Testament: The Bible in Animation - Elijah

Keen followers of Mike McMahon's splendid Tugging Your Coat blog may have been shocked to learn that Mr McMahon worked on a Bible animated series for the BBC. I know I was! I have vague recollections of Testament: The Bible in Animation popping up in an afternoon slot on BBC2 during school holidays. Like the BBC's Shakespeare animations, they were always worth sitting through if caught. The animation was usually lightly experimental, and the content a shade more gruesome than what you would expect from the apparently dull subject matter. Predictably, McMahon's episode is totally fucking awesome, and features beardy, angular men kicking hell out of each other to brooding opera music. That Elijah was a real shitkicker.

Disaster Year 2006: Gnarls Barkley - Crazy

Single cut recall tainted by endless rotation on Jamster ringtone shills? Rediscover Gnarls Barkley's Crazy in this slow, mournful arrangement. As seen on the BBC's since extinct Top of the Pops franchiser.

Elephant

Happy Hallowe'en! After last year's double bill of sweaty illogic, I think a skew in the direction of bleak realist is in order. Embedded for your existential horror is Alan Clarke's 1989 the Troubles short Elephant. Partly based on actual police reporting, and the brainchild of then producer Danny Boyle, Elephant dispassionately tracks eighteen sectarian murders. The removal of any political or ideological agenda stumps justification, it's just killing. Likewise, no reasoning is ever offered, instead you get ethereal Steadicams zoning like an accomplice. This being a BBC production, and given their increased presence on YouTube, you'd figure they'd want to shout it from the rafters that they used to produce thought provoking mind splinters like this? Not a bit of it! This was uploaded by a fan under a misspelled name.

Apprentice 5: Rise of the Machines

The curtain falls on Series 5. We should be due another next year, as well as a Junior edition, if King Alan can convince the Tories that his appointment as Gordon Brown's Enterprise Tsar isn't in conflict with the BBC's impartiality editorial policy. Yikes! Here was me thinking we'd just have to soldier on without show mainstay Margaret Mountford, but by the sounds of it we could be down the whole shebang. Dark days.

Sunday's final saw a chocolate flavoured face off between Kate and Yasmina. King Alan demanded the finalists bang him up a box of chocolates and an attendant campaign / hook. 80s economy, 80s product. If the next series gets made, I expect a task in which contestants have to devise a puzzle-cube thingy. They're all the rage now. A selection of ex-candidates were rolled out for pick-play. Kate didn't dare make eye contact with Phillip. It was excruciating. Kate instead lumbered herself with Ben, whose agitated sex head seemed to infect the whole process. Initial choc-box designs had a whiff of feminine hygiene about them, and the campaign ad veered into pooh-play. Not a pretty sight.

Yasmina's team initially toyed with male-accented bites, before that idea was focus grouped into oblivion. Rather than plow on with a stinker, Yasmina changed tact, focusing on shock-value treats, with flavours such as Arsenic and Toilet. Or there abouts. Cannily recalling how she won the catering task (cheap tat sold less cheap), Yasmina stuck to her model and dished out an eight quid eye-catch to Kate's north of ten culinary treats. Rather than make the classic Apprentice mistake of focusing on the end product, Yasmina concentrated on expanding her bottom line well into profitability. The day was hers.

A great end to a series that started off as a central cast stinker, and matured into a tight business-off. Who'd have thought Debra would have placed? I had her pegged as a Week 4 harridan, ready to explode some bully over the closest waif to hand. This was also the first series since one that gave any sense of fraternity between the contestants. Shown scowling venom was at a minimum, thankfully. There's a clip on the BBC website that shows Phillip bashfully telling Lorraine that despite their past differences, he's really missed her since he's been off the show. Lorraine slips into Irish and agrees she's a grower. What a coda.

