DOCTOR WHO
It’s back! With David Tennant instead of Mr Annoying Christopher Ecclestone – a vast improvement to be sure. This episode was fairly rubbish though. Doctor and Rose go into the future to a huge hospital that is run by lady cat nuns (???) who are experimenting on humans (animals testing drugs on humans –do you see what they did there) and must be stopped. Meanwhile, Cassandra (oblong flat skin lady from rubbish end of the world episode last series) is back and swaps minds with Rose – this gives Billy the opportunity to rub her tits and camp it up a lot. Somehow the experimental subjects escape and stomp around like pus ridden zombies, giving everyone instant death germs (which aren’t transmitted through the air, luckily for the plot) until the Doctor magically cures them all by luring one of them into a magic shower or something. Lame or what. Then there is some nonsense with Cassandra going back in time to “get closure” and some other portentous prophecy nonsense with that big head in a tank, also from rubbish end of world episode last series. The plot is all over the place and the sound levels are really annoying, with overbearing music and muffled dialogue. It all looks pretty good though.

Next week: Queen Victoria versus Werewolves! Fight!!! Also there is a bunch of kung fu monks doing Matrix style quarterstaff fighting for some reason. Hmmmm.

APPRENTICE: TWO FOR ONE OFFER (BUT ONLY IF YOU BUY FROM THE BLUE TEAM!!)
My lurve for this show has diminished slightly after a couple of average episodes. Also I am finally realising that it is not quite as good as the last series, though there’s still time I suppose….

Last week they had to sell second hand cars in “Britains Largest Car Supermarket in Slough” – which sounds like a whole new circle of hell to me but there you go. Shahh-run led one team, despite seeming to not exactly know what a car is, and Ansell led the other (btw I have decided that if Ansell ever took his scary glasses off then laser beams would shoot from his eyes like in X-Men. It is the only logical explanation). That hateful c*** Tulip bleated that “people often say I should be a used car salesman!” Yes but they were insulting you, you cretin!!

Team Shah-runn don’t seem to do very well as Shah-runn and Michelle don’t know what they are doing, Tuan is meek and quiet as always and Syed spends three hours boring a couple to death before they buy a car – probably just so they can get in it straight away and drive off, far away from Syed. He is then told off for lying during his sales pitch. Hate levels reaching critical! Alert! Alert!

Ansell’s team did rather better as Ruth turned out to be an excellent saleswoman. Samuel came up with some gay idea to wear coloured sashes or something, Ansell seemed a bit rubbish as PM though and Jo actually scared people away by running up to them and laughing like a mentalist. The latter two are both told off by an angry car supermarket man for leaving a car marked as sold when the sale fell through at the last minute and it was actually still available. This is apparently a big no no in the world of selling things! Who would have guessed (clue: everyone!)

Editing shenanigans lead us to think that Ansell had won. All of Shah-runs team members started practicing stabbing her in the back but then they win anyway by about £50 for selling more warranties and pots of Scotchgard. Nooooo!!! (Syed was still told off for having the business ethics of a rat though. Ha!) They won a dull prize (trapped on a party on one of those pleasure cruises on the Thames and had an inexplicable row about talking about each other behind each others backs or something. I don’t know. They all end up hating Michelle anyway.

Ansell took Samuel and Jo into the boardroom. Siralan said that the angry car supermarket man thought that Ansell was the rubbishest of them all (even worse than JO??) but that didn’t really come across on telly so who knows? He had a go at Samuel for being vaguely useless as usual but it was Jo that finally went!! Siralan said that he likes her but he could longer ignore the plain fact that she is crazy and rubbish. Jo begged to be kept on (oh shut up, please Jo! Where is your dignity?) but no such luck and she stomped off to the taxi and cries a bit while saying that she just tried to be herself. No comment. I can’t believe she even lasted that long, personally.

