James Galvin

Despite her best efforts - picking the worst team possible, and getting soundly beaten in the task. The contest was sewn up last week by her good performance in the interviews. The badger softened slightly towards the end, and actually gained my support at the final hurdle, but it was the dark horse who triumphed, thanks to the “working three jobs in one day to support your family” Tim-factor that Sugar loves. Ruth returns to her day job of digging for grubs and beatles.

I knew the interviews would be critical in exposing the true character of the candidates, but I didn’t expect it to be so dramatic. It has been clear from the start that Paul was an asshole, but thought he would have enough cop to play the game and make himself look good. To say he shot himself in the foot with his disastrous interviews today would be such an understatement. Concentrating on Big Issue salesmen as something that makes him angry - what kind of Tulip is he?

Ansell should have drawn on his footballing career - everyone said he was a one trick wonder, a great salesman and nothing else… but you don’t get to play for a First Division team without huge dedication, commitment, and ambition for starters. He put up a good fight, and any company that receives a CV From Ansell “As Seen on the Apprentice” Henry will be very pleased. Hes the only candidate who never let himself down, and though he wasn’t the man for this job, he should do very well out of this 10 week interview with a project management/sales team leader position somewhere.

Clearly, Michelle has the job. Although I never liked her (still don’t), she was impressive today and did well in the interviews. Alan was probing for a sense of personality, but got nothing - thats a drawback… shes a dark horse. The best of a bad lot perhaps.

You know you’re addicted when you watch a rerun of the Apprentice on BBC that you saw last week, and then flick over and watch another rerun of the Apprentice on TV3 that you saw last season. But what a difference in the quality of candidates. Tonight I watched (for the third time) the Series 1 episode where James got politely dismissed, despite being an excellent candidate. It was a testimony to Tim and Saira (not psycho Paul, he was just left in it for the entertainment value I’m sure) that Alan Sugar could afford such a luxury of dumping a perfect candidate - essentially because he was too good for an apprentice role.

Tomorrow night, the current crop will be grovelling to Alan, panicking in the boardroom, arguing and backstabbing each other, and trying to dump the blame for their miserable failure on everyone else usual. For an entertaining finale, he should get rid of the lot of them and hire James from the last series.

Alan Sugar was on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross last night. You would struggle to find a more miserable bastard, but I thought he came across fairly well. You can hardly fault him for his attitude on BBC’s The Apprentice, because everything he says is bang on. Although I was never a fan of reality TV shows, I have found myself watching this every week. To be honest, I’m watching all of the reality TV shows because theres nothing else on, but The Apprentice is definitely a cut above the rest. Unlike the likes of Big Brother, the people who make The Apprentice genuinely set out to find the best candidates available, even subjecting them to psychological examinations. It is hard to believe that they could end up with such a disastrous crop as they have season.

RTE Cork’s The Fund is a decent concept, they did well to get so many good business ideas. The problem is, there is no bite to it. The candidates are all nice, likeable middle-class people with good business ideas that could work. I get no satisfaction watching the likes of glass-eyed Aidan McConnon kicked out. He was told to design an ad, he came up with sketches of each scene, what difference does it make if its got fancy graphics or not, this is stage 1 of the design. RTE are making a mistake in trying to emulate Simon Cowell/Alan Sugar in The Fund’s judge, Maree Morrissey.

When Alan Sugar declared that Mani had gone “from anchor to wanker” [you're fired], I was delighted. This was a guy that probably deserved to stay on merit, but was just an unpleasant character that nobody liked. It is the spirit of bloodsport that makes a good reality show tick, and if this was the glariator’s arena, there would have been a resounding thumbs down for Mani. But when a nice, intelligent guy like Vincent O’Brien, with a great product (the silasock) is being chastised for no real reason by an Anne Robinson-wannabe with no charisma, it just doesn’t work. Expect to see Darren Cassidy from Cork (with the ‘Park’nGard’) booted off next week because the judges don’t like his silly beard.

The other mistake is the length of this series. Compare it to the furious pace of Dragon’s Den, which fired out the business ideas one after another, dealt with them, and then moved on. I really do not want to see these candidates in another boring workshop. If The Fund took place on a boat, I would want it to smash against the rocks.

Geldof received the Irish Recorded Music Association (Irma) honour for his contribution to Irish music. Just wondering if Geldof has now attended more award ceremonies in his lifetime than concerts?

I made the mistake of watching Pop Years 1994 the other day on Sky, what an absolute disgrace of a production. I don’t know where they get these commentators, desperately trying to be witty with dumb remarks and boring anecdotes. They happily reminisced that this was the year when America’s musical dominion came to an end, and the British ruled once again. This was before half of them got stumped by the mention of “Loser” by Beck (”Who? Don’t remember that one…”)