Apprentice 5: Judgment Day

The dying weeks are my favourite part of The Apprentice. For the majority of the show's twelve week runtime we are treated to brief impressions of each of the cast. Contestants are reduced to one note caricatures: there's a loud one, a boring one, a funny one. The list goes on. There also seems to be an editorial policy in place that favours idiocy in the moment-to-moment rolling recap. Since the majority of the show is illustration and context for the eventual boardroom showdown, this makes a sense. What has been lost though is any notion that any real candidates exist for King Alan's job. They're all fools. This is what makes the last few weeks so enjoyable, they ditch the pretence and instead begin to focus on why the producers actually did cast this rabble.

During Wednesday's interview special, we started to see some real contenders emerge. Just in the nick of time eh? Thanks to a last minute push mandate, Kate finally emerged as Michelle Dewberry 2, a collected smile-face that has long since ditched emotions as surplus to requirement. Boring she may be, but her droning robo-thing speaks to methodical achievement. Just keep her away from Phillip. He's a bad influence. We finally got explanation word that Yasmina is already deep in business with a restaurant, King Alan lapping up her entrepreneurial instincts, a quality sadly lacking in the other candidates. Those two are heading off to Sunday's rescheduled final. I was sorry to see Debra bow out, her bellowing impertinence was a treat quite frankly. She was always deeply in game-mode. Willing to argue over everything. She's not colleague material, but certainly an entertaining watch.

It also became apparent rather early on that James and Lorraine were to be the fluffy comedy stuffing that keeps this show on an entertainment even keel. Achievements be damned! James had written an attention seeking CV, exactly the sort of bolshy big bollocks that gets you cast, but ends up getting you laughed out of real contention. His exit was actually rather touching, a personable exclamation rather than a boring reconsider jab. Lorraine suffered the same Mad Aunt angle Lucinda failed to weather last year. Her intuition dressed up as tea-leaf reading nonsense. Out they went. Hopping over to BBC 2 for a well earned make-over.

Apprentice Reloaded

Week 10. The QVC (or cheapest near equivalent) task! In order to accurately judge each of the candidates big-business acumen, King Alan tosses them onto live television, their task? To mumble and fumble in front of an audience of literally tens of people. Watching this Ideal Home faff, it struck me: doesn't some enterprising sort keep a beady eye on home shopping schedules for signs of quiz show contestants? Couldn't these fading weeks candidates have been plastered all over the internets ages ago? Why doesn't anyone care enough to do that?

This column is so late, I shan't even keep up a pretence of unfolding action. Kate strummed. James and Yasmina formed a squabble-comedy duo. Lorraine offended. Debra sold. Howard went. We all know. I'm rather happy with the result, not because I hold any sort of peculiar grudge against Howard, but because all my extra special favs have made it to the interviews round! It's just the best task. Weeks and week of frothing boast bullshit neatly poleaxed by a gaggle of grumpy management men. I'm giddy. Ideally, the final throw down would be between James, Yasmina and Debra.

James spent the early weeks as an ego stroke ire target. James had made the fatal error of not acting like a total lizard. Instead, he cracked a few jokes and had a few brain-fuzz outbursts. The other males thus marked him as subnormal. Thankfully, James has buried the lot. Yasmina had the good grace to cut through all the pally-pally nonsense, stating as much minutes after she sunk her new bestest friend Paula in the boardroom. Also! Her general demeanour is that of a no-nonsense equaliser. Mess with her and she'll chuck you in a canal. Finally, Debra, a whip-thin howitzer of bellowing belligerence. She'll lead every week. She wants to do everything. You're just fucking it up for her.

WHO WILL WIN?

Apprentice the Fifth

He finally went. Gordon Gekko's chubbly little toddler is out. Apprentice evictee Ben Clarke even did a frustrated little couch punch after exiting. He dearly wanted it! I'm skipping ahead: this week's challenge saw King Alan dole out teams to parents Lorraine and James. The leaders needed to have kids, 'cos they was selling baby stuff see? It had nothing to do with either's rather iffy reputation. No sir! Lorraine got Howard the underexposed, and Kate Ting Ting. James found himself heading up Yasmina Friend Stabber, Dastardly Debra and VietBen.

