In a similar manner to discussing the best night's out, it seems appropriate to discuss the final episode of the seventh series of The Apprentice the morning after. For many of us, the last twelve weeks have been one long drunken night out, with a series of characters performing acts one only thought possible after racking up a bar tab that'd make Amy Winehouse go a bit pale.
Yesterday's final had me shacked up in front of the box armed with a child-hating Frenchman and a selection of Emergency Biscuits, with a manner of excitement that hasn't been seen since Vincent watched The Three Muskateers for the first time and realised he wasn't alone in this world.
So what happened? Well, in short, Tom won. All the business plans had about as much potential as News International selling pay-as-you-go phones. Suzie demonstrated a similar lack of judgement that plagues many deceased stuntmen. Deep down inside Helen is a party-mad alter-ego trying to escape through an armour of efficiency. And Jim is the scariest thing to come out of Ireland since the IRA.
Series over? Time for some Emergency Champagne.
In my post that ushered in the new series, I proclaimed Tom as my favourite candidate ever. But did I ever think he was gonna win? Not a chance! It would have been as optimistic as the parents of a paraplegic wanting their child to scoop a record haul of medals in the Summer Olympics. The man has the hindsight of Mystic Meg but the get-up-and-go attitude of Johnny Vegas. A combination I doubt Siralan had pinpointed as his 'ideal candidate'.
Yet somehow, in a manner that only a true mad scientist would know how to do, he stumbled his way through 12 weeks of intense scrutiny and somehow made it out the other end with his glasses intact and an ingenious idea. Siralan proclaimed Tom's idea of a chair that eliminates backache would need 'tweaking' but there is potential. I don't think Siralan hired Tom because of the chair. He hired Tom because somewhere, in that brain amongst all the misspelled words and ideas of traffic light apps, there is an amazing idea that could be massive. The same couldn't be said for any of the other three finalists.
One of whom, Jim, the tough-talking Ulsterman who could probably solve the Middle Eastern crisis with an umbrella, totally lost his mojo in yesterday's final.
The man revealed to us all, that he has a heart. It was just the wrong time to do so.
Watching Jim reel off his idea of taking e-learning into schools was very similar to the moment when I watched Luke Skywalker take off Darth Vader's helmet amidst the Death Star's destruction at the end of Return of the Jedi. Underneath all that power and mystical aura, there lies a human after all. Developing a heart and simultaneously trying to lick the faeces out of Siralan's bottom was ultimately Jim's downfall. But not to worry, he'll bounce back during the Clone Wars.
He probably thought he was applying to be Darth Sidious' Apprentice.
Then there was Helen, who has got progressively better looking as the weeks have tumbled. There's a strange attraction in the way she plays down talk of a social life and just seems to tease you with the fact she does nothing all day apart from work. Her idea of starting up a nationwide concierge service was in terms of stupidity, on par with News of the World inviting BT into their offices to check their phone bills. Such was the madness of it all that Siralan was forced to forget that Helen was arguably the strongest Apprentice candidate ever and threw her body onto the mass grave outside the boardroom marked 'rejects'.
There was a moment during last night's final where I thought Suzie had it. Siralan had ripped seven shits out of this woman, yet there she was, still sat at the table with that permanently confused face she wears, in with a chance of winning. Her childish attitude towards business mixed with last night's interviews was TV gold. Her interview technique is best visualised as her riding on an albino donkey, throwing marshmellows to fend off a group of Velociraptors. The verbal undressing she received from Apprentice veteran Claude Littner (who is so evil if you were to cut him he would bleed spiders) should have been censored by the BBFC. Yet she had survived it all, right up until the point where she turned into an Oriental Del Boy and announced she was going to make a million quid in year one. And with that, Siralan pointed her in the direction of the Early Learning Centre and that was the last we heard of Suzie.
So congratulations to Tom and I genuinely wish him a long and successful career, whether it's working with Lord Sugar or on his own (the proposed synergy between him and Suzie that was discussed on 'You're Hired' was quite frankly a disaster waiting to happen). It's nice to see someone who is so utterly charming and bought up with manners win a competition like this, where shouting and swearing are more often than not rewarded.
As Dara O'Briain yelled on You're Hired last night, 'it's a win for the nerds!' In a society that so-closely resembles a school playground's ethos of cliques, it's not often something you hear, so big Chewbacca thumbs-up from me on that front.
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