April 3rd - April 9th 2006
Sunday Eeyore
Saturday V&A 2006
Friday Lesboluvtug
Thursday Batting
Wednesday V&A 2006
Tuesday Apprentice (Jo)
Monday Under-contracted
Sunday 9th April
Fans of Eeyore should plan to make a minor detour next time they're passing Waterloo Station.
Head for the lift that takes you from the tube-exit on Waterloo Road up to the main station concourse. Pay special attention to the recorded commentary ("Doors..closing.")
History does not record whether the woman responsible went home and cut her throat after the recording session was completed - but it seems a distinct possibility.
Saturday 8th April
V&A, Spring 2006
Friday 7th April
Editing last night's story about the Court of Appeal ratification of the decision to remove custody rights over two children from their biological mother and award them, instead, to the mother's lesbian ex-lover, I was fairly confident that I was the only person in the room, if not the entire building, to appreciate that this was a landmark moment for LGBT rights - an apprehension confirmed by my noticing that the horny-handed subs upstairs had chosen to call the piece, for internal purposes, Lesboluvtug
Thursday 6th April
The bats strike back:
Man beaten with bat at carnival
Man arrested for alleged bat attack
Single mother attacks intruder with bat
Bat may cause illness
Wednesday 5th April
V&A, Spring 2006
Tuesday 4th April
Regrettably, I failed to clip or otherwise pin down a fleeting story I saw last week, headlined 'Sir Alan says he hears voices' or something similar.
I didn't read it, and I can't remember which paper it was in, so I can't be sure what its angle was - though I think we can safely assume it was Apprentice-related.
It's just possible - unlikely but entertaining - that Alan Sugar has admitted to being guided in his business decisions by spirit guides. It's more likely - but less entertaining - that it refers to the launch of an Alan Sugar talking doll.
What I'd like it to have been is an attempt to unpick the gnomic asides from the climactic moments of last week's show:
I've sat here, four times, in this room, and there is a message coming from above. Not that I'm a believer in the Lord or anything but I have to listen to other people. Jo, you've been here too many times..This time: you're fired.
Whose message is that, then?
Certainly, if word on the street is any measure, it would have been heave-ho for Jo long before the first episode was even over. (That voice! That hair! Those tears, that manic cackle!)
But, interestingly enough for a programme that ostentatiously dedicates itself to the worship of Mammon, The Apprentice has denied itself the potentially lucrative option of a phone-in component to the voting.
Democracy doesn't count for much in the world of The Apprentice: the sell revolves around the thrillingly-hard-nosed testosterone-rich jungle-out-there values of overt autocracy (a somewhat illicit thrill these days, it must be said).
Sir Alan's voices are not welling up from below; they are "a message coming from above". Someone more powerful than Sir Alan? Surely not.
Unless...
The only people more powerful than the star of what is supposed to be The Alan Sugar Show are the programme-makers themselves. (Or did you really think he was going to throw away thousands of pounds worth of free promotion merely to exercise his own judgement?)
It is the programme makers who have consistently edited the footage to demonise Jo (amongst others), and it is the programme makers, it seems, who have decided to let Jo go.
You thought The Apprentice was intended as a tonic for British industry, a paen to business excellence, a search for diligence, intelligence, professionalism?
No, you didn't. Not after last week's Sun headline:Fired Jo may strip for mag
Monday 3rd April
Much sour chuckling at work over coverage of the French government's problems with its proposed contrat de première embauche, a labour law that would allow employers to hire and fire employees under 26 without so much as a by-your-leave.
Chuckling partly because it's always tempting to caption pictures of placards and burning cars "Parisians are revolting' (or, even better in this case, 'Parisians are still revolting').
Chuckling partly because of various maladroit attempts to get labour puns into headlines: 'Chirac dismisses student fears' or 'De Villepin's next big job' or, my favourite, 'French fired with contempt'.
Sour chuckling because, closer to home, out of a total work-force of approximately thirty, less than twenty per cent of the people in my department have contracts of employment.
The rest of us are 'casuals' - with no fixed schedule of employment, no pension rights, no sick pay: liable to be let go - you guessed it - without so much as a by-your-leave. (Very few of us will ever see 26 again either.)
Chirac's latest move is to offer to reduce the period over which the CPE operates from the first two years of employment to the first year; I've been employed as a casual since, hmm, December 1999.
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