The BBC has just confirmed that this year’s final will screen on Sunday June 7, rather than Wednesday June 10 as expected.

The episode will see the remaining two candidates challenged to create and market a brand new box of chocolates – with brand new flavours. Here’s hoping we see some ‘blue sky thinking’ here, with proposed taste sensations like foie gras and quiche appearing on that white board.

Yes, I appreciate there’s little audience here for dispatches about NBC’s The Celebrity Apprentice, but last Sunday’s episode (which I caught up with last night) gave us perhaps the finest boardroom battle ever staged across the franchise’s global turf. Don’t read on if you’re worried about spoilers…

Having lost on an advertising task, well… this happened.

So, that was poker player Annie Duke and Playboy model Brande Roderick – to use the show’s vernacular – throwing Melissa Rivers (daughter of fellow contestant Joan) under the bus. The background here is that Melissa has felt excluded by her teammates (it seems she’s had issues in high school which this has brought to light), while Joan has fallen out with Annie in a previous episode, comparing her to Hitler.

Of course, the real joy of this sequence is not Joan’s rant to Annie about “money with blood on” nor her observation that when it comes to poker players “none of them have last names”. It’s not even the bandying about of the wonderful phrase “whore pit vipers”. Nope, it’s clearly and squarely the bit where Melissa stomps through the fourth wall, bringing the show’s production staff on to screen, and prompting the wonderful snippet where we come back to the boardroom and Ivanka Trump squeals, “Guys, Melissa’s screaming!”.

All credit to the everyone on the show for keeping the cameras rolling, and laying on these insane, epic episodes week after week. Brentwood is slightly – ever so slightly – diminished by comparison.

…and I’m saying that bearing in mind the episode when Donald Trump fired four people in one sitting, or the time he entered into an indepth discussion about homosexuality.

But here I’m referring to last Sunday’s feature-length episode on NBC, which saw The Celebrity Apprentice teams running rival mini-hotels. Over the last few weeks, NBA star Dennis Rodman has been portrayed as chaotic and bad-tempered, walking out of tasks and feuding with country singer Clint Black. And throughout has been his continual penchant for vodka and cranberry juice.

However, the most recent task saw a fatal three-way collision between Rodman, leadership responsibilities and the hospitality industry, where booze flows freely. Frequently seen demanding his favourite tipple from the kitchen, Rodman eventually ended up disappearing into town with two guests for dinner, leaving the rest of the team very much high and – in comparison – dry.

Even The Donald’s aide, his daughter Ivanka, realised something was amiss: “I think Dennis was inebriated”. Although, as Anna Pickard points out on her Guardian blog (and, er thanks for doing this every week, Anna, but why?) Ms Trump then continued: “So I just hope it’s a consistent effort to bring forth with victory”. Erm…

The final boardroom, was bizarre. Strangely touching, in a way, as “entrepreneur and TV star” Jesse James spoke out: He thought Dennis had a drinking problem. A former alcoholic himself, you sensed James had no small insight into the condition. While the women’s team looked on with pained expressions, the men gently, but forcefully hammered the message home: Dennis was fun, but only up to a point.

Even Donald Trump showed some candour – Dennis was a fallen hero. A sorry state. This was, as Joan Rivers said afterwards, basically a televised intervention and an extraordinary moment for any show, let alone one prefaced with the word Celebrity.

“It’s all love!” shouted Black repeatedly as Rodman exited in the lift. It kind of was.

Here’s how it went down…

Due to air on 13 March, the Doctor Who star will co-present with Davina McCall. In a pre-recorded video screened at this morning’s press launch at The Empire Cinema, Leicester Square, he said: “It’s a great honour for me. I remember the first Red Nose Day when I was at school, buying the t-shirt and everyone joining in, And then, later, at drama school, me and my mate Alan McCue formed a Proclaimers tribute act and went busking in Sauchiehall Street. We were rubbish, but earned £65 in our lunch hour. The people of Glasgow are very generous.”

