The Lipster

The time has come again for clichés about selling ice to the Eskimos and the wagging of your hirin' and firin' fingers, ladies and gentlemen, for tonight's TV brings us the fourth series of The Apprentice, the reality show least likely to feature bottle fellatio and pig wanking. And although the basic structure is untweaked – just as in series three, there are 16 contestants, eight male and eight female – this time I'll be watching the genders at war.

The Apprentice has always played women against men, but this year the pre-publicity shouts it from the rafters: two separate trailers in which we're invited to (1) ‘Meet the Girls’ and (2) ‘Meet the Boys’. The women bluster about ruthlessness and manipulation, emphasising their brass balls and similarity to Rottweilers. Most of the men just seem to want their hair ruffled as they simper about making colleagues laugh. Each trailer’s closing statement says it all – while Alex Wotherspoon earnestly speaks of his heart’s desire to win the contest, Jenny Celerier brags of her ability to exploit her shapely legs, and thus tip a business transaction in her favour. So far, so 1983.

Make no mistake: the theatrical spectre of Katie Hopkins, last year’s Home Counties lovechild of Margaret Thatcher and Martin Bashir-era Princess Di, already looms large. With her fluttering eyelashes and perfect pout, Hopkins memorably wished another contestant to be run over during her treacherous reign, and excited a great deal of debate over the role of women in the modern corporate world. Was she simply acting within cutthroat standards of ruthlessness acceptable for men, only attracting criticism because she was a woman? Or was she an outdated superbitch whose like hadn’t been seen since Falcon Crest was cancelled? The whole furore – whichever side of the meeting room one sat on – probably told us by its very existence that how women behave in business still attracts much more scrutiny than how men conduct their wheeling and dealing.

And giving the Apprentice seasons so far an arch-eyebrowed overview, they haven't treated women very well. Last year controversy bubbled when Sir Alan posed childcare questions to the female contestants; his accusatory tone suggesting that motherhood equalled unreliability. Then throughout the lifetime of the show, there's been the casual stereotyping of Frances, Sugar’s fake receptionist – a woman who does little more than delivering the line “Sir Alan is ready for you” with a well-timed hair flick.

Then there's the fact that the two most obviously capable contestants ever to grace the show – the fearsome Ruth Badger and multi-talented Kristina Grimes – didn’t scoop the top prize, although they've subsequently gone on to greater business success than those who triumphed over them. So on one hand, losing out in The Apprentice probably reflects the struggle that many brilliant women face in that hard-nosed world, but given it was also a showcase for their skills, they were soon able to channel them elsewhere. Oh, sweet justice!

Still, we're forgetting one thing they're doing right. To my mind, The Apprentice can trot out these typecast gender roles 'til it's time for the taxi ride home as long as Margaret Mountford, Sir Alan’s aide, remains on the show. TV so rarely represents women over 50 as anything other than customers for equity-release schemes that it’s a joy to see her permanently unimpressed over-the-glasses glare when she’s forced to sit through marketing ‘brainstorms’ about pouches to carry dog faeces.

But who knows what the new season will hold. How will this year’s female contestants deal with the inevitable analysis their methods will attract? Will all the challengers rise above the usual ‘girls vs. boys’ nature of the early weeks without sinking into tedious Venus and Mars camps? I'll admit it – I want the answers to these questions as much as a tyrannical line manager. And I'll be scheduling a weekly Wednesday evening meeting in my metaphorical BlackBerry to find them.