This evening the Gees will cluster round the radiogram television to watch the final of The Apprentice, in which young, thrusting contestants compete for a job with entrepreneur Sir Alan Sugar.
One thing that has always struck me is that the contestants are all so horrible. As well as being personally unpleasant, some of them are (allegedly) liars and wouldn’t know where to put an apostrophe if you paid them. Part of the fun of watching the show is its gladiatorial aspect: hating these people is fun.
At the weekend I remarked to my mother (another Apprentice addict) how much these ghastly specimens are being paid, when highly qualified people of culture and sophistication, and Richard P Grant, exist on a pittance. However, as my mother remarked, they’re not being paid to be nice or even educated, they’re being paid to sell things. Money is what it’s all about.
I have heard that some people have objected to Sir Alan’s tough-talking managerial style. The show is in part predicated on this. This is the ‘interview from hell’, we are told, and Sir Alan is notoriously rough and toothless tough and ruthless.
Au contraire, say I. Sir Alan reminds me of my Dad, a former lawyer, and indeed all the cuddly Jewish cabbies I knew when I lived in north-east London. And maybe, because Sir Alan reminds me of … well … me. At least if I wore clothes a jacket and tie.
The life of a Nature editor, you see, is very much like that of Sir Alan, though without the chauffeur-driven Rolls.
Every day, candidates are brought blinking and nervous in front of me, and I have to judge their worth, often in a hurry and given insufficient information.
I have to square them up against other candidates, and, if they look good, send them to my crack team of experts to deconstruct.
For a few, that precious few, some will have the chance to earn a six-figure salary get published in Nature and attract citations, tenure and job offers.
For the rest—nineteen out of every twenty—I have the immense pleasure regretful duty of saying…
YOU’RE FIRED!!!
A suggestion. maybe you should invite the 20 authors and teams of authors to Nature. invite the BBC and put tha candidates through a series of meaningless tasks, after each task you sit in the editorial office and, pointing the editorial pen of doom, you state “rejected”.
Suitable tasks could be:
Would that be too close to reality, even for reality TV?
Sorry, I’m trying to revise the manuscript that inspired this post, so I’m easily distracted.
1 There’s a tale about this (and it’s to do with another journal altogether), but I think I should wait until the paper is accepted before explaining it.
2 If there is a news item this summer about a journal editor having his arms ripped of and fed to two goats and a car, you’ll know there is a tale behind this too.
Anothe challenge (I believe set by a Tory Science Minister many years ago) is “Explain the Significance of the Higgs’ Boson in 60 secons without repetition, deviation or hesitation”.
Bob, I’ve told you before, watch your spelling of girrafe, or you will be fired from Nature Network.
(Henry, why don’t you add a “permanent at the top” post just to link to that unicycling girrafe post, so that all your visitors can see the origin of it? You can do this on NN platform ;
), and if it is just a one-line link, it won’t distract from all your other -weasels of doompearls of wisdom. )OK, I’m fired for not doing strike-outs right, or checking preview.
Sounds like a good idea, Maxine. Please would you let me know how to do this?
Ahh, calling my bluff, eh? And well-called, because I have just looked and you can’t do it! If you try to put a link in the blog blurb at the top of your blog (to the girrafe post) you can’t do it, and there is no way to set a post to stay at the top. You can do this in a forum, so perhaps Matt might put this on the development list? Very sorry, Henry, I thought this was basic blog stuff and did not realise it wasn’t possible.
Henry -
What’s the Gee family take on Michael the ‘good Jewish boy’ (according to his application) who appeared to think Kosher and Halal were interchangeable?
a) He was trying to wheedle his way into Alan Sugar’s good books by getting cosily co-ethnic when he said that in his application?
b) He knew perfectly well the difference between Kosher and Halal, but thought they could get away with it?
c) He was just an absolute wally, and it’s impossible to understand how he lasted that long unless option a) actually worked a bit?
I think he was only half-Jewish, in which case my question is which half? I reckon it was the bottom half, in which case there might be an easy way to corroborate my hypothesis.
Yes, he was an absolutely wally, but probably no better or worse than the rest of them. And the whole business about the kosher chicken was an absolute hoot.
I don’t think Alan Sugar has a racist bone in his body, so I’d think that (a) would count against him. I think he’d employ anyone of any origin provided they made him money.
What an enthralling show it was. I think Sir Alan made the right choice, though, with the proviso that he had to work with what he was offered – sixteen candidates whittled down from about 20,000 applicants. I remember asking a very senior official of an enormous and very successful university how he explained the success of his institution. “If you want to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,” he said, “start with a silk sow.”
With you on the enthrallationality. Not sure about the winning candidate though. I went off him hugely in the interview stage when he:
a) lied about how long he stayed on a university course
b) handed in a CV with about four very obvious spelling mistakes in the first sentence. That’s just sloppy.
Worrying, isn’t it?