Jayne Dowle: Good bosses need more than a sharp suit and delusions of being Napoleon

The Prime Minister has committed more than £100m of public money to the Government’s Start-Up Loans scheme, to give young people financial backing for their own businesses. At its launch he said he was looking forward to seeing the next Amazon, Google or Facebook being invented in this country.

Yet, on the evidence so far from the 16 starters in the ninth series of the so-called reality show, some of our so-called “brightest and best” would have difficulty using the internet, never mind setting up a website to show the rest of the world that Britain means business.

We’ve only seen two episodes, so there is the chance that a creditable star will eventually emerge. Of course, I’m pinning my hopes on Leeds lass Francesca MacDuff-Varley, who started out by teaching baby ballet and vows to “fight to the death” to become Lord Sugar’s business partner. However, from what we’ve seen to date, the contestants seem more interested in what they look like on camera than impressing us with their commercial acumen.

I admit that I’ve never been one to stint on the lipstick myself, but honestly, that wily old fox Lord Sugar has missed a trick here. He should have got Max Factor to sponsor the series. And what’s with all the high heels? Five inches? Six? Is this why our mothers and grandmothers burned their bras, so that twenty-something businesswomen could totter out of taxis pulling those silly little suitcases behind them like a flock of air hostesses wiggling their way through an airport in a 1970s sitcom?

I’m not being bitchy, really I’m not. When it comes to power-dressing, I’ve been there and ditched the T-shirt, and I’ve still got the suits in the wardrobe to prove it. I’m just wondering what must be going through my seven-year-old daughter’s head. We’re not exactly short on glamour between us, me and our Lizzie, but when you watch a programme like this and find yourself remembering the candidates for the startling colour of their contact lenses rather than for the brilliance of their business ideas it says something about values.

Values? Did someone mention values? I know it’s a competition, and business is by its very nature competitive, but have you ever come across so much squabbling? Honestly, those girls pouting and sulking with each other make the petty arguments of my daughter and her school friends look as dignified as a group of bluestockings conducting Socratic dialogue in a Senior Common Room. The contestants would do well to remember that business is not only about proving you’re the best, it’s also about leadership, a quality which appears to be sadly lacking among this bunch of alpha females.

It is also about negotiation, and this is where David Cameron really should worry. We live in a globally-competitive world which demands our people go in and pitch against the best. Yet as Lord Sugar said himself, this crew can’t even grasp the basics. “Counting! Calculations!” – he spelt it out, because some of them obviously can’t add up in their heads. I’ve done more complex deals with my children over pocket money than the one that the team of boys attempted to pull off selling bottled water, and I’ve bartered better at car boot sales than those girls struggling to offload the lucky cats. When supposedly super-human business brains can’t even split the difference between £10 and £15 and come up with about £12, then you really do begin to wonder.

I know, I know, it’s supposed to be entertainment, and we’re not meant to take it too seriously. And we don’t even have to watch it, nor subject our children to the edited highlights when they ask why everyone at school is talking about The Apprentice.

That’s the point though, that young people do find it interesting, and they will seek out role models among the egotists and the backstabbers and the power-hungry oddballs pitching for the £250,000 prize and the patronage of Lord Sugar.

We know that it is manufactured for controversy and edited for publicity, but for many youngsters programmes such as this are the only way they will ever witness business at the sharp end, so it is important that the responsible adults around them – that’s us by the way – impart a sense of balance.

We have to make it clear to the youngest generation of budding entrepreneurs that it is wrong and invidious to assume that running a successful company is just about wearing a three-piece suit and thinking you’re Napoleon.

Not only that, but it’s also insulting to those countless individuals who have dedicated their lives, re-mortgaged their homes, sacrificed so much spare time away from their families, and generally given everything to building up a business, to have it made to look so easy.

Entertaining television The Apprentice might be, but reality it certainly is not. And for that, at least, the Prime Minister should be truly grateful.