CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night’s TV: For crying out loud, will you stop banging on about your ‘journey’
The Apprentice
My Grandparents’ War
Rating: 
Don’t call it ‘showing off’ or ‘getting your face on the telly’. That’s judgmental.
Any reality show contestant will tell you their experience has been so much more noble than that. It’s a journey.
Lottie Lion, as her ambitions fell apart on The Apprentice (BBC1), declared tearfully that on her ‘journey’ she’d discovered things about herself she didn’t like. Oddly enough, the 19-year-old’s chief revelation was that other people didn’t like her much either.
As one of the final five on Lord Shouty’s business-for-dummies show, Lottie did what was expected of her during the interviews by having a little weep. Her eyes watered, but the rest of her face remained as savagely disdainful as ever. She looked like a shark that had swallowed a curried eel by mistake.
Lottie Lion, as her ambitions fell apart on The Apprentice (BBC1), declared tearfully that on her ‘journey’ she’d discovered things about herself she didn’t like
The only thing less believable than her emotions was her business proposal — a supper club for snobby ladies in Somerset who enjoy polo and clay pigeon shoots.
The rest of the group weren’t much better. Coffee shop boss Carina cried because she missed her children. Beauty product maker Pamela cried because she missed her mother back in Ireland…until one of Baron Bluster’s assistants called her behaviour needy and off-putting, at which point Pamela’s tears magically vanished.
Lewis didn’t cry. Instead, he prepared for the notorious cross-examinations, where the apprentices’ many shortcomings are mocked, by sitting in the hot tub and flaunting his tattoos.
It turned out that Lewis had never been to Croatia. Maybe he should have gone on a journey before embarking on his ‘journey’
Before long he was in much hotter water. His money-making scheme was to take Sir Amstrad’s £250,000 and buy 200 luxury package holidays to Croatia — then sell them at a profit. Challenged to find Croatia on a globe, he thought it might be somewhere in Greece, or possibly Turkey.
It turned out that Lewis had never been to Croatia. Maybe he should have gone on a journey before embarking on his ‘journey’.
Lottie and Lewis were peremptorily fired. They never had a chance, of course, and Lord Luvaduck must have known that from the start. They were signed up simply to be tormented, and expressed unctuous gratitude for the privilege, once it was all over. Some journey.
The entire cast of The Apprentice 2019. As one of the final five on Lord Shouty’s business-for-dummies show, Lottie did what was expected of her during the interviews by having a little weep
A truly horrendous journey, dubbed by Winston Churchill ‘the worst in the world’, was retraced by actress Kristin Scott Thomas in My Grandparents’ War (C4).
Her grandfather William, the commander of an Arctic Convoy flotilla during World War II, spent weeks on end guarding the merchant ships taking supplies to Russian allies in Murmansk and Archangel — hunted over every mile by German U-boats.
Kristin’s grandpa had never talked much about the war. She began to understand why when she saw a photograph in a family album, tucked between the aunties and cousins, of a sinking aircraft carrier — HMS Courageous, which was torpedoed in 1939. As commander of the destroyer HMS Impulsive, William Scott Thomas rescued more than 300 sailors, but hundreds more died.
Her pride in her grandfather’s bravery increased as she heard of his heroism at Dunkirk. But what defied belief was the ordeal in the Arctic Ocean, where freezing waves would break over the bridge for hours, until the officers’ overcoats and beards were coated with ice two inches thick.
Kristin began her researches with the sort of wry smile that comes naturally when we remember people we loved as children. She joked that her children nicknamed her ‘the Admiral’ because of her bossy ways.
But her indulgent fondness was replaced by speechless admiration for what her grandfather had done. It will change the way she thinks of him forever.
Now that’s a journey.