Also confirmed for this year’s bash, are Steve Jones and Claudia Winkleman, who’ll be hosting the celebrity-packed Let’s Dance for Comic Relief; Fearne Cotton, Denise Van Outen, Alesha Dixon, Cheryl Cole, Kimberly Walsh, Ben Shephard, Chris Moyles, Ronan Keating and Gary Barlow who’ll be attempting to climb Mount Kilimanjaro; a special episode of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps and – best of all – Comic Relief Does the Apprentice.

Contestant Carol Vorderman introduced the latter to the press. “In the past it was very much ring up friends and get things donated and get people to buy auction prizes. It was fabulous and raised a lot of money. This time it was decided – and we didn’t know till we arrived – that it would be a proper Apprentice project as they would give to those in the normal programme.” So no calling in favours from famous friends.

By the looks of the trailer, it appears the teams are tasked with making a television advert – but for what remains unclear.

Lining up, alongside Vorderman, to do Sir Alan’s bidding are: Jack Dee, Gerald Ratner, Patsy Palmer, Michelle Mone, Ruby Wax (“With whom I became more intimate than I have with any other woman in my life”, said the former Countdown star), Fiona Phillips, Jonathan Ross, Alan Carr and Gok Wan.

Find out more about Red Nose Day at the official site: www.rednoseday.com

Drama: With everyone else seemingly finding David Tennant to be utterly irritating, I have to confess I still love the 10th Doctor, particularly when he’s being impish. This year’s Doctor Who might have contained a lot of mediocre stuff, but I still think it’s the best thing on telly by about a million miles. It has such a massive emotional library from which to pull stuff from, and this year’s return of the Master was just brilliant (albeit only when Jacobi was in the role). Of course nothing further need be added to the already thousands of positive reviews for Cornell and Moffat’s contribution to series three.

Comedy: I have to confess to having been a bit slow to catch on to The Thick of It. A lot of things about it put me off – Peter Capaldi for a start, and the overly naturalistic faux documentary style, but I have to concede it is simply brilliant. In truth it’s been a shit year for comedy but “a tete-a-tiny-tete” almost made up for it.

Reality: Another genre of telly that was a bit rubbish this year. I stand by earlier comments that Dragons’ Den is no longer essential viewing. Big Brother was okay, and most other reality shows this year were poor. Probably the pick of the bunch in 2007 was The Apprentice.

Light entertainment: Well controversially I’m going to give this to Britain’s Got Talent. Ant and Dec know how to perfectly judge this sort of thing so that it never feels too exploitative. Although variety acts seem to be making a comeback in a major way, the selection for this series was particularly entertaining. Sadly, I’ve never been able to “get”Strictly Come Dancing.

Documentary: I’m on far safer ground here as I think the undisputed documentary series of 2007 was The Secret Life of the Motorway, fantastic archive footage, great interviewees and an utterly evocative series.

Get Me The Producer starts on Channel 4, Monday 15 October. It features Greg Dyke (Grey Dyke!) overseeing an Apprentice-style challenge in which 12 people new to TV perform a series of TV production-related tasks, all hoping they’ll be the one awarded a year-long contract with a leading indie (presumably Princess, who make this).

“Television?” snaps Greg. “It’s all about ideas. Simple as that!”. And then off we go. The iconography is all present and correct – opposing teams, white boards, water coolers, mentors. And fantastic non-sequitars …

“Let’s have a little fun being creative”. “I hate losing … I’m not allowed to play squash any more, put it that way. I can be quite – you know – violent”. “Only hold the potato once … chuck a banana in!”. Plus, my favourite: “How interesting is seeing a chicken really going to be? For five minutes? On British television?”

Alas, in practise, it’s a bit more Tycoon than Apprentice. Greg’s holed up in Brick Lane, seemingly living in a flat above a library, where he’s continually shuttling executive chairs around the office, and chewing on his spectacles. Described as an “education” commission by C4, it actually feels a bit like that – as though the reality show element is merely a fashionable fiction to get across messages about working in industry. But for all that, it’s still enough to hook me. 

“If you Google my name,” says team leader Karen Seeberg, “you’ll find out I was a James Bond girl. But I really don’t want that held against me”. In fact, if you follow her advice, the first thing you’ll find is her vanity site -www.karenseeberg.com - and a spot of cracker barrel philosophy: “Life is like a wild tiger. You can either lie down and let it lay its paw on your head … or sit on its back and ride it”. Hear her roar!

