THE stinging swipes from Lord Sugar on The Apprentice have become legendary but I hear all is not as it seems.
Looking like he delivers them off the cuff, in fact his jokes are all written in advance – according to one of the candidates on this year’s show.
Student recruitment company owner Dan Miller let me into this big boardroom secret, saying it’s all smoke and mirrors.
Talking about the show, which launched last week with 4m viewers and continues tomorrow night on BBC One, he said: “When he says all of his jokes he’s got a piece of paper on the desk and he crosses them off every time he says them.
“He’s got this magic Mont Blanc pen that he spins around on the table and he spins it on the desk and he says which team is going to go first.
“I mean most of his jokes I didn’t get or didn’t find very funny.
“Probably because of my Aspergers and on a few occasions I had to ask him to repeat the jokes multiple times for me to understand what it was and I think everyone in the boardroom found it quite funny.”
In 2024, Lord Sugar insisted the show is in no way scripted.
In particular, he claimed his jokes were “spur of the moment” saying “they do roll off my tongue. They just come out as we’re going along.”
IT’S the Kennedy love story you probably don’t think of when you look back at the great American political dynasty.
But new Disney+ drama Love Story: John F Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, might just change that after it drops on February 13.
It’s the first in a new anthology from exec producer Ryan Murphy, who currently has The Beauty riding high on Disney+ too.
It stars Paul Anthony Kelly as the son of the assassinated Potus and Sarah Pidgeon as the woman who suddenly gained global media attention when they fell in love.
Their rollercoaster romance came to a tragic end when they were both killed in a plane crash in 1999 – she was just 33 and JFK Jr. was 38.
THE Crown’s Claire Foy has revealed she had to give up coffee to get rid of an infection of parasites she picked up in Morocco.
The actress said on the Table Manners podcast she didn’t take antibiotics and instead had a treatment programme which involved ditching caffeine.
JILL UPS JUNGLE DRAMA
I’M A Celebrity champion Jill Scott has lifted the lid on behind-the-scenes secrets that helped ramp up the show’s drama.
The former Lioness, who was crowned Queen of the Jungle in 2022, says producers intervened to increase the action.
They asked campmates to reshoot key moments and even prompted them on what conversation to have.
Jill said: “I had to go up to Charlene White and tell her that I really didn’t like Loose Women. That was the task.
“Because I’m a people- pleaser and I hate upsetting people, I had to do it twice. Apparently they didn’t catch the first one on camera even though there are 74 cameras in camp.”
Jill also said Culture Club singer Boy George was told to ask her about her sexuality and coming out.
“I was so uncomfortable,” she told the Long Story Short podcast. “I just didn’t think that was going to be the subject.”
U AND U&Dave will launch new escape-room comedy series The Way Out later this year.
The four-parter is hosted by former Great British Bake Off host Mel Giedroyc and features The Traitors Uncloaked presenter Ed Gamble, and comic Nish Kumar, as team captains.