Before setting up shop at a Baby trade show thingy, the teams needed to pick product. James' team opted for a very deep paddling pool, and Captain Dashing Swift's patented contrabulated fantabulated Horse shaped kid rocker. The latter a snip at ten million billion pounds. Lorraine homed in on an M branch collapsible pram, and a silence hat for babies. Oh they said it protected their noggins, but all I saw was big Velcro claps swamping earholes. Issue them at snip, and you'll be raising a generation of fearless hawk-eyed nutters. Head banging is basic cause and effect teaching! Don't take it away! Thankfully, no-one chose the baby sized high-heels. Cute? Abuse, more like.

Unfortunately for Lorraine she hadn't haggled down a trade price for her wondrous capsule pram. Curses! She was stuck selling it £35 dearer than cannier stalls. Unfortunately for James, no-one at the show was an extravagant millionaire. The Rocking Horse sat there gathering contempt. Debra, desperate to justify her horsey enthusiasm, gave the hard sell to anyone who strayed anywhere near the stall. No-one bit. Boardroom! Despite being chronically undersold Lorraine sailed to victory. As a reward, she got to meet Gerald Scarfe, who drew each of her team as repulsive feature faces. I'm very jealous indeed. James brought back Ben and Equine enthusiast Debra. Despite James' assurance that he'd have brought Debra in twice, King Alan dumps Ben. But not before he's told us for the millionth billionth time that he got a scholarship to Sandhurst (but didn't go). Bye Ben!

A5: The Mighty Ducks

Rebrand Margate! This seaside town could do with a lick of London think-paint, so King Alan's dispatched his interviewees to have a themselves a spruce. Howard attempted a little backbone, putting himself forward as team lead for Team Empire, but Debra was having none of it. None. Howard was already on to a loser when he started to pitch himself to Debra. She's not the boss! What she thinks doesn't matter! She's bamboozled you with thin lips and icy stares Howard. Stare back! She's not that tall. Team structured, James suggests pitching to the gay market, they are most rich! Mona is apprehensive. She lives near Kent, and doesn't know any gay people. This means she is poisonously homophobic. We will all wince whenever she does anything now. It's 2009! Nobody anywhere is allowed to misunderstand anything.

Over at Ignitesville, Yasmina has breezed into Captaincy with ease. Full backing! She's had a think and family is where it's at. A novel approach, I think. I'm sure all of Margate are kicking themselves for missing that trick. The brutalised loner pound is looking a bit slim by comparison. What were they thinking? Floating around in self-appointed Lieutenancy is Lorraine. Poor Lorraine. She has some good points, but she can't help being rather patronising. She can make: "Good idea! Well done." sound like "You're a right thick twat aren't you? Fucken CARRYING you, I am." A text heavy poster campaign is assembled. It's a bit Haven / "So, you're returning to work?" leaflet. No matter how doctor's waiting room Ignite's effort looks, it can't hold a candle to Empire's ad campaign. Empire have gone for reception class chic: lots of floating photos on drab big-card backgrounds, with a comic-sans alike font. Exciting! I bet they put some glitter on too! Margate's assembled dignitary were not impressed. Neither team had come up with anything groundbreaking. Wasn't their nebulous rebranding request oblique enough? They wanted to be wowed! But they're just not sure what by.

Boardroom! Debra's team are sunk. Their leaflets had blank bits. King Alan wants to know why Empire's pitch was so rubbish. All signs point to Debra's squinting belligerence, but Mona goes anyway. She's been coasting. Except, you know, last week were she sold ice to Eskimos. Something else next week!

Apprentice vs Love

Overnight bag! This week King Alan teased his candidates with a vague insinuation of tropicality. Of course they bit: "I'm packing a deckchair and lots of sunglasses!" said one. Phillip dribbled at the prospect of seeing some ladies in the all-together. I'm not sure Kate would approve of that. More on that later. Off they trotted, lilos and wacky shorts tucked under their arms, with dreams of sandy sun lounging filling up their imagine box. Did they end up at the airport? Or maybe down the seafront for some ferrying? Nope! The candidates were dumped in a bleak motorway service void. It was raining too. Not that that bothered King Alan. No sir. Whilst the other schmoes huddled under umbrellas for a hint of dry spell comfort, his majesty simply stood there on a dictate. Being wet is for sissies!