The obvious things, first, then – ITV just shouldn’t go toe-to-toe with the BBC in this fashion. Aluminium-hued shots of the City prompt comparisons to (let’s get it over with now) The Apprentice, but then we get “Tycoon Tower”, a squat, anonymous building on London’s South Bank. Okay, it’s got a “Tycoon” sign outside, but it’s hardly a tower. 

Inside – and here’s the real pisser – nothing at all looks bespoke. This is just a fairly generic working space, hired out for the show. And why does Peter take most of his meetings in the carpark, or the communal coffee-sipping areas with kids loitering in the background? It all just looks so … cheap.

Peter, himself, is a weird sort of TV character. Nothing he says feels spontaneous, particularly in those candid moments it’s just him rattling away to someone off camera. He’s also hugely hung-up on names – his counsel to each of the contestants consisting solely of coming up with new monikers for their products. You can imagine him brainstorming programme titles – “What’s better than being an apprentice. I know, being a tycoon!”

And yet, by the end, I was rather enjoying it. It’s like a lowkey sitcom – and how can you not enjoy Elizabeth “I can move mountains. I CAN move mountains” Hackford, who looks like she’s dropped in direct from a meeting with Simon Harrap at Eyecatchers? Her attempts to get passers-by to name her product. Her pitch for investment money (“That’s not like my product – it’s a concentrate”). Her hackles rising as the Sod girls whirled the klaxon.

Yes, it’s aimless. Yes, it’s unglamorous. No, the “pier of fear” (as it’ll surely be dubbed) is never going to become an iconic element of the show. But people trumpeting their own ideas and talking rubbish – that’ll do me.

Best of all, you can watch the whole thing again courtesy of ITV1′s BBC baiting watch-on-demand service (which is really great) at: www.tycoon.com.

Do tell me what you thought of the show. Meantime, I’m off to see if anyone wants to Fruka.

That new series line-up in full, then (to save you clicking the hyperlink): Peter Jones, Deborah Meaden, Theo Paphitis, Duncan Bannatyne and new boy James Cann – founder and CEO of private equity firm Hamilton Bradshaw, should that mean anything to you – who’s replacing outgoing Australian “super” investor Richard Farleigh.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve brushed up against a few folk from DD‘s BAFTA-nabbing rival, The Apprentice. On each occasion – for some wilful reason – I’ve asked them what they think of the show. 

“I’m not a fan of Dragon’s Den. I can’t see where the business element is, because you can go to the bank and get £100 grand without giving away part of your equity. I think it’s a very good PR exercise for people, though.” 2006 Runner-up Ruth “The” Badger, there. 

And, ho! Who’s this? Why, it’s business bad boy and fellow ejectee Syed Ahmed: “I hate Dragons’ Den. The whole thing is flawed. You get people on there with fantastic ideas, and even if the product’s good, the Dragons take the Mickey out of it. They don’t treat people with respect. All the Dragons are just wannabe TV stars. Duncan Bannatyne – his teeth! They can’t be real!”

Thankfully, the boss has a different point-of-view. “I love Dragons’ Den,” says Sir Alan Sugar. “I think it’s wonderful. Wonderful! Great programme, Dragons’ Den, really do enjoy it. I’ve watched every single one of them. It’s another reality programme, if you like, but there’s a real meaning to it. You do see some real-life business experiences. I think it’s fantastic. Really brilliant.”

Drop dead shrewd, that man.

“I know that life isn’t always sandwiches and picnics.”

“We work until we bleed.”

“I can be very, very offensive when I need to be.”

Quotes, there, from this year’s intake of 16 would-be apprentices. Yep, I’m back from the London Stock Exchange, and the launch of The Apprentice series three . Despite the fact there’s a new production team working on the show, it looks fantastic once again. I’ll go light on the details, suffice to say there’s some ace wrangling over who should be team leader, a lot of running around Islington and shouting into mobile phones, and a fantastic moment from Sir Alan: “I think Certus is gonna hurt us”. You’ll understand it when you see it.

