Why Singapore version of The Apprentice shows Alan Sugar's UK series up: Bird Lovegod

It’s actually very stupid on every level and harmful to the truth of business.

Young people watching this dumbed down show will see that business is about being argumentative, hyper competitive, backstabbing, insincere, and for the most part, incompetent.

It’s actually the opposite of what real business is about, and why Alan Sugar is willing to put his name to it I do not know. Perhaps he hasn’t realised just how far the programme has slid.

Perhaps the BBC are trolling him, seeing how degenerate they can make the business sector appear before someone somewhere says stop.

Oh, it’s entertainment, it’s only a TV show. Yes, that is the predictable excuse for the continuous slide into ignorance, the ever reducing of standards.

And entertainment can’t be too intelligent, can’t be educational, and must always aim lower than the supposed intellect and values of the audience. So the producers think.

Obviously when you continue this trend, you find the direction is always down. Not getting enough viewers? Aim lower. Always lower. And so society is degraded by the media, made less intelligent, and absent human qualities.

I was in Cambodia at the end of last year, and watched, on Netflix, the Singapore version of The Apprentice. It’s called The Apprentice ONE Championship. Quite honestly, it made the UK version look ridiculous, embarrassing, and slapstick.

The contestants in the Singapore version were serious people, real, credible, not fluffed up with lip fillers and pumped full of cliched lines about how awesome they are.

They were professional, had humility, and intelligence, and actual personalities rather than the desperate egos of the UK pantomime.

The man they were trying to impress is Chatri Sityodtong, his own business is ONE Championship, a multi-billion pound sports media company.

Chatri is a martial artist, and the values of martial arts are embedded in the show, integrity, courage, respect, discipline, compassion, honour, dignity, the values of Asian society, as Chatri describes them.

Each episode of the show has a hard physical challenge for the contestants to compete in, then a serious business challenge, sometimes requiring them to present to CEOs such as the founders of Zoom, Grab, and Twilio. It’s real and impressive, and the UK version is fake and cliched.

The Apprentice ONE Championship is genuinely moving, in the interview stage the contestants were asked questions such as ‘what do you most regret in your life?’ ‘Cheating on my wife.’ It is a positive influence, educational, instructive and demonstrative of values. Our UK version teaches anti-values. It teaches foolishness, crass behavior, petty greed. It’s pathetic.

If British television is generally aimed in this direction, downwards, and social media is aimed in the same direction, downwards, and the mainstream media is aimed in the same direction, downwards, why are we so surprised that the general direction of our society is downwards?