Like a gladiatorial giant he came into the boardroom. Riding across a field of ponies, the sun glinting on his slightly rouged face. Stuart Baggs. The brand. The man.
If you don’t watch BBC1’s The Apprentice, you’ve missed something special this year. A man so full of self belief and a large amount of horseshit that if he were to explode he would cover most of southern England
Stuart appears to me to be the deranged love child of Norman Wisdom and Frank Spencer. Everything he touches turns to fudge; he is the anti-midas. I have no doubt that five minutes of control at one of Alan Sugar’s companies and Stuart would comfortably have been instrumental in its shares being suspended.
He is unprofessional, smug, annoying and let’s be honest, a bit thick in equal measures and yet he has a unique ability. He is 100% prime time. The sound bites he produces are absolute gold dust, he can make you bellow with laughter and cringe behind the sofa in a way I haven’t since I was a kid watching Dr Who.
This week after another inept performance that had seen him asking women to taste his jellied eels and nearly coming to blows with a fellow contestant he found himself in the boardroom again to face Lord Sugar (the man of a thousand put downs). Surely this week there was to be no hiding place; Baggsy was for the slag heap.
His fellow contestants in the boardroom were the clever but slightly robotic Stella and the breathtakingly beautiful and competent Liz. Both strong contenders to win the show outright. Stuart sat between them, looking flustered, contrite and resigned to a taxi ride to see Dara on BBC2.
What followed was a masterful performance in the art of flim-flam. He begged, he pleaded and he promised the grumpy entrepreneur a life time of happiness. That he would be there to wake him gently in the morning by massaging his testicles, breathing platitudes into his ears as he carried him to the bathroom to bathe him in ass’s milk. Well, maybe not quite but not far off.
Unbelievably, it worked. Millions of viewers watched in amazement as the multi millionaire seemed to change his mind and fired one of the people who could actually help and not hinder him. Liz caught the taxi of shame blinking back tears of rejection. It’s possible she’ll never recover from a beating like this…
So why is he still there? Lord Sugar was fairly convincing as the man who saw a little bit of his younger self in “the brand” but surely a seasoned business man like him must be able to spot a dud? Then it dawned on me, he’s not been left in to win it. Next week is the interview episode, the ritual humiliation of the final five candidates. Baggs is the sacrificial lamb being thrown to the slaughter and we all get to watch.
At times, I forget that this is an entertainment show. Mere competence is not going to keep me coming back week after week. Watching Liz giving solid answers to difficult questions all be it slightly uncomfortably is not making me watch through my fingers.
Stuart is a different story. The man who changes his story more times than a Lib Dem MP caught on Hampstead Heath is going to get torn apart. Worth keeping him in for? Hell yeah.
Talking of which, Stuart talk’s seven kinds of bollocks, changes his story every 12 seconds and cares about nothing but money. Your seat in the House of Commons awaits. It’s either that or The One Show…..
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