But the important point – and what’s going to be the continuing soundbite that’ll open every series? It’s up for grabs, however I’m putting my money on: “You’re a total shambles – you’re fired” or, “No-one’s going to make a fool out of me!”.

As ever, Sir Al doesn’t like schmoozers: “The worst kind of schmooze that I can’t stand is ‘Sir Alan I’m just like you I came from a humble background and worked my way up.’ Well don’t lay all that rubbish on me.” 

“This is no gameshow,” he cautions. “There won’t be some busty blonde waiting outside to hug you so that you can sob into her bosoms. What there will be is a black cab waiting to take you to the station.”

It’s a point that seems to be very dear to his heart. After the screening (which prompted a spontaneous round of applause), he addressed the press, and spoke in disparaging terms about last series, which he clearly felt had been stocked up with the wrong sort of candidate. “Er… there’s a lot of regrets about last year,” he said. “Maybe turning up is perhaps the biggest regret. Look, I’m in an awkward situation in having to bite my tongue about what I think. That’s all I can say at this moment in time. Next question.”

He did, however, go on to reveal that he’d engaged in serious discussions with Talkback Thames before agreeing to go again this time around. And reckons the current crop – bar the first person out the door in episode one – are all the right sort.

He also revealed that the show is going to continue much the same as before, citing the US series’ penchant for twists, turns and tweaks on the format as something that “backfired”. That said, with 16 people and 12 weeks, the UK show’s first multiple sacking has to be on the cards.

The Apprentice hits BBC1 on Wednesday 28 March.

[NB: Ben Stanberry was the first of this year's apprentices to be dispatched by Sir Alan Sugar.]

And so it is, another fairy tale ending …

Let’s start with some inside gossip.

When Sir Alan points that nasty index finger of his at you and delivers the death blow things really do happen just as they appear on your TV screen. With your tail between your legs, you skulk out of the boardroom, collect your case, walk out the door and into a waiting taxi.

Only slightly more uncomfortable and cringe-worthy than shaking your now ex-team members by the hand (instead of punching them in the face) is having a camera crew jump into the cab with you to record your last, tearful self-analysis. Once that’s in the can, they jump out again and I must admit that, by the time they did, I felt like hurling myself out the other side into the path of an oncoming bus.

If the candidate is lucky and lives in London, they’re taken home – where their spouse or partner will hopefully be pleased to see them (mine simply said, “Oh, back already?!”). If they’re unlucky and come from outside the capital, they’re taken to a rather smart, boutique hotel in Shepherd’s Bush that’s actually only a stone’s throw from the studio where the boardroom scenes are filmed. Once there, they will spend a miserable, lonely night consuming the entire contents of the mini-bar and reflecting on where it all went wrong.

Though I live in London myself, I did get to see the hotel on the night Jo (aka “The Bouncing Brummie”) was fired.

She must have just got out of the taxi when she telephoned me. I instinctively knew it was her because that distinctive, machine-gun laugh practically perforated my eardrum. “I’ve been fired … ha ha ha ha ha!” she rattled. “Get over here and I’ll tell you all about it.” I did as I was told.

This was the first contact I’d had with any of the fired ex-apprentices since my own departure. But as shocked as I was to hear from Jo which candidates had departed between me and her (“Karen … Gone?!” I whimpered in disbelief) I was even more shocked when she told me who she was convinced was going to win.

“Do you know who’s going to be the next apprentice?” she asked me, looking me straight in the eye. “Michelle”, she continued assuredly, “Without a shadow of a doubt, it’s Michelle.”
The more I thought about this, the more I couldn’t help but agree.

While Michelle’s triumph as the winner of series two of The Apprentice might not have been predicted by Joe Public as early as week six, when Jo left the show, it was probably already expected by many of the fired candidates who had got to know her during filming. Indeed, some of us realised later that, up against Michelle, we probably never stood a chance. If nothing else, The Apprentice is a modern fairy tale which has, of course, to have a fairy tale prince or princess and a fairy tale ending.

So just as he did at the end of series one (when Tim “The Quiet One” Campbell seemingly came out of nowhere to become his first protégé) Sir Alan has chosen the candidate whose humble origins, determination to better themselves and strong family values he feels most empathy with – and whose physical attractiveness and demurity best compensates for his self-perceived short-comings in those departments. The candidate who, ultimately, will be most receptive to his management and nurturing.

