Sir Sugar's Apprentice

I am a self confessed 'naff' TV addict, and despite Sir Alan vehemently denying the Apprentice could ever be classified as 'Reality TV' I would beg to differ. How else would the last series have created it's very own class of 'e' list celebrities, the 'badger' (that matronly scary one) who now has her own TV show, that gobby asian guy who frequents the likes of Nobu and other London celeb haunts and most famously got the winner, Michelle Dewberry, up the duff within a month of her being awarded the holy grail...a 6 figure (yep, count em) salaried job in one of Sir Alan's many business ventures.

Anyway with some fairly serious PR, I'm sure you can't have failed to notice that Sir Alan is back on the prowl in his helecopter circling and swooping and trying to nail an Apprentice for 2007. Why he couldn't just employ a high brow head hunter we'll never know, but I guess then we'd miss out on all that FUN!

Last year, Sir Alan was none too impressed with the calibre of his wannabes, and so this year, he endeavoured to really get his teeth into the selection of the 'finest young business brains in Britain'. And didn't they do well?

I'm sure if you saw the first show last Wednesday you would have delighted alongside me watching the two teams, led by Andy the car salesmen and Jadine the erm, annoying women with a big chip on her shoulder, setting up coffee companies and trying to flog cheap nasty coffee and kelloggs cereal bars to discerning punters in Islington, and other spots around town. It was brilliant TV. I'm no bright spark so watching a quantum physicist fumble her way through basic common sense calculations whilst the rest of the team stood around and nodded was great. They based their ordering calculations not on forecasted demand for coffee, but on the capacity of the machine. So, they calculated the machine that could make 1,000 cups a day would require 200 litres of milk to do so. 200 litres! How very very embarrasing. I haven't even mentioned the fact that they purchased the wrong coffee, that one of team leaders called back their mobile unit from it's most lucrative position only to stand dormant and unused, it was heinous business error after error. Not complicated ones either.

But what's really amazing about this show are the boardroom appearances where Sugar interviews the startled candidates to select someone to fire. This is an unadulterated forum for blame, backstabbing and humiliation to try and save your skin. In life you'll rarely bear witness to people stooping so very low for their own personal gain. In some ways, I admire their absolute dogged perseverance, but in others it's truly terrifying. I'm such a softy when it comes to work, 'ambition' and general 'go gettery'. I have no qualms when people younger than me overtake me at work and it makes me feel queasy just thinking about putting myself in a situation where I'm pitting myself against someone so self-assured.

So grab your cushion...because you will need it for the cringy moments. Even Steve, Steve, Steve of the (corporate) jungle had to hide behind one when porky car salesman met his fate in a most unbecoming manner. Grab some decent wine, tune in on Wednesday and enjoy a damn good heckle.

We all love to pretend we could have done better than all of them, but only from the comfort of our nice, cosy sofas.

Mode, median, mean

Last night Channel 4 televised the first in a series of documentaries, following Britains most gifted children. For anyone who watched this, I'm sure you'll agree it was deeply disturbing for a whole host of reasons, most of which I won't be able to scratch the surface of.

These children were seriously bright, the youngest was 3 and already a member of Mensa. 4 of the 10 children had IQ's of 170, AKA the highest IQ possible in the test they sat. They are already in the top 0.01% of the population. Despite their obvious and often jaw dropping abilities, these children were little pseudo adults with little or no ability to interact with children of their own age at all. They were all painfully aware of the burden of their 'gift' citing the continous pressure to 'amaze' 'shine' come first and stand out from the crowd. And in doing so, they had all lost friends and become social outcasts from their peers. One of the children was seriously exhibiting signs of terrible depression. But the most terrifying element of this programme? The parents.

In most of the parents, one pushy, dominant figure dictated long hours of study, practice, home schooling, recital of equations, poems, you name it. And they did this without trace of emotion, one mother saying it was her duty to ensure her children became nuclear scientists, surgeons, because that was their destiny and nothing else would do. Her children spoke like cyborgs, with no expressions on their faces. The youngest, 4, sat and drew maps of the British Isles, laboriously labelling coastal towns...why? To alleviate boredom.

Anita and I of course, discussed. I think it was fair to say that what we want from our kids when they eventually come along, is that they are 'average'. And perhaps that's a terrible admission, but is it? I want my 3 year old to be putting paint pots on his/her head and head butting the walls, I want crayola all over the walls, and I want to be in a position to teach my child, not vice versa. I don't want to parent a child who when they reach their teens, want to discuss history/politics/gastronomy. I want a teen who hides in their room, grunts and doesn't want to communicate for a few years.

And as I lay in bed last night thinking about all of this, it occured to me that extremes of any kind tend to have a negative impact, even the good ones. Think of any. Too generous (taken for granted), too kind (ditto), too clever (make people feel thick), too beautiful (must be stupid or a bitch), too short (get trodden on), too tall (freak show), too common (thick), too posh (stuck up), too sensitive (wet), too emotional (pathetic), too successful (makes us jealous). So should we all just aim for the middle ground, and if so, isn't that a sad thing?