Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Ambition makes you look pretty ugly

It will, or should, come as no surprise to anyone to find that the world is a cutthroat place. I personally work in an industry of remarkable contrast in this respect; although it is, on the surface, a friendly, fun and informal way of earning cash, it is very bitchy and backstabbing behind the scenes. There are only so many gigs, and now hundreds of established and thousands of aspiring comics all jostling for a slice of the pie. Do a good gig and, certainly once you have a reputation as being at least reasonably handy behind the mike, no-one will draw reference to it. Give an under-par performance though, or, heaven forbid, die on your stinking hoop, and the news will be gleefully bandied around the circuit with the pace of a Japanese bullet train. Ill tidings travel so fast in this business you can practically hear them swoosh.

All businesses are like this, though, certainly at the top end, and just about everyone wants to make at least some headway in life. Although barefaced ambition and careerism may be decried as vulgar, most of us have things we want to achieve and plans to get there.

Such is the subject of one of my favourite televisual delights, “The Apprentice”. Now in its third series, it offers contestants the opportunity to win a job (with a six figure salary, no less) with Sir Alan Sugar, the famous entrepreneur. Each week, he sets his hopefuls, who are organised into two teams, a mini business task. The team that displays the most enterprise, and thus generates most profit, are treated to a day at the races, or a night at the opera, or some other reward that coincides with the name of a Queen album. The losing team are hauled over the coals before one of them suffers the indignity of being fired on national television.

Of course, the show is farce of the highest order. The carefully staged grillings that the contestants receive from Sugar in his boardroom, set to eerie, tension-cranking music, are designed to have the viewer cringing as the desperate, dry-mouthed hopefuls babble their excuses, pointing the finger of blame at each other to save their own scrawny necks. The show also employs the classic (by now, in fact, maybe even hackneyed) tactic of forcing the competitors to live in a house together, so they can plot each other’s downfall whist maintaining the façade of being the best of pals. Being forced to live together also maximises the potential of any underlying personality clashes erupting into proximity-induced meltdown. Nothing, so TV execs seem to think these days, makes good telly like an old fashioned set to.

Despite ticking many boxes in the game of “Naff Reality TV Bingo”, the show has garnered a reputation as required viewing with people who would spurn the genre’s more tawdry offerings. I know many who would rather have a leprous crack-whore with acid for urine squat over them and piss into their eyes than sit through an episode of “Big Brother” (and the tortures they would endure instead of watching “Love Island” are truly, unspeakably foul) but they watch “The Apprentice” religiously. It has become the respectable face of an often ridiculed oeuvre.

The thing I find most fascinating about the show is not the contestants, however, but rather their taskmaster and his cohorts. Sugar gives off the air of a perennially grumpy uncle, but his assistants really put the fear of God into me. Margaret Mountford has a stare that could cut through a bank vault door, and Nick Hewer’s facial expression suggests a subtle blend of mild distaste and extreme discomfort, like a man with chronic haemorrhoids changing a nappy. She is medusa after a haircut, he looks like he has never smiled in his life.

If I were a contestant, they would make me think twice – do I really want this job if that’s what a lifetime working for Alan Sugar does to you?

How did Sugar make his money, anyhow? He owns, amongst other things, Amstrad, but to me that company name is synonymous with slightly less than state-of-the-art computers from the late Eighties. My mate had an Amstrad when we were kids, and all I remember is how blocky the graphics on “Double Dragon” looked compared to on my Atari ST. He also owned Tottenham Hotspur Football Club for a time (Alan Sugar that is, not my mate) so, considering how fraught with hazard investing in football is, it’s a wonder he has any money left at all.

Not that Sugar is the only entrepreneur flashing his wad on telly, as any devotee of “Dragons’ Den” will tell you. On this show, you get not one stern faced businessperson to impress, but five. A panel of investment capitalists sit before you, all willing to throw money at your ideas – for a sizeable piece of the action, of course.

This show is great fun, if slightly more ostentatious than “The Apprentice”. Alan Sugar is famous for being filthy rich, so he doesn’t need to make a song and dance about it (if you discount the huge office building, the fleet of black cars and his habit of turning up by helicopter to announce this week’s task). The eponymous “Dragons”, however, are not household names and so assert their considerable financial dominion over the hopefuls by sitting with huge bundles of cash on the table in front of them. It always reminds me of the Emperor at the end of “Return of the Jedi”, sat with Luke’s lightsabre on the arm of his throne, hissing, “You want thisssss…..don’t you”.

The “contestants” are ushered up the stairs to the “den” where they pitch their business ideas, only to have them torn asunder by the irascible “dragons”. Some of them frankly deserve it, some of the concepts so ludicrously pointless and some of the pitches so hopelessly inept as to be beneath contempt;

Hi, I’m Jim. I, erm…(gulp)…excuse me, I’m a bit nervous...I love gardening, me, and I also love Radio 4. I often put the radio on when I’m doing some gardening, you know, turn it up and leave the kitchen window open…anyway, my garden is quite big. Not as big as the one at the last house mind, but we couldn’t keep on top of it in the end…what with our Elsie’s leg… so, anyway, when I’m weeding at the far end I often struggle to hear, and I’d hate to think I’ll be missing the end “The Archers” just for the sake of a few dandelions! So, I have invented…the combined hoe and AM/FM radio! Just this prototype for the time being, but in time we could extend the range to cover all manner of gardening equipment – spades, pitch forks, trowels…you name it! I would like an investment of £150,000 in return for 2% of the company. Thank you”.

Do you have a business plan?”

No”.

Get out”.

For me, the standout “dragon” is Duncan Bannatyne, a man who doesn’t so much cross the line between charming and smarmy as use it to floss his teeth. He is the owner of the famous chain of “Bannatyne’s” gyms (where pretentious young execs pump iron in between sipping lattes and checking their Blackberrys) and presides over the whole affair with a cocksure swagger and a perpetual smirk plastered over his greasy face. Despite the fact that his “I’m doing rather well for myself don’t you know” smugness doesn’t quite cover his roots as a working class Scotsman (he still has the faint air of a man who would glass you for looking at his bird), he is great entertainment and worth tuning in for alone. Take, for example, his putdown to a person who had come on the show with his “invention”, a wedge shaped device designed to alleviate the problem of wobbly tables in pubs;

Well, I don’t mean to rain on your parade pal, but such an invention already exists. It’s called a beer mat. I’m out”.

That's the thing about ambition, you see. It's not always focussed in a suitable direction. Sometimes, people just need to be told.

Peace. X

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

GET YOUR HAIRCUT, YOU GREASY TIT HEAD!

2:41 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Smelly greasy fat fucktard.

11:34 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey Ben,

Your mother sucks fucking big fucking elephant dicks.

Ya got that?

Joe.

8:30 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The comments here are incredibly cruel.

Do you people not realise Ben Schofield has passed away?

Ben died from massive blood loss after attempting a home based penile enlargement operation with a Vax vacuum cleaner nozzle.

He will be sadly missed.

12:43 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi, I do think this is a great web site. I stumbledupon it
;) I will come back once again since i have bookmarked it.
Money and freedom is the greatest way to change, may you be rich and continue to help others.


Here is my web blog: free weight loss programs

11:30 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home