Hiring on all cylinders

TV Review: Sir Alan "I-promise-you-this-as-sure-as-I've-got-a-hole-in-my-arse" Sugar has got himself a new apprentice to blow on his soup and cool his wrath; another ambitious, tough little minion to clickety-clack her away along the corridors of his £800 million (€1,172 million) empire and make the money make more money.

Yippee.

In The Apprentice: the Final, Michelle Dewberry, his fresh little poppet from Hull, broke into a cautious smile when she saw off her last remaining rival, Ruth Badger, a tough and strapping sales manager who rather scuppered her chances of success at the beginning of the final episode when she stated that "I won't be the one to roll over and let Sir Alan tickle me" (we should be thankful for small mercies).

Dewberry and Badger's last task was to organise two separate but simultaneous events in the two glass corridors that connect the two towers of London's Tower Bridge. For the task, they were invited to choose staff from among some of the series' more insanely egotistical and colourful rejects and were then sent off with a budget and 48 hours to create a party. Thirty-six hours later, with the various contestants limping around London trying to rouse the interest of weary passers-by in a Bond night called "007 Heaven" (Michelle's offering) or Ruth's marginally more abysmal "Murder Mystery Night" (which also included over-enthusiastic girls doing the can-can and "staff" sporting moth-eaten Victorian ruffs), the words "piss-up" and "brewery" sprang to mind.

"It's a dog-eat-dog world," said Sir Sugar, though actually it's probably more correct to say that it's a dog-eat-murder-mystery-actor world - if you've ever despaired of your career choice, spare a thought for murder-mystery thesps improvising arthritic old tosh to a bunch of disinterested drunks with indigestion after their all-you-can-eat turkey buffets. "Who are you?" Sir Alan asked one poor unfortunate has-been with a dodgy upper-class accent, who was attempting to entertain him with some silly chat about daggers and drawing rooms.

Oh well, it's over for another year. Sir Alan harrumphed importantly about the value of the series with regard to promoting business acumen (or maybe that was acned businessmen), and that was it - he was free to trip the light fantastic with his icy prize. No doubt thousands are already filling in their online applications for next year: "I'm tough!", "I'm ambitious!", "I'm a winner!", "I won't let you down, Sir Alan", "I'll give you 110 per cent, Sir Alan, three bags full, Sir Alan" . . . Sir Alan???

TOMMY TIERNAN INVITED us into the seriously precarious world of stand-up comedy as he and his well-travelled laptop attempted to crack the US comedy circuit in Jokerman: Tommy Tiernan Takes on America. The first in a four-part series began with Tiernan performing his hundredth show in Dublin's Vicar Street in front of a packed house of young urbanites in halter-neck tops who'd been spending quality time with the hair-straightener (and the ladies looked lovely too). Tiernan is an irreverent master of the Irish zeitgeist and knows how to pull in an audience. Prior to his sell-out Dublin shows, we saw him go "toe to toe" with Pat Kenny on the Late Late Show, where his invective against cosseted priests in their rambling parochial houses and air-conditioned cars earned him numerous calls to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission, fleetingly illuminated Kenny's professionally beatific face with terror and encouraged the Vicar Street tickets "to fly out the door".

But packed Irish venues, seemingly, were no longer challenging enough for the reassuringly morose Tiernan. "I've got to find my happy head," he said as, outside his dressing room, the Vicar Street hordes loudly circumnavigated each other's Bacardi Breezers to find a seat.

At the start of his two-year odyssey to crack America, Tiernan, in a moment of wild optimistic abandon, lifted his head from the misery of his intransigently empty laptop and said: "I'm good enough to know that I'm not shit." The journey took him to inhospitable New York comedy cellars, where he entertained a handful of friendly comedy aficionados who, despite their East Coast liberalism and European eye-wear, had never heard of the Northern Bank robbery or the curing powers of Lourdes. The pressure of walking out on stage (whether to rapturous recognition or polite speculation) without a script or a band is immense, and the honest portrayal of Tiernan's journey makes for quite compelling viewing. Interestingly, the fourth and final part of the series will not be aired until the autumn, by which time Tiernan and the programme-makers will presumably have decided whether or not the Navan man has bitten off more than he can chew in the Big Apple.

TIME TO PLAY spot-the-acutely-cheery-loser again, and predictably it wasn't Alan Sugar, who smiled like a piranha when The Apprentice won Best Feature at the annual luvvie fest, the BAFTA Television Awards.

Prize for most devastated loser of the night was surely Noel Edmonds ("the Bee Gee that time forgot", according to Dead Ringers), who blinked back his fury when Deal or No Deal failed to yield him a statuette. Despite an atmosphere of nervous indifference and caustic disdain, there were some well-cut gems hidden under the Versace pleats and veiled compliments at this year's event, presented by the defiant and heavily pregnant Davina McCall. British comedian Chris Langham picked up the Best Comedy Performance award for the political satire, The Thick of It, while Help, the brilliant spin on psychoanalysis in which he starred with Paul Whitehouse, deservedly won Best Comedy Programme. Essex boy Jamie Oliver, meanwhile, got a standing ovation and a shiny mask in recognition of the admirable Jamie's School Dinners.

Inevitably, and thankfully, there was a side order of leftie politics when veteran film- maker Ken Loach, collecting the British Academy Fellowship, used his platform to remind all the news editors in the audience that what spin doctors call "the war on terror" is, in fact, an illegal invasion of Iraq. Then there was the irritatingly smarmy but sometimes spot-on Rory Bremner who, when presenting an award to the Channel 4 Ashes coverage team, quipped that "this time last year the prospect of England beating Australia was as unlikely as someone having sex with the deputy prime minister". Sometimes you just can't win.

"IT'S ONE THING labelling the contents in the drawer; the thing is to remember that I've got the drawer." My award for most thought-provoking, sympathetic and moving offering of the week goes to ONE Life: My Life on a Post-It Note, which told the story of 65-year-old Alzheimer's sufferer Christine Lyall-Grant and her daughter, Fiona, as they negotiated a further year of Lyall-Grant's effort to maintain her independence in the face of the insidious disease.

Lyall-Grant, a former copy editor for Cambridge University Press, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's when she was just 55. Her intelligence, humour and spirit shone through in her battle to fight off confusion, the post-it notes of the title littering her home in an attempt to anchor her to her past. On a wallchart she had written "Hatch", followed by her date and place of birth; "Match", the names of the three men she had married ("I don't want to be thinking, 'I know I married three men but who are they?'); and, poignantly, "Dispatch" followed by a question mark.

Dying with dignity was a major issue for Lyall-Grant, who knew that her continued decline was inevitable and that she may live for 20 or more years in a condition of blank dependency. She spoke with disarming honesty to her daughter about being allowed to swim in the waters off Southwold (a pastime she had loved), until the waters eclipsed her and she could drown, sparing herself and her family her further deterioration.

Her daughter described the process of losing a loved one to Alzheimer's as "a slow process of grieving" and although she did willingly take her mother to Southwold, it was not to facilitate her suicide but to offer her the chance to experience the water again, to bring her for what they both knew would be their last holiday together. Later, Lyall-Grant described the swim as "freedom, to be alone, to be back to myself", before adding, with a haunting lucidity that undercut her previous desire for death: "I desperately want to see tomorrow, I want to see my children, I want to go for a walk."