This week they each had to run a concession in Top Shop Oxford Circus and try and sell the most stylish-yet-affordable clothes. Michelle came over to Badger’s team as PM and Tuan led Team Cockfarmer. They had four lines to choose from and could only have two each. They also had chance to chat to some schoolgirls to see what was hot (Military jackets, apparently!)

They went off into teams and talked about what lines they wanted. All the cockfarmers ignore Shah-runn, even though she is supposed to be an expert in fashion (hmmm, she was also supposed to be an expert in advertising…) and then shout at her when she tells them to stop ignoring her. Ruth Badger slaps down Samuel when he tries to voice an opinion but otherwise the team gets on well. When they have to negotiate for their two lines, Badger walks all over Tuan and leaves him done up like a kipper. It was hilarious to watch.

They set up their little corners of the shop. Shah-runn has an amusing passive-aggressive strop and pretends not to have any ideas and to need constant supervision, but then snaps out of it and gets everything sorted out. Samuel comes up with more weak-as-a-kitten marketing ideas (trying to lure people into top shop with bottles of water, giving complimentary massages but not advertising them, etc) and Michelle goes into Sex and the City fantasyland and decides that she is going to spend the whole day in the dripping VIP Dungeon being a personal shopper. Oh that is just a terrible idea.

When the shop opens, they all have to wear clothes from Top Shop. Ansell wears a hilarious pink t-shirt/pink intifada neck scarf combo and Ruth puts on some lippy and does her hair up a bit and actually looks pretty in some shots. Samuel still looks like an engineering student though. They all run around selling stuff while Michelle spends like three hours in the VIP Lounge trying to get some French girls to buy loads of clothes. In the end they buy one skirt for £30. Doh. That dude who owns Topshop (a close personal friend of Siralan of course) comes round and offers to buy an outfit for £100 but Ruth can only grab £66 worth of clothes. Double doh. At lunchtime Michelle’s team are 25% behind Team Cockfarmer, so Ansell gets Michelle to get her arse in gear and stop messing round in the VIP Dungeon. There is a mass selling overdrive, with Tulip accosting women in the street in his typically hateful manner and Syed letching over some girl in the dressing room and making comical faces because it is the first time he has seen a real live woman’s naked skin. There are no editing shenanigans to make us guess who has won but it turns out to be Team Cockfarmer by about £100. Noooo! I hate that they keep on winning. They get packed off to a luxury hotel for the night and someone in Michelle’s team is going to be fired.

It is obviously going to be Michelle or Samuel. Michelle also brings Ruth in as she messed up with the boss bloke but otherwise didn’t do anything wrong. Michelle is bollocked for not spending enough time on the shop floor and Samuel is bollocked for not bothering to advertise the free massage thing. Samuel tries to defend himself by saying he wanted to pick other clothes lines and was ignored (Ruth goes into her ultra aggressive “Why are you being so aggressive? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah? Whatever bitch!” routine – this behaviour is the only reason I can see for people not liking her, to be honest. Badger to Win!!) Siralan says “as long as I’ve got a hole in my arse” at one point. Thanks Siralan. I did not ever want to have to think about the hole in your arse. It seems obvious to me that they would have won if Michelle had not wasted all her time in the Dungeon and Siralan agrees, but Samuel is still fired for being a bit useless. He puts on a hilariously awful flasher mac to get into the taxi (and is it just me or does his hair grow between being fired and getting in the cab?). Oh well, Samuel wasn’t hateful like some of the contestants I could mention (Syed! Tulip!) but I did say he was the new Raj and I was pretty much right.

Next week: Siralan shows up in the small hours of the morning like some kind of evil slumlord and shouts at the contestants while they are still in their pants! They have to “sell to trade”! Ruth thinks someone is a “wanker”! A tradesman thinks that one of the contestants is like a used car salesman (Syed? Tulip?)! Someone is fired! (Syed??? Tulip??? Pleeeaase!!!)

