Apparently it involves Sir Clive Sinclair or someone else to do with shite 80’s office equipment. He sits behind a big shiny grey desk in a big shiny grey office. He looks a bit like Sid James with designer stubble. There might be some other people sitting next to him, not sure. A Greek bloke and a bored slouchy lady.
Then what happens is that wannabe business people come up to him - over-groomed, sanctimonious, oleaginous public-school Nigels - and suggest ideas for products he might want to invest in. But each of the panellists has a buzzer that makes a red ‘X’ light up, like on Family Fortunes, and three ‘X’s and the person has to leave.
After that, Sir Clive sends the people who have got through the auditions out to come up with new products – like, say, a new type of nasal hair remover – and flog them to unwitting members of the public. Or they have to pitch them to him again, not sure. Anyway, it always goes ‘totally pear-shaped’.
Then he gets each contestant to bad-mouth the others and apportion blame for why the whole Nostril-Shave-O-Matic scheme backfired. This is the good bit. It’s usually accompanied by the theme tune from Apocalypse Now and we get to see a helicopter fly around the London gherkin. But not quite as good as the next bit, which is when Sir Clive points at one of them and says ‘You’re fired, kyakyakyakya’.
And then Ant’n’Dec, or Dermot, or someone, has a chat with the loser, who also gets interviewed on BBC Breakfast by Bill Turnbill and Susanna Reid. Which is the only way I know about what happens on this show. That and from watching comedy spoofs.
