 hours. Fortunately  for you, I am not such a cynic, I’d never suggest that a quarter of a million quid is an incredibly cheap way to invest in someone who already has a successful invention and an ‘in’ at the worlds biggest retailer. I’d certainly never imply that, with the backing of Petty Officer Sugar’s henchmen and number crunchers, the money invested will almost certainly be recouped within the first six months of trading, and I’d certainly never insinuate that the business plans became an utter irrelevance the minute Sugar Daddy was informed that one of the applicants had created, patented, marketed and successfully sold an invention entirely of their own to the aforementioned worlds biggest retailer. No, only a cynic would suggest any of these things, and I am not a cynic – I am a crackpot – and the two are very very different.

So, let’s have a look at why none of the others stood any more chance of winning the contest than I do of winning the dressage gold medal at next years olympics – an award I won’t win for three reasons:

1. 

   Dressage - why not just give Olympic medals for flower arranging or hairdressing?

   Dressage isn’t a real thing. Horses wearing hairbands dancing sideways?  It’s like awarding people gold medals for sculpting their hedges or getting their dog to fetch the paper – quite impressive, but not a sport. Topiary. That’s what the hedge thing is, topiary.

2. I’m not a horse. Let’s be honest, if any bugger’s going to get a medal for this farce then it should be the one doing all the work, not Zara bloody Phillips whose job basically consists of putting on jodpurs, looking good and sitting there.
3. I fear horses. Not because they’re particularly sinister or anything, but they weigh a ton and can run faster than me, jump over my head and kill a man with a single kick. Not only that but they get spooked and kick out over practically anything: thunder, dogs, cars, ghosts – there was even that one who leapt over a shadow thinking it was a fence. They’re huge and they’re muscular and they’re stupid – not a good combo. Also there was that one who could talk, though that might have just been on Rent-a-Ghost.

I digress, the basic point I was attempting to make is that – when you have a proper look at it – none of the others were ever going to win, thus making the 12 episodes – whilst incredibly entertaining – a bit superfluous. So, here’s why they were never going to win (in the order they were eliminated)

The group of people assembled to make going in to business with Tom more interesting

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Edward “It’s all there” Hunter (Accountant) – Whilst Edward might not have ‘fit the mould’ for accountants, he was still an accountant. As much as I would have loved him to stay in just so I could hear every single non-sequitur he had in his armoury, the truth is that his fate was sealed the second he wrote ‘accountant’ on the form.

Reason – He’s a service provider. And he talks gibberish.

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A Foxtons 'twat tank', they don't even have the decency to hide from the public.

Alex “I look suspiciously Californian” Cabral (Estate Agent) – Whilst estate agent’s might not be the purest form of evil on the planet they are pretty f**king close. I’m sure there was a time when estate agents did something to actually earn their money, but now it’s just become a systematic wallet raping machine. To para-phrase Sugar Pie – what estate agents know about anything other than greed and hair gel is f*ck all. If you need someone who can’t make anything and whose only role is to introduce someone who wants to sell something to someone who wants to buy it and somehow make them both feel utterly cheated in the process then call Alex or one of the identikit shitpots at Foxtons, just don’t expect to leave with your dignity intact.

Reason – He’s (technically at least) a service provider, the primary service being making you feel a little bit better about the choices you made in life.

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Gavin “I’m the Scouser” Winstanley (Online Retailer) – Hands up who honestly thought that La Sucre was ever going to hire a Scouser? Seriously now. There’s always a Scouser and they never win – why? Well it could have something to do with the fact that every ticket tout in the world is a Scouser, so when you hear that accent you can’t help but picture the speaker outside the Hammersmith Apollo offering you an overpriced ticket for Kings of Leon, or offering you a fiver for the one you paid £30 for.

Reason – He’s a shop keeper and as such doesn’t make anything. And I think he actually told people to ‘calm down’. Unforgivable.

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Felicity “Oooh, Arty” Jackson (Creative Arts sort) – Do you really need me to write anything here? I mean she’s a creative arts entrepreneur! You’d have

If the phrase "You're fired!" was a movement it would look a little like this...

thought she’d have workshopped the possible scenarios in which she might win The Apprentice and, upon seeing that they all involved all the other contestants dying in a minibus crash/monkey attack/Die Hard scenario she would have realised that never in a million years is Executive Producer Sugar going to give so much as a shiny shit about the business of creative arts.