The candidates were being shifted up North, woe is them! Their task was to sell tat to department stores and such in Liverpool and Manchester. Being from the former, I did a wince. It was only a matter of time before someone said something untoward. You just expect it. We're all thieving cannibals up here you know. Incomprehensibly backward, and dirt poor. We're a continued affront to Londondery. I don't know how they put up with us.

The candidates were wheeled of to a function building side-room for a spot of bargain basement Dragon's Den. I bet the contestants felt like King Dick and his enormous dick that day. Finally able to command a modicum of seniority over floundering pitch merchants. It was their typical day in reverse. King Alan had also lined up some meet and greets for the next day, an inside box thinker might cotton on that snapping up product vaguely relevant to these free-rides was good thinks. Thankfully the candidates think so far outside the box that typical notions of supply and demand mean nothing to them. NOTHING! "Lets buy some tat that appeals to our bored whimsy instead!" they bleated. So, rather than buy a swish little drill-bit cleaner-upper to pitch to hardware store Rapid, our heroes ended up with flash cardboard boxes for macho cat-fans, and a two handed dog lead. You know, for lovers. Or mentals.

Off they went, head wringing shite in tow, to completely balls up their pitches. On Team Lorraine, Glasses and sales lieutenant Yasmina argued like buggery all day, whilst Ben, Kate and Phillip circled nowhere in a taxi. Phillip spent the day pushing cat boxes in Kate's unamused face, whilst Ben harrumphed and tried not to stare. That's flirting! On Team Mona, James stood back grinning whilst Mona stitched up various outlets with breezy charm offences. Elsewhere, Debra simply refused to let Howard do anything. He looked like a sulky little child.

Boardroom! King Alan berates both teams for completely ignoring the sales meets he had lined up. Gang of planks. After a couple of minutes of eye rolling, and head shaking, Team Mona was announced as wins. Off they went to chug bubbly and vomit in a Helicopter. Weeeee! Lorraine dragged back Kate and Phillip. Ben narrowly escaped by keeping very still indeed. He was like the Vietcong. Phillip immediately rounded on Glasses. He's the best seller ever! Chimps and trouser can sell better than Lorraine! A risky gambit since Beanpole and Appleton Blonde failed to sell ANYTHING AT ALL. Louder and louder Phillip grew, spilling increasingly embittered slander all over Lorraine. She's worse than Stalin don't you know? When not pillorying Lorraine, Phil was doing a weird Kate defend: "We're great!" "Me and Kate can do anything!" By way of contrast, when it came Kate's turn to excuse her own gross inactivity, there was no Phil mention anywhere. Gulp! Look after Number One! Phillip shouted himself right into a taxi in the end. Lorraine thinks she's a contender now.

A quick shout out to dastardly Nick Hewer. His brief, stately, defend of Lewis' made me a bit misty eyed. Thank you Mr Hewer. Now, if only they'd have shown Sir Jacob Epstein's big naked Liverpool Resurgent. I bet he was a bugger to shoot around.

Re-up!

Heads up! BBC 2 begins screening The Wire Season 2 tomorrow. Season 2 continues the urban devastation vein, delving into the plight of a marginalised working class. With dock-fronts slowly disappearing to make way for condo space, how does Joe Blue Collar survive? Aside from eroding class distinctions, viewers can also expect dapper Nation hitmen, a season long case, and more drug dealer bureaucracy. If that piques your interest, pencil in an 11:30 appointment with Baltimore's finest. If it doesn't, bang your head against something until it does.

