The Apprentice: Series 6 Episode 1

‘Suralan’ (now Lord Sugar) is on the hunt for a new apprentice and the results are as compelling, barmy and glorious as ever.

Sixteen hopefuls - some of them clearly hopeless - were called up outside Sugar Mountain at the stroke of midnight (nobody thinking to ask who does business at that time, aside from drug dealers and witches). The task this week was to make and sell sausages (‘They sell in “bucket-loads’, apparently), and the gang were divided into a stag party and the cast from a Boots advert. The plan was to sell sausages to unsuspecting passers-by, under the watchful gaze of Nick Hewer and She's-Not-Margaret replacement Karen Brady, who impressively already comes across as a impersonation of herself via Jan Raven.

Heading up the boys was the shouty Dan, whose aggressive management style was not appreciated by his team. One team member - wet-eyed with fear, panic and the stench of broken dreams - muttered that Dan “couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery”, clearly not aware of the possibility of that being chosen as the task for Week Seven. Meanwhile, Dan The Man's Man was spluttering and raging as if he'd spent the previous day preparing by watching Platoon: ‘Who's mincing?’, he screamed. His team, jacked up to all levels of Alpha Male-ness, clearly didn't know how to respond. ‘Who's mincing?!’, he shouted again. All the boys looked at their feet, possibly to check. Clearly, nobody wanted to be the mincer - it was Mr Pink moaning about his name in Reservoir Dogs all over again.

But of course, the true star this week - and almost certainly of the early weeks of the series (we can safely say he won't win) - is Stuart Baggs. ‘I'm unique,' he declared in his sharp suit, motioning with contempt to a board-room packed with sharp-suited hopefuls nodding with contempt. 'I'm completely unique', he says, before explaining his theme: 'I'm twenty-one'. This apparently needs no further explanation, although his opening gambit might: 'Everything I touch turns to sold'. This might work better if he spoke clearly, because he sounds like he's boasting that he can turn things into salt. Either way, if the boy's got any business sense at all, that phrase will be on a t-shirt by the time you read this. There will be great television mileage out of his huffing and rolling of eyes, looking like a petulant toddler who's just had his face vigorously rubbed with a rough towel.

It's too early to pick out a winner just yet (although we'd put good money on the first recruit to try and sell Lord Sugar a job lot of wheelie-suitcases). Sadly, it probably won't be Melissa, who has an endearing habit of cloaking what's actually clearly a decent business mind with talking absolute nonsense. The real apprentice is still there, in the shadows, unremarked upon as yet.

Next week's task involves the team employing the services of some dummies. You can write your own punchline.



Airs at 9pm on Wednesday 6th October 2010 on BBC One.

> Buy the Best Of The Apprentice DVD on Amazon.

Reviewed by Andrew Allen.