Not quite rubbish enough to be properly entertaining

‘The Apprentice’ is back yet again and Lord Sugar looks like he’d rather be anywhere else, writes Katie Rosseinsky

- Katie Rosseinsky

With The Apprentice now in its 20th year on air, the bar for its contestants is somehow both lower and higher than ever. Any pretence that the BBC One competition, which is basically the Olympics for bullshitters with a strong track record in B2B sales, is a genuine recruitment process for potential business highfliers faded long ago. The selection criteria seem to be erratic at best: is it open to anyone who's ever listened to an episode of a motivational podcast, I wonder? Or perhaps to those who selfidentify as “entrepreneurs” on LinkedIn? And yet this programme now has such a glorious track record when it comes to corporate stupidity that, in order to really grab our attention, Lord Sugar’s latest batch of hopefuls need to be utterly, unapologetically woeful.