Apprentice 5: The Quickening

Late, and short! I spoil you people. After some team swapsies, King Alan presents task: shift some of this tat I've got lying about. To keep you interested: one or two items are actually worth something. Sneaky, sneaky! Ben and Philip are leading, it couldn't happen to two bigger planks. Ben seems to think he's a hard boiled war-vet, because kill academy Sandhurst dropped him an offer that he didn't even take. First Blood! In his mind he's a wheezing Nam-nightmare, stitching his scarred body back together with gunpowder and grit, whilst the other candidates bleed and die. Eye of the Tiger! In reality he's a no-chin flounderer, whose cack-handed belligerence seems to have aroused King Alan's like gland. God knows how. Philip is a beanpole yawn with a taste for badgering girls he doesn't find attractive. What a gent! No matter what Lorraine says, Philip will interpret it as a gross, indecent slander. She's poison! He'll simply have to scrunch his face up and scream venom in her face just to cope with all negativity. Philip is a heavy lifter.

On task, both leaders simper and whine with negligible sense of direction. It's a pennies game, there will be no hard sell triumph here. One will simply outdo the other by the smallest possible margin, scraping through for another week. And so it is. Eventually, Philip limps to a victory, but not before Margaret speaks up. King Alan's lady muscle kills the yuk-yuk yuppie dick waggling with a Lorraine shout-out. She's a soothsayer don't you know! Maybe candidates should listen to her occasionally? Post-task celebrations focus on Philip throwing her a vague compliment; by way of response the edit comes up with a seemingly unconnected misery-guts Lorraine reaction shot. They're telling a story!

So who's back in the boardroom? Unflappable Ben has a panic, first stating an intention to drag back a fairly blameless James. After a round of withering stares, not to mention James yelping, Ben brings back church mouse Noorul, and GBH mouth Debra. Actually Debra more or less bullies him into it. She's dying for a scrap! Despite Ben having all the composure of a drowning child, King Alan ejects Noorul. Ratings innit?

Apprentice 5: Dead Man's Chest

Cereal! Who doesn't love cereal? No-one. Kids love it! The unemployed love it! Other less recognisable groups also probably quite like it! King Alan's giant IMAX head especially likes cereal. "MARKET ME SOME BHLADDY CEREAL!" it screams. Imagine being in the contestants shoes: dragged out of bed at the crack of dawn, dragged across town during London morning traffic, only to be seated in front of a three storey high image of King Alan's grumpy head. Pre-caffeine head fuzz and swamp-vision Orwell heads are not ideal stablemates. Yikes. Couldn't he just fax something over?

Lambasted by the squinting building-face, the contestants drifted off into the world to make their mark on breakfast milk treats. What sort of cereal had King Alan lined up for them? Well, it was a sort of shitty leftovers pile-up. Rice Krispies jossling with branny flake bits, and muesli lumps. Maybe even some raisins too. It looked like a crafty Mum's attempt to polish off all the stale box dregs before the weekly shop. "Look kids! I got this well great new treat! Yes! It's supposed to taste like that! No Tristan, you can put it in the bin."

Kimberly's team dragged their feet before Phillip vomited up some guff about Pants-Man, no doubt his bedtime sex-identity. Pants-Man. Pants-Man. Pants-Man. On and on he banged, throwing little hissy fits if anyone interrupted or made eye contact. I think he was after the lucrative Dick and Dom market. I hadn't minded Phillip up until now. Now, I'd be glad if someone brained him muddled. Quite apart from the relentless tantrums, he seems to have completely missed the fact that what children actually like is irrelevant, it's parents you have to sell to. They've got the money! Parents don't like farts, they prefer cheeky cartoon characters that don't threaten anybody. Boring Lorraine chipped in with some well chosen yawns of negativity. She rightly attempted to steer them away from Phillip's guffing narrative, but made the crucial error of suggesting something even shitter. Polly Apple Minx or some such nonsense. Anthropomorphic dead-eye fruit shills are well worse than Mr Shit-Whippy haired superclods right? Everyone got that Big Business memo. For the ad reel, Kimberly put her Cali direct hat on and demanded sunshine smiles out of her central casting mannequin adults. "Oh no! You're wearing pants!" The children rolled their eyes into the ground.

