Is it just me or is Fiona Bruce incredibly, incredibly annoying? I only ask because I didn’t have a view on the subject till I was watching her present The Real Sir Alan Sugar (BBC2, Sunday) and on at least two occasions found myself so cross it was all I could do not to smash my TV to tiny pieces with a claw hammer.
The first occasion was when — while breakfasting flirtatiously with Sir Alan on his private jet — Fiona decided to show what a hard-headed reporter cum serious feminist she was by taking umbrage at Sir Alan’s supposed neanderthal sexism. Apparently he has a habit of asking prospective female employees what their childcare plans are. Fiona huffily declared that if he tried that sort of nonsense on her she’d soon tell him where to get off.
‘Yes, Fiona,’ I said with a weary sigh. ‘That’s because you work for the BBC, an organisation which not only bends over backwards to embrace every piece of left-liberal social policy going, but which furthermore can afford to do so because it’s a publicly funded institution. Sir Alan, on the other hand, has to live in the real world. He runs a business — not some government quango responsible for remedying the terrible unfairness whereby it’s always women who have wombs, ovaries and maternal instincts, but never men.’
Later on there was a scene where Sir Alan took Fiona up in another of his aeroplanes, a small one this time, and taught her how to fly. This was Fiona’s chance to switch from Germaine Greer mode to Babs Windsor mode, and make squeaking noises to indicate stereotypical apprehension, mild distress and — oooh, you’re so strong and powerful, yet simultaneously so gentle Sir Alan — girlie vulnerability. Then, a bit later, she was back on her anti-sexism hobby horse, subtly implying in an interview with Sir Alan’s very old-school wife that there was something a bit odd about his not ever having shared with her (his missus, that is) his business problems.
Fiona’s annoyingness made me warm to Sir Alan greatly, not least for the almost superhuman forebearance he showed throughout by not once ordering his security people to have her dragged off and executed. Apparently, we learned from Nick Hewer, the persona he presents on The Apprentice is no persona at all. A complete ****, then. But a very entertaining one. And with a redeeming twinkle in his eye.
Incidentally, while we’re still vaguely on the subject of girls being rubbish, can I just say how much I hated the BBC’s insultingly poor The 39 Steps adaptation that was on over the Christmas period?
Female-produced and female-scripted — and with Rupert Penry Jones simply there to look mildly tousled and available as Richard Hannay, but not to have to bother with any of that acting nonsense — it was clearly commissioned with the sole purpose of giving girls something to drool over as they stuffed their faces with chocolates.
But why, in God’s name, why? Richard Hannay was never meant to be some sort of cross between Noël Coward and a Playgirl centrefold. He’s a mining engineer, late of the Boer War. He’s a man’s man. He doesn’t do smooth talk, or irony. And he doesn’t — Lord help us — need reinventing for the modern age with the bolt-on addition of a — Lord help us even more — feisty Suffragette sidekick with whom slowly to fall in love. And The 39 Steps is not, repeat NOT, tongue in cheek. Hannay’s quest may be a MacGuffin but it MATTERS. The violence is real, as is the threat to the nation posed by those mysterious baddies. Girlifying The 39 Steps is as pointless and wrong as trying to make Little Women more bloke-friendly by tweaking the plot with a few new chainsaw attacks, lesbian orgies and zombie headsplatter shots.
God, now I think of it, I SO want to see that version. Don’t you, chaps?
Million Dollar Traders (BBC2, Monday) is a new Apprentice-ish challenge programme in which various wannabes (the pretty ex-vet; the beardie tofu-muncher; the ex-army officer; the black one; etc.) are trained up as traders and then given $1 million of real money by a mysterious figure called Lex Van Dam to play at being hedge funders for two months. It’s addictive and involving, as trading unfortunately is, but what really makes it is the sinister off-screen presence of Lex himself.
His name is a cross between Superman’s nemesis and a martial arts hero and you wonder whether he can be for real. But his anger and contempt sound genuine enough as his unflappable ex-trader office manager, Anton Kreil, keeps him apprised on the phone of just how much money his team of ‘****-for-brains’ are losing him.
Comments