I have to admit that I have found The Apprentice quite addictive over the past couple of years. As someone who spent almost an entire career in sales and many years sharing testosterone-soaked office space with thrusting alpha males and mouthy, ballsy females, nothing surprises me about the behaviour or chutzpah exhibited by thirty-something wannabes who get the chance to be on telly.

As a once-promising young gun myself, I can confirm that assembling a dozen members of a peer group for a training event or group task was a sure way of bringing out the worst in people, especially if it involved observation and evaluation. While most delegates would behave as reasonable, well-adjusted, co-operative and professional colleagues, there would be one or two people who made you wish for a hasty re-introduction of the death penalty for the crime of being a "total arse". There was always someone who simply had to be heard above everyone else, who had a monopoly on the best ideas and needed to organise everyone in a loud (usually English) voice. Invariably they were imbued with a self-belief cultivated by indulgent parents and business acumen acquired from airport lounge bookshops.

In my experience, such confidence and bravado is, more often than not, entirely misplaced. The old saying that "empty vessels make the most sound" is very true and most examples of the species turn out to be oafish office bullies and corporate cliches, lacking self-esteem and often over-compensating for some shortcoming or other. Chips are often clearly visible on shoulders and egos are always much larger than intellects. The Apprentice attracts these types in droves.

I was lucky to have a career fairly high up in the food chain and rarely encountered people of the calibre of those on the Apprentice. The occasional intellectual sprat did occasionally find its way through the net before before being more closely examined and thrown back into the waves of mediocrity along with purveyors of double-glazing and industrial cleaning products. That said, some of the most successful people I've met came with modest academic accomplishments, but were blessed with natural smarts, bucket loads of common sense and excellent qualities as a human beings.

So when you round up a dozen unpleasant "big-heads", add the TV cameras, the prize of easily acquired celebrity and the caricatures, which Sir Alan and his two sidekicks have now become, the result is a rather predictable and tiresome black comedy.

It's not reality TV at all. The whole Apprentice concept is based on a lie. If you really ran a multi-million pound business and you were really hiring someone to do a meaningful job, these people wouldn't get anywhere near your shortlist. The would-be apprentices represent the extremes of young executive material - and not in a good way. By and large, they're a boorish, selfish, deceitful, disloyal, conceited bunch, lacking any attracive personality traits or discernable talent - in fact pretty much the opposite of every genuinely successful person I have encountered.

What makes The Apprentice work as a television event is the fact that it is so unlike real life. It's a modern version of a Roman amphitheatre where the last man standing survives. It appeals to the voyeuristic senses of Joe Public and offers legally accessible blood sport for those too squeamish to participate. It's Big Brother for people who think Big Brother is beyond the pale.

Not that I really care, but I should also like to make a genuine appeal to the programme makers to ditch Sir Alan. He has become a tiresome and profoundly unfunny bore of a man who offers nothing beyond abusive and often unfair criticism. I can think of no-one less likely to successfully fulfil the role of a mentor in real life. His old school ways are wearing pretty thin and I suspect that, if he was starting out today, he would find it pretty tough going.

I will probably watch the rest of the series in my capacity as blogger/TV critic, but I expect I will be cringing throughout.

ps. I do know it's only a bit of fun.