All Saints reserve Kate seemed to be doing quite well. Her team darted about under the radar for the most part. They had hit upon a Pirate themed morning munch, with a cackling parrot for a mascot. It looked almost good enough to front a supermarket own brand. The biggest falling out was over whether or not a kiddy girl voice should ring out over the ad. It shouldn't. Burly Ben Dickface was roped into gruffing up and rolling some scurvy sea-dogging out his piehole, as well as costuming up as Parrot Beard. He pranced around pally-pally with the nut-allergy kid in a piece that stunk of dead-air. "Ooh! A Pirate Parrot!" BIG PAUSE "Aaaah! Lets have us some cereal! Aaaah!" MASSIVE PAUSE. "Yum! I well like that Cap'n!" INTERMINABLE PAUSE. At half the length it would have been serviceable tat.

Kate's team did so well, Miss Disaster and me were convinced we'd missed some barely detectable misstep that would spell downfall. The Apprentice edit is never this straightforward! We needn't have worried. The big execs at Big Business Cereals thought the Pants idea was pure bottom burps. Kimberly dragged back Phillip and Lorraine for body-shields. A bizarre choice since she spent a significant portion of her groping beg-time screaming in Lorraine's face about how much she respected her. Phillip did the "I can't believe I'm here!" pout and shout, with a side order of working-class-hero blather. King Alan didn't look impressed. Kimberly ended up getting shoed in. She reminded King Alan of the Wizard of Oz. Quite.

Apprentice 5: Lost in New York

"Do you want to see my balls?" screamed Kimberly. "I will show you all of my balls!"

Week 4 in Apprentice Land. King Alan's had himself a think. People don't 'alf like to smell nice. How about the contestants invent themselves a soap? Noorul's team wandered off to make a chunk of honey-shit. It looked very much like a cheapy supermarket ice lolly that heat and wasps had been at. Syrupy orange was leaking everywhere. Yuk! "It'll harden up after the first wash!" they bleated at prospective buyers. Amazingly, people believed them. Behind scenes, beanpole Complain-Man Philip was doing a common sense panic. Interest sink Noorul was having trouble making decisions. That make Philip get head-mad! Kimberly wasn't impressed. Balls unimpressed actually. I felt sorry for the cowering design-chap caught in the crossfire. He didn't want to see anyone's balls.

Paula's team cooked themselves up a genuinely impressive product, surely an Apprentice first? Their jade soap lump had a touch of Victorian decadence to it, it looked like the sort of thing a Parisian drunk would rough his arty armpits with. This suddy-sot look was topped off with an oversized Alice in Wonderland bow and label. It looked like something you wouldn't be ashamed to buy. Too bad Paula and Yasmina got their essential oils to cock. A point King Alan's right hand, Nick The Lurk, savoured. He broke the news to Team Paula seconds before they were whisked off to trade. They'd only gone and dumped a barrel of Goldy McPlatinum's Very Best Stink Oil for Poshos into the mix. Zoot alores! "I'll leave it with you." sniggered Nick. The cad!

Who was going to lose? Would it be honest mistake Paula? Other than this admittedly grave slight, Paula conducted her lead tenure with cool can-do charm. Surely nice-guy justice can exist in this Big Stink snake-pit? Or would it be Noorul? A man so overwhelmingly inept the Apprentice production staff all but keyed up silent film prat-fall piano larking everytime he summoned up the resolve the speak. What do you think! Of course Paula went! Fuck all that good product shite, she made a loss. Take a loss to King Alan, and you might as well hand him a head-pound half-brick too. Toss yourself in the pig-pen while you're at it. Bacon needs its eats.

Apprentice 5: Pig in the City

Another easy task on last night's Apprentice then. Doesn't ask much King Alan does he? The two teams only had to outdo a billion pound industry laser targeted at swindling chubby people out of their cash.