Reason – He’s an electronics magnate, she gets people to use creative movement to interpret what sadness might look like – you figure it out.

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Ellie “The Northern Bird” Reed (Building Recruitment) – I’m Northern myself – and proud of it – so I say this with a sense of regret and with no malice. Ellie has accomplished a great deal and is, I’m sure, very intelligent – but by Geoffrey Boycott’s lady beating stick she doesn’t sound it. Unfortunately she’s from a band of the country (stretching from Hull to Blackpool) where even if you have a PhD in incredibly difficult sums you’re going to sound like you’d struggle with the complexities of working behind the counter at Gregg’s. It’s a curse.

Reason – She’s a service provider. Is it me or is a pattern developing here?

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" I'm fired? What a dreadful bore!"

Vincent “Disney Store” Dinosaur (Telecom Sales Manager) – I loved Vincent. Not for any good reason of course, more in an ironic way. He looked and acted like a panto villain and he looked greasier than a cast member of the musical Grease eating at a greasy spoon on holiday in Greece – and it made him brilliantly entertaining. He was also, of course, comically inept, but that’s not necessarily a bar to success. The main problems for Vince lay in the fact that, whilst looking a bit like David Niven, he had the business acumen of reptile fan David Icke and the charisma of Michelangelo’s David.

Reason – He’s a salesman. he produces nothing. Getting a bit predictable? I think it might be.

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Edna “The Three Degrees” Agharba (Business Psychologist) – In the world of service providers there is a hierarchy: Those who actually provide a service sit proudly at the top (IT technicians and the like), then it’s those who don’t really provide a service, but talk a lot to people who do (Consultants and that sort) and then, sitting at the bottom you’ve got those who don’t provide an actual service and talk a lot to other people who also don’t provide a service (Edna). It’s role creation taken to the nth degree – a job that is impossible to both understand or defend and unnecessary in every way imaginable (or yet to be imagined).

Reason – She masquerades as a service provider, which is even worse than actually being a service provider.

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Glenn “I’ve reserved you a bed in the Emergency” Ward (Design Engineer) – Glenn was a funny one, a bit like Marlon Brando he coulda been a contender but it all went wrong. Why? Well it wasn’t the fact that he had the cold dead eyes of a killer, it wasn’t his performances – he showed creativity and ingenuity – no, it was his job description. By calling himself a design engineer rather than an inventor he shot himself in the face with a gun loaded with Sugar and prejudice. Big Al don’t think engineers can be creative.

Reason – Bad luck and poor research, Glenn actually did fit the brief on this one.

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Leon “I’ve got a girlfriend” Doyle (Fast Food Entrepreneur) – Leon’s another one with a made up job. Ronald McDonald and Wimpy are fast food entrepreneurs. Colonel Sanders took the time not only to achieve

Colonel Sanders - never heard of Leon. Also, not a real Colonel.

his lofty rank, but to perfect his secret recipe for delicious and fattening chicken, he too was a fast food entrepreneur. Leon, on the other hand, is a man who has a website. You can’t eat a website any more than you can properly digest a Big Mac. He is a fast food entrepreneur in the same way as I am the star of Channel 4’s mythical shitfest Camelot – i.e. not at all, but I have mentioned him on a website.

Reason – Not even a service provider. A non-service provider. It’s getting pretty obvious where this is going now.

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Zoe “Monotone” Beresford (Project Manager, Drinks Industry) – Zoe is possibly the dullest enigma in the history of television. She always seemed to have something about her – from the moment she utterly dominated Susan to her appearance as a stewardess on ‘You’re Fired’ you were always waiting for that moment when she’d spring out of her shell and reveal herself to be something. Anything – brilliantly creative, convicted killer, sexual predator. But nothing ever materialised. She was just wall paper, background noise to the interesting stuff.

Reason – There was simply no reason to ever contemplate hiring her. I doubt her business plan of ‘Belittling Susan until she cries’ would have generated much income any way.

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Melody “The Name Dropper” Hossaini (Bullshit Consultant) – Melody, half of the league of evil, talked more than all the other candidates put together, but despite this she never actually said anything. She talked herself up constantly, talked about her business, how Jesus himself taught her how to play tennis and how she’s spoken to every child in the Western world about what they want to do after school, and yet no-one knows what she does. Genuinely, hand on heart, do you know what she does? One things for certain – it has the word ‘consultant’ in it!