But was it the right result on the night? Let’s take a look …

Planning

Ruth and Michelle’s final task was – with assistance from the six most recently fired ex-apprentices – to organise a themed party for 80 people at what Sir Alan described as “London’s greatest venue: Tower Bridge”. Rather than pick who she thought would be most manageable or who would work together best, Michelle chose her team on the basis of the skills mix necessary to execute the task. Hence Sharon was selected for her event management expertise and Paul and Syed for their sales brilliance. However, had she thought about it for just a couple of seconds, Michelle would have remembered that Syed, Paul and Sharon all hate each other’s guts.

Ruth, on the other hand, chose more manageable people: Tuan, Ansell and an unusually quiet and co-operative Jo (who had obviously been drugged). These were people Ruth knew wouldn’t dare disobey her, regardless of whether they got on with each other or not. However, she struggled to settle on a coherent theme for her event. The end result looked like the restaurant car of the Venice-Simplon Orient Express had derailed and simultaneously crashed through the film sets of both Moulin Rouge and Dangerous Liaisons. Though for all we know, that’s exactly the look she had in mind.

Michelle’s James Bond-inspired party theme – “Double-O Heaven” – while not exactly original, was ultimately the classier and better executed one.

Scores: Michelle 8/10, Ruth 6/10

Team Performance

Michelle hoped – wrongly – that the brilliance they had demonstrated throughout the show would enable her to leave her “Sales Boys” – Paul and Syed – to get on with flogging their 80 tickets. But by the end of the day, all they’d done was fallen out and argued over how to spell Aston Martin. In the car on the way home, potty-mouthed Michelle confessed to Sharon she hadn’t seen this coming and gave Syed, in particular, a dressing down. “It’s me who gets it in the fucking arse if I fail.” Nice.

With only 11 tickets sold, a crisis meeting was held the next morning and things seemed to get back on track, albeit with Syed and Paul selling tickets in the street for a lot less than break-even price. Syed was rewarded with a kiss from Michelle. The only person who seemed able to get on with their job without being micro-managed was Sharon.

Meanwhile, over on Ruth’s team, everyone had been terrorised into doing exactly as they were told – selling their tickets to the business people they had met during their previous tasks – and they’d sold out. Failure was never an option.

Scores: Michelle 6/10, Ruth 8/10

Execution

Come the night itself, both parties looked full enough. There was a coherent theme running through Michelle’s “Double-O Heaven” night, with target shooting, sexy dancers, a high-rolling casino and a diamond auction taking place in an awkward space that was nonetheless thoughtfully dressed with well chosen props.

Ruth’s “Murder Mystery/French Tarts” combo, however, looked rather tawdry in comparison, even if it did give us Tuan and Ansell dressed as 18th century courtiers and the hilarious sight of Ruth’s enormous bosom being squashed into a bodice with the same ease and grace with which a killer whale would get into a Mini Cooper.

Scores: Michelle 9/10, Ruth 8/10

Result

Come the final boardroom showdown, no one could have been surprised at the outcome. Though it was a greater commercial success (83 tickets were sold for a total profit of £3,592), Ruth’s party was considered less classy in its execution than Michelle’s, which only sold 73 tickets and made, when the proceeds of the diamond auction were added, £1,897.

Final Scores: Michelle 23/30, Ruth 22/30

And so, with Nick, Margaret and the ex-apprentices thanked and cordially dismissed, the moment of truth was upon us. Would Sir Alan choose “The Badger” – who, win or lose, seems destined for world domination in any event – or “The Blonde”?

Well, he chose The Blonde.

Some might say that, faced with a choice between two women, Sir Alan simply did what every self-respecting, unreconstructed barrow-boy-made-good would have done: he picked the fittest one.

But personally, I believe in fairy tales. And so I am, frankly, delighted that Michelle – shy, petite, potty-mouthed, clever, determined Michelle – now finds herself a million miles from the kind of life she might have had if she’d made the same choices as some of the other girls she worked the check-out tills at Asda with, a decade ago.

And I for one hope that she’ll live happily ever after. She’s earned it.