Gibson on the box
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| The Apprentice: Made a bit of a stink this week |
Dorset-trained wannabee tycoon Alex Wotherspoon was left blubbing on the sidelines this week after the fickle finger of fate attached to the iron fist of crinkle-cut boardroom behemoth Sir Alan Sugar wobbled threateningly in his direction accompanied by the dreaded words "You're fired!".
Alex, who used to work for Branksome-based company Matrix Direct Sales, had made the fatal mistake of trying to market a new men's fragrance in a bottle that simply cost too much.
So it was that The Apprentice: The Final, (BBC1, Wednesday) saw his arch rival Lee McQueen - a man whose talents include impersonating a reverse pterodactyl - hired by tough-talking Sugar.
Lee's fragrance was called Roulette which, considering he has a Jonathan Ross-style speech impediment, made it quite difficult to pitch. It had "essential animal notes" too, which sounded pretty unappealing. However, Sir Alan clearly didn't care what it smelt like. In fact he indicated that rotten cabbage would be just fine by him as long as people bought the stuff and it turned a profit.
How Lee will fair in the cut-and-thrust world of Sugar's £800 million empire remains to be seen but in my experience the only scents most people who operate in such environments are ever aware of are those exuded by ambition and fear.
I witnessed this first-hand many years ago when I was asked to write a feature about Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at a Conservative Party Conference. Now I'm no Tory, but witnessed close-up the Iron Lady was an impressive, although spectacularly unhinged, operator. It was fascinating to see captains of industry quaking with fear in her wake. How she would positively flirt with those who were in favour while cold-shouldering, with devastating effect, those who weren't.
I was reminded of this when I watched The Making of the Iron Lady (BBC4, Sunday). Michael Cockerell's excellent documentary explored how Thatcher overcame all the odds to handbag her way to the top.
When she was first elected as an MP in 1959 there were only 25 female MPs in the Houses of Parliament. They were outnumbered 26 to one by their male colleagues and the idea of a woman as Prime Minister was considered laughable.
Twenty years later, Thatcher had cajoled, manouvered and bullied away into Number 10.
Watching her bossing her colleagues about, one wonders what on earth happened to the once famously clunking fist' of our present Prime Minister.
Just 24 hours after the Thatcher programme, an hour of prime-time television was devoted to precisely this subject. Dispatches: Gordon Brown Where Did It All Go Wrong? (Channel 4, Monday) arrived a few days before Brown's "humiliating victory" in the vote to allow terrorist suspects to be held for 42 day without charge.
It didn't matter. The catalogue of disasters he has faced during a year in office is quite extraordinary. Even more extraordinary is the inept way in which he's handled them.
Brown enjoyed a golden career as Chancellor but it would appear he is fundamentally ill-suited for the job he has coveted for the past 10 years.
His predecessor Tony Blair soon acquired the nickname Teflon Tony' for his ability to slither out of trouble, without anything unpleasant ever sticking.
In contrast, Gummy Gordon seems to be permanently wading knee-deep in the mire.
What went wrong, it would appear, is that he has gradually lost his authority. The tough guy who no-one dared challenge for the leadership still apparently rages and kicks over tables when things go wrong but no one's scared anymore. He is now heckled by his own back-benchers, a situation that would have been unthinkable a year ago.
As the Lib Dems' Vince Cable so perfectly put it Brown achieved the unlikely feat of changing from Stalin to Mr Bean in a few short months.
This remark brought howls of laughter from the House, although not, of course, from Brown's trusted lieutenants.
That doesn't mean they didn't find it funny though. Jack Straw indicated that he thought it had been a class jibe. Asked if he'd laughed out loud he replied, with a noticeable twinkle in his eye: "I've got used to not showing my emotions at Prime Minister's Questions."
Poor Gordon. He may survive for a few more months after the 42-day detention vote in the Commons but my guess is he'll be walking when the whole idea is chucked out by the Lords.
3:59pm Friday 13th June 2008
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