"Design an original piece of sports equipment! Do it now! Why haven't you done it yet?

WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT PIECE OF SHIT?"

Piece of piss.

Credit to one of teams, they actually vomited up a plausible bit of sub-gym tat. Debra's Ignite! team (exclamation mark my own, it doesn't look right without one) eventually settled on a Wii Fit board with a wonky sphere bum. Body Rocka! You sort of sat on it and didn't discriminate against minorities, yeah? Debra was a terrifying presence, a wearying control freak who'd prefer it if the other contestants just did exactly as they were told. No ideas or input please. I've got this one sown up. I hadn't noticed quite how enormous Debra was until last night. She's positively gigantic! She does wear needle-perch stiletto alikes, but even without them I'm sure she could pulverise any of the other contestants with mechanical beanpole ease.



That other team though. What the flippen heck was that box monstrosity? James' team came up with a fold-out mini-gym lunk. It looked like teenage despair rendered in sobbing fitness form. It was titanically inadequate, the kind of thing a handy psychotic Uncle might bang up for a child's birthday. "Look! It's just like your Daddy's gym set!" Everyone at the party would nod, phony thank-you grimaces plastered all over their faces. The second Uncle Nuts departs, it'd go straight in the loft to gather insect droppings.

Naturally, everyone on team bollocks thought it was a total fucken winner. 80s lizard-man Ben sprayed on a plastic vest-thingy and spent the entire episode thrusting himself about, like a giant calamitous erection. Pitching to potential clients, he couldn't keep his hands off himself, smacking his arse red raw. Maybe that's why he wears braces? So he can dip into his nether-regions with quick-draw ease? SMACK MY BUM!

Of course the shit-box lost it for James. Was it ever in doubt? James flapped and brought back Ben and Majid. It looked like curtains for James and his just-keep-talking stratagem, but! Turns out Margaret thinks he did okay thanks. Majid was too laid-back, didn't want it, blah blah. Majid went.



Bye Maj! Phillip will miss you. Kiss. Kiss.

Apprentice 5: Back in the Habit

Week 2 and it's already difficult to foresee a line that could possibly top James McQuillan's exasperated groan about being stuck looking at King Alan's ugly mug when the girls are off fannying about with horses. I'm paraphrasing very little here. The Boys bungled the task. A loss was made. A loss. Not even a little bit of profit. King Alan was seething. Seething! McQuillan was back in the boardroom along with PE teacher narrow miss Rocky Andrews, and Whatever Happened to the Inbetweeners? reject Howard Ebison. McQuillan argued up and down the boardroom tense-off, his tactic one of carpet bomb boredom. He miscalculated though, everything he said was, in fact, awesome.

These to be read in the awkwardly strained quote voice of a high-flying barrister reading garbled colloquialisms in court:

"Im sorry. It's just, more the hurt that this has caused me."

"I'm telling it how it is. That's what I'm doing."

"If, if a company's most valuable assets are its employees, then, then, you know, that I'm your kind of prized possession."

"I'm passionate about this."

"I think you should fire the pair of them."

His team seemed to have him pegged as a bit of an easy target, although carefully chosen reaction shots painted the beginning of another King Alan / Big Gob Braggart romance. King Alan fackin' loves 'em. Syed Ahmed. Tre Azam. Get yourself an accent, a little bit of charm, and some unflappable "I'm great" swagger, and you can expect to place reasonable. Not win though. That's for the well spoken lads.

Rocky ended up going. Unkind attention was drawn to the premature end of his promising footballing career. King Alan reminded him of the most awful moment of his life whilst in the midst of another contender. Thanks King Alan! As Miss Disaster pointed out, Adrian Chiles rubbed his fucking nose in it over on BBC2 follow-up show You're Fired! by handing him a signed shirt from his former peers. These are people he probably still has acquaintance contact with, let's not forget. How would you feel getting a signed shirt of your friends? It's a blow isn't it? He's an autograph hunter now though. Another outsider gazing in. Move along.

