Andy Ward talks to himself.

Good news everybody! Tonight on BBC1, starting at 11:20 PM, there’s a new series of The Apprentice USA! Hooray! Release the balloons!

Really though, everybody should be excited about this. It’s a tremendous programme. Think about The Apprentice UK, and then crank the ridiculous up to maximum. And crank the actual point of the series up to maximum as well. You see, whereas here in the UK, the eventual winner ends up with some daft prize like colouring in liquorice allsorts or trying to flog the latest Amstrad product (‘It’s a briefcase AND a pen!’), from what I’ve seen of the last few series of The Apprentice USA, the winner actually gets to build a giant tower block of their own, or construct a casino, something impressive like that. I’m fairly sure that Tim, one of the former winners of The Apprentice UK, got the reward of having to market a toothbrush, which is hardly comparable.

“It’s a toothbrush… AND a pen!”

“What? So I’m scribing on my teeth?”

“AS YOU CLEAN THEM! YES! … Hello?”

What also makes The Apprentice USA so brilliant is the presence of Donald Trump himself. People here seem to assume that Alan Sugar is some kind of brilliant maverick, but they probably just haven’t been witness to the insanity of Donald Trump, in which the boardroom scenes are basically just an opportunity for him to play some kind of demented buckaroo, seeing how far he can push things before he gets wheeled off to a home. There have been weeks where he’s decided to fire everybody, and indeed, one week it just became like watching a reinactment of the Stalinist purges, where one person up for a firing said that they thought another member of their team was crazy (who wasn’t even in the boardroom, and there was absolutely no evidence to suggest she was crazy in the slightest), before Donald Trump then summoned her from the safety of the mythical ‘I’ve not been fired yet’ house, and fired her based on this piece of fiction, letting everybody else go free. He’s a maniac. Apparently there’s 15 episodes in this series, though it’ll probably only take 3 until everybody’s been fired and Donald Trump has to craft himself some kind of Pinocchio-esque apprentice out of the boardroom table to make the whole thing seem worthwhile. It should be fun though.

I also went and watched The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus yesterday. I thought it was good. A magical film. That’s my review, so expect to see that on the front of the DVD when it’s eventually released.

Now I am going to go and try to prepare a stand-up set, as I might do a gig tomorrow, and maybe eat some noodles whilst I’m there. Both fun activities. Bye.