Grace Dent on TV: The Apprentice candidates are risible masters of comedy, not commerce

One of the greatest mysteries about the hit BBC1 show The Apprentice is how it continues to be made at all.

Or how it lives on BBC1 prime-time. Or why we still love it so. The Apprentice is the “Trigger’s broom” of television. It’s the exact same show as it was in 2005 – only everything is different.

The candidates, whom we truly believed back in 2005 to be the cream of British go-getters, are now a knowingly risible bunch of fame-seeking ditherers. Masters of comedy, not commerce. The fact that a person auditions for The Apprentice at all is a honking great signal of the vast chasm between themselves and brilliance. There is not one single candidate in this series I would leave in charge of my Labrador.

OK, I might try Roisin Hogan, the Irish accountant, or social worker Steven Ugoalah with my more hardy spider plants, but strictly on a trial basis. Nothing will convince me that “PA and hypnotherapist” Sarah Dales – she of the electric-blue power suits and the instructions to the girls to “pack nice make-up!” – is not played by a brilliant comedy actress.

Obviously the fact that the clever, impressive people are no longer clever nor impressive, and that Margaret has jumped ship and that Nick is on “contorted face of dismay” autopilot, and the tasks are wholly manufactured to provoke running about screaming while dressed as a hot-dog are of less import to The Apprentice now that there’s no apprenticeship on offer. The 2014 show should be called “The Quite Reasonable But Let’s Not Get Too Excited Investment”, which isn’t half as catchy and, let’s be frank, draws attention to the fact that Dragons’ Den has the whole dishing-out-investments thing on lock-down already. Plus, the dragons would be much nicer to deal with. Which masochist would really want investment off Lord Sugar? Who wants money doled out with general disdain and a grunty preamble?

“I won’t be working! Just offering my advice.”

“Oh pick me! Give me the chance to be tied financially to a man who becomes fractious to the point of belligerent at the mere sight of me.”

Seriously, one would have to be a proper idiot to sign up for that. Oh, hang on...

Clearly to be true to the real 2005 spirit of The Apprentice, today’s candidates should be fighting it out for a seven-figure salary at Apple or Google. Boardroom meetings should be held in a “forced fun” environment around the ping-pong tables while people mill about sipping chai lattes and warming up for “glee club”. There would be no Apprentice mansion as only the weak would want to go home when they could sleep at their hot desk while work dry-cleans their undies.

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Alan Sugar should be replaced by a Californian twentysomething Harvard grad who has been flogging apps where pigs chase cows, or goats chase cheese or something fires watermelons at something... No one can remember exactly what but they banked millions of dollars and now spend their time mooching messianically between here and San Francisco wearing flip-flops and a first-class flight-mask. This is an apprenticeship we could take seriously. Meanwhile, on The Apprentice, they’re making candles and selling them outside Argos.

On The Apprentice, “serious” left the room many moons ago and yet still we watch. Twitter is ablaze from the moment it starts. Its moments of idiocy become trending topics. Its spin-off show on BBC2 – designed purely to take the mick even more out of everyone involved – is a roaring success. The Apprentice is meaningless, it’s a shadow of its former self, it’s been done to death, it should have been canned years ago, but leave us alone because we all still love The Apprentice.

We watch for those moments like the one in the third episode when three grown women began a stand-up public scrap over the manner in which tiny stickers were applied to cheap boxed candles. Or that beautiful moment in episode one where the girls stormed into a zoo laden with buckets of sponges and cheap toilet-brushes to announce: “We will sell you these cleaning products for… £250. They should be £300.” “Are these products safe around animals?” asked one nit-picker on the zoo’s staff. “Um, no,” one of the candidates muttered, “probably keep them away from the penguins.” Or the moment when the boys pitching their wearable technology concept quickly admitted that it wasn’t really suitable to wear to a nightclub, or indeed, “in public”. Or the moment when pub-quiz company director Daniel Lassman, unable to contain his joy at choosing the team name “Summit”, said: “There’s no ‘I’ in team. But there are five in ‘individual brilliance’.”

Daniel is mesmerising. On his personal information online he has written, under “Worst Personal Quality”, “I love banter and I’m a massive wind-up”. Under “Role Model”, “Roy Keane”. In his audition video, asked for his business tactics, he says: “There are no tactics needed when you are complete in the world of business.” There’s something beautiful, almost spiritual, in Daniel’s certitude he is “complete”. I hope that when he put on that hot-dog suit his enlightenment reached even dizzier heights.