TOP TEN MOMENTS IN APPRENTICE: BADGER VS TULIP

1. Jo pulling a series of OTT amazed faces when Siralan described this week’s task, as though he was letting off fireworks or producing an endless string of cute puppies and kittens from his pockets while talking.

2. The teams being sent to tosser-zone extraordinaire Saatchi and Saatchi (where the room for “blue sky thinking” actually has blue sky painted on the ceiling do you see what they did there?) to create adverts for Siralan’s weird charter jet loyalty card thingy. Cue scenes of Tulip’s team in sitting in complete silence, patently failing to indulge in any style of thinking at all.

3. Samuel trying on a ridiculous bellhop outfit that made him look like Buttons from an xmas panto. Meanwhile, ubercocks Syed and Tulip practically creamed their pants at the chance to wear a pilot’s uniform.

4. The adverts that they created were comedy gold but I must have missed the part that said that they had to be filmed in the style of 1980s American soap opera. In Team Tulip’s ad, a man sits in a plane seat and starts rhythmically rubbing his thigh as though indulging in self-love. In Team Badger’s ad there was a hilariously porntastic scene where a bellhop comes to collect a woman’s cases and looks her up and down in a blatantly sexy way, later on the same woman is “surprised” when an air steward comes up behind her and slips her a glass of champagne. Hmm, yes I’m sure that’s not all he’s going to slip her.

5. Tulip dying on his arse with his lame and desperate “its like a magic trick” presentation, made to a huge room full of stony faced Saatchi Nathan Barleys who obviously hate him as much as I do. Later on there were more laffs aplenty as Mani, patron saint of making presentations, sulked after he was ignored in favour of Samuel, as Ruth Badger had obviously heard that his calendar presentation was a big dud.

6. Tulip slagging off his team for being rubbish, even though they later won. What a backstabbing bastard. He later managed to earn more “HATE” points by saying that he was the best one and was bound to win. Once again, Siralan and his rotten taste awarded the win to the team with the crappiest result. Ohs noes – La Badger cannot be fired!!

7. I love Ruth Badger’s constant display of truculent, aggressive, hacky facial expressions, eye rolls and sideways glances. She makes Chloe from 24 look like Doris Day!

8. Siralan saying that he thought Team Badger’s advert had been mixed up with Nick’s copy of “Debbie Does Dallas”. Ruth pulled a hilariously quizzical expression and Nick cracked up a bit before regaining his normal stony face.

9. In the boardroom it is Mani vs Badger full on gladiatorial combat ashtey argue about whether the “concierge” in the ad was metaphorical, metonymic or literal! Mani said that Ruth wais “authoritarian”, Ruth “What’s that supposed to mean?” Mani “Look it up in a dictionary! I don’t have time to explain it to you!” Ruth “Oh, he’s patronising and a dick!” (I made up the part re being a dick btw). Later on Ruth told off Mani for flapping his hands around in her personal space and there were accusations of “being aggressive”. I knew that Ruth would stand her ground and not let herself be steam rolled like drippy Alexa or Ben.

10. Siralan quotes a really smarmy self regarding excerpt from Mani’s CV and says that he has gone from “anchor to wanker” (tee hee) and is fired! Hurrah!

Next week: they have to sell second hand cars and Jo is told off for being rubbish. Could this be the end for the spiral permed mentalist?

DON’T TALK TO ME ABOUT NEW GREEN WING!!
Channel 4 are busy hyping the new series of their tragic sitcom “Green Wing”, without mentioning the fact that watching it is about as entertaining as being devoured by weevils. It is set in a hospital and stars the least funny cast members from a host of other comedy shows (look out for the least funny cast members of Book Club! Smack the Pony! Black Books! The Brittas Empire! Etc! etc!) together with a bunch of smug, irritating men who are probably attractive if you a 30something PR executive called Cornelia who lives in Chiswick. The main source of so called amusement is that people do silly walks and pull faces while dressed up as doctors and nurses and – omg you won’t believe this – sometimes the camera speeds up and slows down so they are doing the silly walk at the wrong speed. While this is going on there is a rubbish soundtrack of trip hop, because nothing says comedy like a dinner party in 1993.

