Absent Apprentice Andy

I've just watched the first episode of The Apprentice Season 3. Alas, nice but dim & weak Andy Jackson got fired despite claiming:

"My passions are winning, winning and winning."

He seemed to have a lack of passion for coffee. Maybe they only drink tea up North.

The dilemma for the losers and for Sir Alan is who is to blame when a team loses - the incompetent individuals or the project manager who didn't stop them going astray or redirecting them back on the road.

Tonight Sophie Kain ordered 100 litres of milk when Andy only asked for 20 litres. I was very disappointed to see someone with a PhD in Physics make such a blunder. She blamed her error on not allowing for the expanded volume of milk due to frothing but a simple order of magnitude calculation should have seen her order closer to 1/10 of the milk she ordered. Gerri Blackwood picked the wrong location for selling upmarket coffee - the downmarket Chapel Street Market - complete with Pie & Mash shop.

For the other team, an elementary error of buying the wrong type of coffee was made but they recovered from it by buying more coffee. Given the classy men in the team, I'd have thought one of them would have experience of drinking & making more than instant coffee.

I've spotted the new Syed Ahmed: Tre Azam who is alledgedly

"Forthright, opinionated and a bit of a maverick"

He certainly upset his project manager, Jadine Jackson, this week.

What is it about the BBC? In each season, the opinionated ones seems to have the same racial origin. Is it racist or pandering to those with Indian-subcontinental origins? First there was Saira Kahn, then Syed Ahmed and now Tre Azam.

Heard on a Bus: Medical Misdiagnosis

"Nurses don't prescribe antibiotics"

Cor Blimey Cooper

I've just discovered the most un-PC newspaper columnist. He doesn't write for the Sun or even The Mail but for that right-wing vipers' nest, The Independent.

Cooper Brown is a Yank and he writes about his expatriate life in the Yoo Kay with his pregnant girlfriend.

He's nervous about the imminent new arrival but has a cunning plan:

"Oh Jesus, a whole new avenue of hell has just opened up in front of me - the world of baby shopping. With Mini Cooper only two weeks away, Victoria takes me down the Kings Road to get "everything we need". To me, that means stock up on bourbon and get going on finding a foxy full-time nanny. Obviously, this was not what she meant."


"I got so bored wandering around these dumb places so I started taking the piss out of all these gay dads who seemed to be really into it. You could spot these testicle-less bastards a mile off. They're the ones running up to their hideously fat wives holding some stripy nightshirt going "isn't it adorable?" while nearly in tears. One pasty guy comes up to me in a shop. "Isn't this the best thing ever? When's yours due? We're having a water birth at home."

I tell him to fuck right off and leave me alone as I'm clearly not a homosexual, and then I spot his wife - it's only frickin' Julia Roberts."

However, he does manage to have a good time shopping:

"Victoria currently drives a pretty cool silver Audi TT, but she wanted a car suitable for a mother and child so we decide on a new Range Rover Vogue. All the crappy little British cars have to give way to the new boss in town.

We go for the fully loaded option, and I'm totally in Victoria's good books.

To celebrate we go for lunch at Gordon Ramsay's and end up making out in the toilets. It's not classy but a man's got to take his action where he can get it when pregnancy is about."

He's written the story of his life and his entry into the UK.