Blame game

LAST week’s edition of The Apprentice was rubbish. How we enjoyed seeing these boasting would-be entrepreneurs getting their hands dirty as Lord Sugar’s latest task set them to work in the rubbish business.

Not all of them grasped the essentials of how the business worked – I was struggling too with the financial side of things – and with the losing team coming second by just £6, it was certainly a close-run contest.

Then the recriminations began with project manager Zoe owning up to getting it wrong, Edna claiming to have made all the decisions, and Susan telling us how she hated Zoe and never wanted to work with her again.

They were still arguing in the taxi at the end after Edna was given the boot after boring Lord Sugar with her list of qualifications.

This week the two teams – renamed Hopeless and Nearly-As-Hopeless – go into publishing. The business is in a bad enough state anyway, what with a drop in advertising and competition from newfangled electronic media. The apprentices- in-the-making can only muck things up further.

They’re gathered together in Fleet Street, one-time hub of the newspaper industry before Wapping came along, and told to create and publish a free magazine.

The winner will be the one that attracts the most advertising. Isn’t there already a magazine called Sugar? Or the candidates could call their publication that and get into Lord S’s good books.

REMEMBER, children, don’t try this at home after watching Wonderland – The Kids Who Play with Fire. The documentary series follows three children with arsonist tendencies.

They have a history of fire-setting.

It’s not just the odd bonfire in the garden either. Ten-year-old Liam sleeps on a charred mattress, and 14-year-old Hulya has repeatedly set her bedroom alight.

Although their behaviour is obviously very dangerous, both to themselves and other people, it seems that for some of them, the temptation is just too strong.

Ryan in particular is brazenly fascinated by flames.

Here, fire service counsellors try to stop the children’s destructive behaviour by getting to the bottom of the anger and frustration that provokes them.

TO scientists they are a pomaceous fruit, but to millions of others they are a thousand memories of fruit pies and golden-hued images of orchards.

Despite being an international fruit, for many folks in Blighty, there’s nothing more quintessentially British than a good old Bramley. Now, in Apples: British To The Core – the apple equivalent of Who Do You Think You Are? – garden designer and presenter Chris Beardshaw looks at how Britain has helped to shape this green and pleasant fruit.

He explores the history of our favourite varieties. He visits a piece of living history – the original Bramley apple tree from which every Bramley apple ever eaten has come from – and goes in search of some lost varieties.

He finds out what drove Victorian horticulturalists to create more varieties of apple than anywhere else in the world.

There’s also a look at the incredible work of British scientists who got to the core of the apple’s deepest secrets and helped make it a mass-market success.

IT was recently announced that the ladies of Wisteria Lane will soon be back on American TV for an eighth series of Desperate Housewives. On this side of the Atlantic, we’re still working our way through season seven, as Gabby and her daughters temporarily move in with Bree.

However, while the redhead may be the hostess with the mostest, she’s also intensely house proud – and she doesn’t appreciate Celia and Juanita’s casual attitude to their new abode. Her friendship with Gabby has withstood a lot over the years, but can it really survive Bree laying down the law to her mate’s kids?

Elsewhere, Tom may live to regret hiring Lynette and Renee to redecorate his office when it becomes clear they aren’t particularly bothered what he wants, while Susan is shocked to learn Felicia is out of jail and back in Wisteria Lane.