Comic Relief Does The Apprentice

In a preamble to the forthcoming series of The Apprentice, our business TV blogger, Verity Gough returns with a withering look at last night's Comic Relief frivolity.

In a change to the usual format on account of it being Red Nose Day, last night's celebrity version of The Apprentice was relatively un-entertaining and only really revealed what we all already knew: celebs are megalomaniacs and Sir Alan has no sense of humour. For the boys, Jonathan Ross (big kid) Alan Carr (camp and funny) Jack Dee (predictably morose but funnier than Ross) Gerald Ratner (glum) and Gok Wan (camp and stressed). For the girls: Ruby Wax (loud and annoying) GMTV's Fiona Phillips (quiet) Michelle Mone (OCD), Patsy Palmer (shouty) and Carol Vorderman (um, mathsy).

The task was to invent, design and package a new toy for five-to-eight-year-olds before making a TV commercial about it, and pitching to potential retailers. The winning team's design would then be developed for market. Sir Alan decided to mix it up a bit this year and placed one real entrepreneur in each team: po-faced jewel king, Gerald Ratner and Scottish lingerie queen, Michelle Mone, perhaps in the vain hope that there might be a glimmer of an actual marketable idea at the end of it all. And of course the white-haired wonders, Nick and Margaret were on hand to roll eyes and tut at the celebrities' antics.

As the initial discussions kicked off, the first decision to be made was who were going to be the team leaders. The girls quickly nominated Mone, despite her protestations that she was a terrible bossy boots and had OCD. When the boys' team asked the same question, old show off Ross's hand shot up quicker than a rat up a drainpipe but it was decided that Ratner would be a better leader (how wrong they were!)

It didn't take long for both teams to decide on a product: the Swap Belt – a tacky looking belt for kids to hang collectables off, for the boys and Stick Stuck, a Velcro suit for children to stick to each other in, for the girls. Ross who is clearly used to getting his own way, promptly took over and from then onwards, no one got a word in edgeways. The girls, however, complemented each other, developing ideas and sharing ownership of them. Lots of mutual appreciation ensued.

By the following day, the prototypes had been developed and delivered and the teams set off to plan their marketing campaigns. By now I was getting really annoyed with Ross and his silly antics, but more hilarious yet was Gok's stress out about how difficult his 'styling' task was and how no one understood how much he had to do (is he or is he not a stylist?).

An unwitting comedy moment was provided by Ratner, who by now had conceeded power in all but name to Ross, when he lamented the loss of days gone by when boys painted lead soldiers and played cowboys and Indians in the woods while Ross bounced off the walls of the limo like a kid after too much tartrazine.

Over on the girls' team, things seemed to be going pretty well. The jingle for their Stick Stuck ad was recorded and the filming complete. By this point, it has all been pretty boring and my eyes had started to glaze over: cue a pointless tantrum from Palmer who bizarrely took offence at being asked by Mone what she was doing (some sort of dance routine with a bunch of am drams). The poor kids looked distraught as Bianca, erm I mean Patsy, launched a tirade of vitriol at a bemused Mone before walking out, then coming back in.

Finally, it was nearly all over. The teams, faced with Sir Alan, his sidekicks Nick and Margaret, and a room full of star-struck toy industry experts clapped and tittered along to both presentations – even the rather bizarre effort by the girls which included some particularly hammy acting from Vorderman. A few questions were fired at the teams – and deftly barked down by Palmer, and then it was curtains– cue high-fives and relieved sobbing.

Back in the boardroom, Sir Alan, looking like a bulldog chewing a wasp, seemed unimpressed with the boys' attempts at humour. So who won? Obviously it was the girls – the rather pathetic and cheap, poorly thought-out effort from Ross's camp was never going to have legs. So now we have to wait and see who gets the boot and I for one can't wait to see Wossy fired live on Prime Time TV.

Comic Relief does The Apprentice concludes live tonight at 8pm.