Do you remember that old joke about the child (in some versions he is German, but I don’t think that’s essential) who doesn’t speak until the age of nine, when one evening at dinner he says “not enough salt” and his amazed parents say “you can speak! Why have you never spoken before?” and he says “Until now everything was satisfactory”?

Well, that’s where I’m at, more or less. Glad All Over has always been a blog about nothing, largely powered by my occasional need to rant about Things That Pissed Me Off. And nothing much has pissed me off recently, or at least nothing that merited more words than could easily fit into 140 characters. But a recent lifestyle adjustment has turned me into someone who watches TV, and it turns out there’s loads on TV that pisses me off. Yay!

Proudly topping the list is The Apprentice, which I have managed to avoid for the last decade, whilst still knowing quite a lot about it. I don’t know why I find its innate cynicism more offensive than that displayed by, say, The X Factor, except that X Factor has as a redeeming quality its contestants, who are by and large sweet and charming and easy to root for. (My favourites so far, in case you need to know, are Fleur and Andrea.) The Apprentice features famously awful people so there is nothing to distract me from the fact that it’s a horrible, lying, ugly programme. It teaches us that the way to get ahead in business is to be a bully; to relentlessly push one’s own agenda and to ignore or trample on anyone who gets in the way. That may well work for some people in some contexts, but it makes the world a nastier place, and having had more jobs than most I can assure you that being polite, respectful and knowledgeable works too, and doesn’t result in half the workforce being signed off with stress.

So it’s an unpleasant show, but it also treats us, the audience, like idiots. I am actively embarrassed every time Lord Sugar is presented like God, as though he isn’t as beholden to the production schedule and technical requirements of making the show as anyone else involved. I don’t mind being lied to in the name of entertainment so long as an attempt is made to make it entertaining, but this isn’t. It’s just silly. And practically speaking, the tasks are ridiculous. In last night’s show candidates were asked to come up with an item of wearable technology and pitch it to buyers from John Lewis, J.D. Sports and Firebox. I mean, honestly, can you think of a single item, wearable or otherwise, that those three retailers would all stock? So the premise was ridiculous and the criteria for success a nonsense. The week before, the winning team (and why split them, in this day and age, into a men’s team and a women’s team, FFS?) made something like £50 more than the losers, who were subjected to a torrent of contempt bordering on abuse as a result. £50. It’s a joke of a show. And if you were to ask the founders of the most successful companies launched in the last couple of decades whether their primary motivation was to make money, I doubt a single one of them would say yes. Here’s Mark Zuckerberg in a letter to shareholders two years ago:

“Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services. And we think this is a good way to build something.”

Anyone who thinks Alan Sugar is a better role model for success in the world of business today than Zuck probably deserves to – well, to be on The Apprentice.

I mean, I don’t mind silly TV shows. At the moment I am particularly enjoying The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Come Dine With Me and Gogglebox, all of which, in different ways, shine a light into something real and human and vulnerable. Shows about people need real people in them, and nobody and nothing in The Apprentice is real.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to install the X Factor voting app.