How are you fired?

When I watch a film or a program on the television I often wonder how they have made what I'm watching. For the most part I imagine that it's just pointing a camera at something and remembering to switch it on, but lately the way that the The Apprentice is filmed has been puzzling me.

First of all, do they only film one task a week? Some, like the first weeks cleaning task, are only one day long jobs; given the task in the morning, do task, boardroom to see who has won and then someone is fired. Then what? Do the rest of the group get six days with nothing to do? Or are they just carefully edited to make it look like they do it all on one day?

And the logistics of putting it all together must be a nightmare! I watch an episode of Charlie Brooker's excellent Screenwipe where they mocked up an episode of The Apprentice so you can see what goes into a days work. The production crew has to get all the random members of the public that appear on the show to sign a form allowing the BBC to put their faces on

TV. That must take time. They get the members of the team to make little backstabbing comments about their project manager (or 'PMs'. "I haven't PM-ed before. You happy for me to PM? Right, I'm PM-ing then.") and when the two groups split into two that means four camera crews. Put that together with the traffic in London and it really makes you wonder how they do it all in a day. If they are shot one after another then it must be bloody tiring!

One thing I have noticed is that the show has a number of characters* in each series. The loud one, the argumentative one, the young one, the hopeless one, etc. And that's very obvious this year. Another thing I want to know is what is behind that big door in the boardroom? I know the boardroom is just a set, but I have a theory that Sir Alan Sugar is coming out of a really plush toilet before each showdown.

Speaking of Sir Alan, I'm curious as to how much say he gets in the tasks. Does he decide them all? When he says that he's sorted out meetings has he really sorted out meetings? Or have the production crew done it? How much of his own money is spent on each task and does he keep any profit the team makes? So many questions...

I really like The Apprentice. I think it's one of the best-made programs on TV and can't wait to see who is eventually hired. There are two people I would really like to see go. Their names rhyme with Wren and Red-Ba. But I don't see these people going because they're good TV, and that's what we want to see. We want to see argumentative, bitchy types (Alan Sugar doesn't, based on last week's firing). The best moment of the series so far was when the one whose name rhymes with Wren had been building himself up for confrontation in the boardroom saying basically that no one stood a chance against him. Fast-forward ten minutes, it looks like Sir Alan might fire him and he's practically in tears. He wasn't fired. I shouted at the TV.

* I want to know at what point the word 'character' changed it definition to 'arsehole'. Each year the Big Brother house if filled with characters, or arseholes.