Reason – If she provides anything at all (other than a Melody Hossaini promotion service) then it’s a SERVICE! You’re really not getting this at all are you?

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I think it's cute, you think it's cute. Natasha thinks it's breakfast.

Natasha “Puppy Killer” Scribbins (Recruitment Manager/Demon) – Completing the league of evil, Natasha took noise generation to a new level. With Melody you could be fairly sure that what she was saying was geared to promoting herself, whatever Natasha was saying was anybody’s guess. The only times she was ever direct and to the point involved her repeating something someone more intelligent and less sinister had just said or when she was blaming others for her own failings. A genuinely unpleasant human being (based on every nonsensical word she uttered).

Reason – Other than the evil? Well, guess what she does? She doesn’t make anything does she, so what is it? That’s right, she’s a service provider.

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Jim “Puppet Master” Eastwood (Sales and Marketing Manager) – No-one could deny Jim’s rating as ‘most charming man in Britain’ and he could probably sell Hugh Grant an evening of chat and ginger sex with Rebekah Brooks such is his talent in that field, but get beyond people skills and what do you have? Seldom did Jim come up with any great ideas, and a business plan that revolves around a business that Sugar (they’re close, he can call him that) already has is an interesting approach. Like most charming men he was always going to lose out in the end – that’s why I’m never charming.

Reason – He’s a salesman. That’s the start of it, and the end of it. He could be the best salesman in the world – maybe he is – but he couldn’t sell himself (ooh, deep)

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Susan “100% Organic” Ma (Skincare Entrepreneur) – Having already explained in some depth my irritation at Susan’s immaturity I will forego the pleasure of repeating myself and instead go on to the small matter of her business plan. the most obvious business plan in the brief history of ‘guessing the business plan’, a game that’s only just been invented with this series. Her plan consisted of doing what she’s already doing, but more. The only problem with that being it’s just about the most congested and competitive marketplace in the entire world. Otherwise excellent.

Reason – Naivety. A great thing if you’re trying to talk a 21-year-old in to bed, a bad thing if you’re investing a quarter mill in their business.

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So let me get this straight, she's intelligent, beautiful and she works for Gregg's The Bakers? I'm in!

Helen “How sexy did I look on You’re Hired?” Milligan (Executive PA) – All the wins in the world couldn’t hide the simple fact that Helen is just an organiser. When I say ‘just’ I don’t mean it derogatively – if I wanted someone to run my business she’d be right up there – but ‘being organised’ isn’t a great business plan and that’s essentially all she brought to the table. She’s confident and capable and polished and good with people and assertive and organised and organised and boy is she organised – but she’s not creative. I doubt anything new will ever come from Helen, which is a shame.

Reason – She’s a service provider really, it’s just hers is a very personal service – and you can’t turn that into a mass market thing.

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So there you go. A sea of service providers, pseudo-service providers and sales people – a lot of the sort of people who you employ, not the sort of people you go into business with. If you were asked at the start of this process what kind of person Lord Sugar would have been looking for you would have given the answer “an ideas person” or “a creator” and really, truthfully and honestly speaking there were only ever two people in the competition who stood a chance – Tom and Glenn (I discount Susan on the basis of £250k is a drop in that ocean) – and Tom was so far ahead of Glenn in every department that really the contest was over long before Glenn got the boot.

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So yes, maybe I am a cynic, but I’d argue that the job was Tom’s from the moment he was cast, because looking back I can’t envisage it going to anyone else. Now that’s hindsight (a trait that Tom has never ever demonstrated, he showed quiet foresight).

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Thanks for the fun,

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R xxx

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PS – Next series maybe include a few viable candidates – it’ll be obvious if you do this again.

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PPS – Also next series can you replace “You’re fired!” with “Thanks for your participation, but you’re no longer part of this process.” as, technically speaking, you have to employ someone to fire them, and even then you have to give them written warnings and all that. Except in cases of gross misconduct of course, but that doesn’t cover ‘being inept’.

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PPPS – Also, “You’re hired!” bit of a patronising way to greet an equal partner isn’t it? Don’t be so condescending. How about “So, do you fancy going in to business with me?” it’s not as catchy, but it would make you seem like less of a presumptuous tit.