Syed It Isn't So
by Quinn
Just over halfway through now, and The Apprentice is proving to be compulsive viewing. In my previous post on the matter I felt sheepish about admitting to watching it, but I make no such apology now; it is the best thing on the box by a goodly way.
Alan Sugar has made a few strange decisions when firing people, but his broad thrust has been right; getting shot of the pointless planners and management consultants, the people who “give good flipchart” as Adrian Chiles says on “The Apprentice; You’re Fired”. It is encouraging that he can see through the business-speak bollocks of the likes of Mani, Alexa and Samuel, and I can see the door beckoning for Sharon and Tuan in the near future and for the same reason. They may be nice enough people, but they are basically rubbish.
Despite being (or perhaps because I was) a failed salesperson in a previous life I am gradually warming to and gaining a grudging respect for those candidates who ooze sales talent. Paul and Ruth in particular can seem arrogant at times, they can be too smug and too bolshy respectively, but both are charm personified and hugely impressive once they are wooing a customer. More importantly they both appear competent, an attribute most of the other candidates lack. How it will all pan out next week though when pitching to corporate clients will be interesting to see; acting like a second hand car salesman is great when you are, well, selling cars, but Paul’s cheesy and wince-inducing presentation to advertising execs a couple of weeks back doesn’t bode well.
My main concern, though, involves Syed. He continues to act the up-himself oaf, without any obvious qualities other than his own self-deluded self-belief. Tragically, Alan Sugar looks to have a blind spot where Syed is concerned, as he did with Jo; last Friday on Jonathan Ross he was full of praise for the lad. Then yesterday on “…You’re Fired” Mark Frith went on about how the next few weeks would show us the redemption of Syed, and that the public would swing round behind him. Short of Syed receiving a personality transplant I can’t see me backing him, but my real worry is that Mark Frith has inside knowledge, and that his prescience is actually down to having viewed the preview tapes and knowing the outcome. The Wikipedia entry for The Apprentice shows Syed to be one of the few candidates who doesn’t have their own website listed; is that because he doesn’t need one, having won the job of being the apprentice months ago?
I await with breath bated and fingers crossed.
Update 10/4/06: Syed does have a website, here! Yay! Not much going on there (you can take that to be about Syed or his website) but hope springs eternal. Thanks to this comment on this post at Blogjam for the information; Blogjam is a new blog to me, but the post on The Apprentice is fantastic, essential reading if you want to know who really should win the contest. The answer may surprise you.
The Obscurer 
Don’t get me wrong I like Alan Sugar even if his punt in the PC industry was as well timed as it was short lived. Judging by the lack of new stuff on the website it looks like the apprentice is Amstrads most lucrative earner at the moment and last night they started punting the book too.
I must admit that I have always wondered about the glowing tributes recently paid to Alan Sugar. There was a time when Amstrad was a major firm (I used to have one of their PCs, and to be fair it was great), but I bet there is a new generation growing up today who have never heard of Amstrad. Their main claim to fame seems to be that emailer nonsense (as featured on The Apprentice) and The Apprentice itself.
Sugar’s reputation stems from Amstrad, which is soley down to the Sky TV deal which absolutely stinks:(An aside: When the “Big 5” – Man Utd, Liverpool, Everton, Arsenal & Tottenham – were negotiating the television rights of the soon to be formed Premier League, ITV were hot favourites. Under Greg Dyke they’d already had the rights to top flight football, and all the Chairmen expected them to continue. A surprise occurred, when Mr Murdoch at newly formed Sky managed to deliver a last minute bid that beat ITV. I believe it was a sealed auction, and several attendees were suspicious of how Sky knew what ITV’s bid was. During the final stages of the bidding, the Tottenham Chairman – Alan Sugar – had left the room. He was the CEO of Amstrad, a firm that had an exclusive agreement to supply the satellite dishes required for Sky TV. If Sky didn’t win the bid, Amstrad would have gone under. The suggestion that Mr Sugar phoned Mr Murdoch to reveal the ITV bid, merging his roles as Tottenham Chairman and Amstrad CEO, is pretty convincing. For more, see this book.)http://thefilter.blogs.com/thefilter/2005/12/kerry_packer_19.htmlIncidently, I enjoy watching The Apprentice but aren’t impressed with any of the candidates. It seems there’s a massive selection bias – why would a geniunely capable and ambitious person apply to be on the show? Depsite Sugar’s puzzlement, I think they’ve got what they advertised for – self-confident knobheads
Why would a geniunely capable and ambitious person apply to be on the show?Indeed, a point Jarndyce made here and which didn’t occur to me in the first place, but I suppose I initially forgot that The Apprentice is first and foremost a TV programme, not a recruitment device, and the candidates have been picked for their entertainment value, not business prowess.As for the Sky/Amstrad thing, I must admit I have always gone with the view that Sky were picked over ITV by the smaller clubs to piss off the likes of David Dein who had got their cosy deal with ITV to show the bigger clubs more often and so get more TV revenue for the top sides, but I may check out that David Conn book; I have heard him interviewed a few times on Radio 5 and the like and he seems to know his stuff.
“The Redemption of Syed”? Syed is without a doubt one of the most dislikable people I have ever come across. He is rude, arrogant and cocky. I can’t understand (but then, I am not in Sales) how that attitude helps in the business world. Yes, I understand how confidence and perseverence, and even an element of pushiness, are useful, but I can’t see how generally appearing a wanker will endear you to potential clients.
Agreed; and since I wrote this post another episode of The Apprentice has been and gone, and if anything Syed appears even more unbearable than before. Great telly though.Syed is certainly leaving it late in the day if he if going to change my opinion of him for the better.