Glad you can’t spell, either, dear anonymous

This is in response to the question from anonymous of Altrincham (not Altringham) about the results of The Apprentice.

I see you have the same trouble with typing as me. My sympathy!

For those of you not familiar with it, this show is a sort of second-rate English rip off of the dreadful show featuring Donald Trump’s bizarre hair, appalling clothes, bad manners and mean little pursed mouth.

The “star” is an English version of Trump, called Sir Alan Sugar, who has only ever had one half-success, the Amstrad computer, a cheap, primitive early machine which he never had the wit to follow up on.

Even by the low standards set by Trump he is a thoroughly obnoxious bully; and in the last series the winner he chose was, as anonymous says, a man who lied in his CV.

They deserve each other, but I think that making a liar your winner casts a revealing light on what is left of morality in business – and I am not exactly a prude.

And if Alan Sugar is someone to emulate and a measure of success, God help us all.

I am quite fascinated by the popularity of these shows, which are an interesting expression on what I think is called schadenfreude – delight in the misfortunes of others.

Mind you, many of the people who appear in some of these shows – Big Brother especially – seem to be carefully chosen by a machine that measures your IQ – Ignorance Quotient – on a scale of one to minus three thousand.

I am actually typing this in bed in a hotel in Sofia, Bulgaria, where I had my hair cut today. This job takes about two minutes as I have no hair anyhow, but later I’ll post a rather blurry picture of the whole event, taken by my partner.