I really don’t know what they were thinking of making one series, let alone doing another one. Just in case you had forgotten that the series is so teeth grindingly irritating, the adverts on TV do a very good job reminding you – you see the cast members are dressed as ballerinas! Even the men! For no reason! That doesn’t smack of “forced wackiness for the sake of it” at all, does it? “New Green Wing – Nearly Ready.” Nearly ready to annoy the hell out of me without even watching it, more like.

THE APPRENTICE
This week Siralan called the teams in and said “poisoned chalice for two!” – yes, one woman had to go and lead the men’s team (Toyota Alexa, pretty much having no choice after last week) and one man had to go and lead the women’s team (Mani). The task was to run a themed restaurant/food stall at the Thames Festival for a day.

Toyota Alexa and the blokes decided to do pizzas and have a lame Italian theme, while Mani and the girls had a hilarious brainstorming session that showed off Mani’s cockfarmery to a very high degree (“We’re just throwing out ideas now! Say a word!” “It should be easy to prepare” “Easy! Yes, I like that! What else!” etc). At first they decided to do crepes but had trouble thinking of a theme to go with them, so Mani changed his mind at the last minute and said they were doing noodles and having an oriental theme. Cue lots of eye rolling and moaning from Ruth Badger, Michelle and the Scottish One (btw, Jo was pretty much in the background this week. Phew). Later on, one of them had a bratty fit and stomped out, accusing Mani of not listening to her after he had squawked “We’re in the convergent phase now! Convergent not divergent!” to her about fifteen times. Shut up, Mani.

Each team would be given help from a catering firm but had to buy their own ingredients and do all the prep and cooking themselves. Tuan and Syed said they had catering experience and Toyota Alexa said she used to work on the pizza counter at Asda (ha ha ha, I bet you wish you hadn’t mentioned that now Alexa), so they went off to get the food based on their estimates of what they need. Unfortunately the wholesaler was closed so Syed had to place a telephone order on their answerphone for 100 chickens etc etc. That sounds like a great idea. Not.

The girl’s team got the food and Mani left them to chop up three million peppers and shred the meat off loads of chickens for hours while he ponced around buying soft drinks and napkins etc. People on the interweb have criticised him for this but someone had to do it and he seemed to do a pretty good job when the final restaurant was unveiled. In the end he went back to help the others and there were some comedy shots of slightly forced bonding as they all shredded chicken while singing and dancing like cretins in an advert.

Alexa was trying to get some leaflets printed when she got a phone call saying that the food had arrived – as the wholesalers hadn’t been given very specific instructions they had sent 100 of the hugest chickens known to man! Syed had also managed to order hundreds of £££ worth of cheese. (If I ever I am on Apprentice I will never buy cheese – it is always someone’s downfall) so basically they had about 50p left for everything else. Back at the kitchen, Nick (wearing an adorably dorky food safety hat) wondered why they had bought 100 giant chickens when they only planned to make 100 chicken pizzas. Alexa just sort of shrugged and ignored him. Ruh roh. For some insane reason they decide to make their own pizza bases from scratch and, of the 500 they had planned to make, managed to make just 90! This is turning into a monumental fuck up and we are shown no evidence that they tried to turn it round (by say, thinking of ways to sell the left over chicken somehow). Samuel had a bratty fit and moaned that no-one was taking charge to sort out the problems while Alexa just stood there and ignored him. In the end the catering guy who was helping them told him to just shut up and chop up a pineapple. Heh.

