The Apprentice: the Final
BBC One
★★★☆☆
Strictly Come Dancing: the Final
BBC One
★★★★☆
Finalist Courtney Wood’s closing pitch on The Apprentice last night was prefaced by a long King’s Speech moment. “Well, well,” said Courtney, ushering in a silence filled only by the shuffling of prompt cards. As he had said beforehand, the only thing making him nervous was pitching to 250 and “what was a stake”. His rival, Alana Spencer, started more brightly but her word tank soon emptied. For a while she ran on ums.
For such a talkative, boastful programme it was a small miracle that Alana and Courtney even made it on, let alone to the final. They can only have slipped through that eye of the needle reserved for young people with genuine commercial acumen who might, therefore, not immediately lose Alan Sugar his £250,000 investment.
This nowadays, rather than an apprenticeship, is the prize and the drawback with the format is that it really goes to the best business plan. The preceding capers, although revealing of character, are something of a diversion. The previously fired who yesterday crowded in to help the two finalists market their products reminded me, in terms of their utility at piecing things together, more of all the king’s horses than all the king’s men. Alana and Courtney did well not be stamped under their size-12 egos.
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The problem in choosing between Alana’s boutique cake business and Courtney’s novelty toy company was that both ideas looked like winners. Sugar perceived kindred business minds. He saw Alana as his “cross-dressing alter ego”. Courtney was an inventor of baubles, as Sugar had once been. He went, finally, with his “gut” (or stomach) and the confectioner. On You’re Hired, he told Rhod Gilbert that he had chosen Alana because she had been on a “great journey”. I am sure he meant rocky road.
A similarly pleasing problem emerged on Saturday’s more joyful final, of Strictly Come Dancing. If Louise Redknapp was half a step behind, there was really nothing to separate Ore Oduba and Danny Mac — as dancers, showmen or, indeed, nice guys. The public, however, agreed with the judges, who having quibbled between perfections, gave Ore and his partner, Joanne Clifton, the edge. In an instant, those early queries over whether racism was sending BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic) contestants to too many dance-offs were answered. Mac won’t mind. His acting CV now has “dancer” in its first paragraph. Oduba can sob with joy all the way back to the BBC sports desk.
I said a few years ago — exhibiting, I was told, casual sexism — that that year’s final had been exceptionally hormonal. It was nothing compared to the blubbing by the men on Saturday night. The honourable exception was Len Goodman, retiring after a dozen years as head judge. As the tributes gushed, he kept his immaculately folded nimbus of a handkerchief firmly in his top pocket. The excellent host Claudia Winkleman said he called himself a cup of tea “in a world of skinny lattes”. He was ever the honest, strong, reviving cuppa among the judges. How will they ever brew up a sufficient replacement?
andrew.billen@thetimes.co.uk