I know, I know it’s an entertainment show masquerading as a business programme, but the pet food Apprentice episode did get me a little hot under the collar.

The premise that a bunch of entrepreneurs searching for funding from Lord Sugar should have the skills to develop a new pet food and write & produce an advertising campaign (all in a couple of days) might make good TV, but it’s pretty ludicrous.

Why should they be expected to be able to do it with any degree of competence?

If the ability to create an advertising campaign is a core ability for running a business with Lord Sugar, what else might he also expect his candidates to undertake – complete a full financial audit, draft a new customer contract, install a new IT system – or would even Lord Sugar accept that it pays to employ experts for specialists tasks?

Perhaps it’s a reflection of the Amstrad school of advertising – product picture, price and logo with no suggestion of any effort to build a brand…maybe that’s why Amstrad fails to feature on any scale of desirability.

I almost felt some empathy with the Apprentice contestants faced with a rather smarmy (or was that embarrassed) advertising agency and pet food executives, dismissing the thought of a mass market pet food (Pedigree Chum, Kitekat, Whiskas anyone?) – in favour for the bizarrely named Catsize – an interesting idea to help address the problem of pet obesity totally destroyed by an inability to communicate its benefits.

I wonder if these arbiters of advertising effectiveness are the same clever people who insist on sending me cat food offers through the mail despite the fact that I haven’t owned a cat or dog in the 27 years I’ve lived in my house?

And so onto next week – making money out of rubbish…how ironic!