More You're Fired!: Wasn't Shappi Khorsandi hilarious? Quick as whips. Which are quick! Her satellite line to seconds-delay brayer Greg Wallace had me rolling.

Apprentice V: Quest for Peace

Is there a lot to say? The candidates might as well be VO5 hunk-puppets at this stage, their personalities are so undefined. I didn't really catch many names, and it's hard to slander reaction-shot facial expressions. By God I shall try though! King Alan kicked things off by making reference to the candidates' similarity to bongo drums. We were all thinking it! Hopefully by series end we can expect to see him thumping them all upside the head, shaking out sin rhythms for Margaret and Nick to cavort to. Lusty so-and-sos.

Thankfully, there was a rash of regional accents in evidence. Always a pleasure. It's nice to dream that the BBC cast their candidate net a little wider than London and Essex. I think there may even be a gentleman from Liverpool. I look forward to cheering him on, provided he's not a total dunce, in which case I will resent and hate him for bringing shame on us.

The task last night had a credit-crunch whiff of start-up business. The candidates had a scant amount of cash with which to buy cleaning products. Backs heaving with soaps and suds, they ran off into the night (morning) to pester and harass the general public. "I'm fucken washing that." they'd say. Cameras drilling disapproving holes into the heads of anyone who so much as dared object.

The boys split into two teams, one decided there was a Victoriana shaped hole in the cleanliness market and zipped off to shine shoes; the other thought it best to make deals with cab drivers they couldn't quite honour. I don't know about you, but I don't tend to think of Taxi Drivers as great grue for my evilly lazy cleaning ambitions. Their job is driving, bullshitting, and being hard-faced. Hardly conductive to half-arsery are they? That was before the boys left car doors wide open whilst they blasted the world with jet-fast streams of H20. Good thinking dick holes! Soak the fucken seats while you're at it. I'm surprised King Cab Hard Face didn't ask for a massive discount. Maybe cab drivers can only round up?

By way of contrast, the girls pissed all their money up the wall on tat, then bullied the life out of military grade Limo drivers. Screeching "fuck yous!" when their outlandish pricing strategy was shot down. I say strategy, it was more like the mathematics of a bully. They needed £300, and by God you'd better pay them it for something. Both teams were so hyped up on swaggering bullshittery, they didn't bother to actually try and do the job. Instead they contented themselves with a convincing sort of impression. One eye on the task, the other on sniffing out any hint of weakness in their team-mates.

In the end it was Droopy love child Anita that went.



It was her fault the girls had overspent. Apparently. Anita's fleeting representation on the show boiled down to a series of frowning grumble faces, and toady law-man politicking in the board room. Such caricature was cast off for Adrian Chiles' aftershow You're Fired! in which she came off as a bit jolly hockey sticks.

Did you watch Charlie Brooker's new series Newswipe after that on BBC4? That was very good too.

By The Time You Read This, It'll Be Gone: Olympics MP3

Go here quick!

Why? It's a free MP3 download of that there electro-Mando-pop BBC Olympics score. Only available until some time today. I is slow on the uptake! barely worth archiving is it? Oh well, I have (quite considerably) anyway. For future readers, who perhaps fancy their file sharing luck, the piece is called Journey to the East. Hopefully by then someone will have edited out the mandatory BBC shill for a games that's already ended. There's no pleasing me!

Pearls of Wisdumb

Do you see what I did there? I'm clever.

The first in a regular feature detailing overheard conversations of particularly low merit.

The following nugget of anti-information assaulted my ears today during a distant fumble about the relative de-merits of the BBC's licence-fee policy. So what was the crux of the kerfuffle? Economic impartiality? Commercial viability of niche broadcast product? The serious lack of child exploiting, cack shovelled, memory build blocks?!

None of the above:

Person A: "I reckon instead of having to pay licence fee, the BBC should be scrambled like Sky channels if people don't want to pay."

Person B: "Exactly! Why the fuck should I have to pay the BBC one hundred pound a year to watch fuckin' Coronation Street?!"