They set up the stalls and Mani’s team’s looks inviting and classy and has buddha’s etc scattered around. Margaret tried some of the noodles and made a surprised “Mmm, this is actually nummy!” face. They do an “early bird special” cost reduction and soon the stall was packed. Alexa’s team’s stall looked like a tacky piece of shit with cheap red, white and green balloons and a v amateurish looking “Taste of Italy” sign. It was completely deserted, so Alexa spied on the other stall and cuts prices. There was a funny scene of “economics graduate” Alexa failing to correctly calculate £20 minus £9 at the till. Three times. We got various clips of the most dickish men – Tulip and Syed - moaning that it was a disaster, but not doing anything to sort it out. At one point Alexa asked Syed to go outside and drum up some trade and he was all “I’m not sure what to do. Please demonstrate”. What a dick – I have quite recovered from feeling a bit sorry for him last week. Presumably they were hoping that Alexa gets the chop but it didn’t look good that they were so apathetic and Siralan will take note, I’m sure.

At the end of the day, they were desperately trying to sell off their old stock for knock down prices. This worked better for pizza than it did for noodles. There was a hilarious scene with that hateful c*** Tulip telling a woman customer “It’s only costs a pound for sexy women and you just about scrape through” and the woman telling him to fuck off. Ha ha ha. What does Tulip actually do except to make snide comments and make me hate him? I can’t wait until he is put in a position of authoritay and makes a complete hash of things. (Me saying that probably means he will win now…). Alexa’s team ended up throwing away tons of perfectly good food – if they have won it will be a miracle.

Oh look they lost. Mani’s team made a profit of £300 and Alexa’s team made a loss of £800! (We get the Siralan line about “pissing money up the wall” around now.) I’m not surprised when they bought a giant cooked ostrich for each of 100 chicken pizzas and then only made 18 chicken pizzas. The winners get to have a meal at Oxo Tower and watch fireworks (Siralan pops up, drunk, to say hello!) and one of the losers is going to be fired.

In the boardroom, Siralan asked the blokes if they thought that Alexa was a good leader. Cue deafening wave of silence. Siralan: “Ansell, so how was Gretel?” Yes yes, very funny. How long did it take him to think of that? Ansell said something tactful but negative. Everyone else said she is a bit shit. Nick uses the magic of basic arithmetic to show that they had to sell each slice of pizza for over £4 to break even and obv they were selling them for a lot less than that. The budget (based on 500 pizzas – they would have had to sell a slice every 9 seconds!) was incredibly overambitious and they bought too much food even for that. Alexa decided to bring Tuan and Syed into the boardroom as they were in charge of the budget/purchasing. Tuan says he just suggested 500 as a benchmark (500 slices or 500 pizzas?) and no-one had a better idea – I think he is fairly safe. Alexa tried the “I will learn from my mistakes and go on to be fantastic” spiel that she tried last week. Oh no, that is completely the wrong approach. If she had been more specific and said she had trusted Syed to be vaguely sensible re the purchasing then she might have had a chance. Siralan said that he is not running a training academy for dumpkopfs (heh, he is on good form this week) and then gives Syed a good grilling re the ridiculous overpurchasing. Syed smarmily keeps going on about how is a winner and will give 150%. Siralan accurately points out that he was actually a big loser. He says he blames Syed “100 percent” for the disastrous result but that Alexa is fired anyway for being so rubbish. As he leaves the boardroom, Syed smarms that he is grateful for the opportunity to be a dick for another week and Siralan calls him a cocky bastard. In the Taxi of Finality, Alexa says that she will learn from her mistakes and that everyone could see that she is a good manager. Well, if you call “standing around ignoring things that go wrong” being a good manager, I suppose you’re right.

Nest week: they have to make an advert about aeroplanes. Oh, I hope it is as good as the CD player adverts last series, with Rachel’s “kick off your shoes and dance” comedy standout moment. We see a clip of a 70s looking actor getting out of a car and looking at his watch. Tulip does a presentation (FAIL!! FAIL!!!). Siralan is not happy about something surprise surprise and someone is going to be fired.