Whether you’re a grouchy old police inspector or Doctor Who, the race to be your acolyte usually takes place off-screen, well before the cameras roll. The Apprentice (BBC Two) has been different with potential sidekicks fighting for the role of Alan Sugar’s chosen one under the full glare of the cameras. Last night, he finally declared “You’re hired!” to round off the second series. But I don’t envy anyone joining last year’s winner, Tim Campbell, in having to shift such Sugar products as anti-ageing wrinkle cream, especially as Sugar’s own leathery scowl has gained even more exposure this year.

The success of The Apprentice suggests that this elimination contest should be applied elsewhere. Any crusty copper’s sidekick would first need to solve a dozen ITV psychological thrillers even though they lack any convincing psychology or logic. New companions for our favourite Timelord would have to slug it out by negotiating with the Cybermen, sealing a rift in the space-time continuum and proving mathematically that it’s possible to give 110 per cent in zero gravity. Perhaps the Prime Minister should have a 12-week series with policy- making tasks for his successor. That way, we’d all know how deserving everyone was.

All these potential series would make a change from the current Da Vinci Code frenzy. It used be the Nazis that were shoe-horned into every other programme. Now it’s Dan Brown’s bestselling thriller (44 million copies and counting) about secret societies and the descendants of Christ. Since his books feature a hero having to crack codes and ciphers against the clock, I’m sure a Da Vinci Code quiz show will turn up next week. Actually, we may already have that with Countdown, in which I’m sure the random letters have been forming “conspiracy” and “bloodline” lately. Come to think of it, Desmond Lynam is an anagram of Damn Sly Demon so there’s surely something diabolical going on.

Last night, Five gave us a triple bill of programmes related to Brown’s conspiracy-laden work, kicking off with The Man Behind The Da Vinci Code: Revealed. This was Henry Lincoln, one of the authors of the 1980s bestseller The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which used to be piled up high in bookshops alongside Erich von Daniken’s “Was God a spaceman?” books. As in Brown’s novel, Holy Blood suggested that Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene and began a blood descent via a French royal dynasty, a secret preserved by a shadowy order called . . . Oh, you know the rest. I can recall Lincoln expounding these theories in a 1970s BBC documentary as if it were only last week. That’s because footage from that film was also used in a BBC Four Da Vinci Code programme last week.

Lincoln’s Holy Blood co-authors recently sued Brown unsuccessfully, showing that most conspiracy histories involving grails, Masonic pyramids or ancient covert organisations tend to draw on existing theories — it’s how you connect them that counts. Lincoln, who insisted that Holy Blood merely presented a hypothesis rather than provable fact, is currently connecting the dots by examining what he sees as the precise arrangement of French churches in Languedoc (and hinted in a Poussin painting of the region) and on a Danish island. They apparently form sacred pentagonal patterns and are connected to the Knights Templar, an obligatory presence in any mystery hoping to get on the bestseller lists.

Until recently, documentaries happily gave airtime to the likes of Lincoln and “I know where Atlantis is” types to expound on the “uncanny” coincidences and “intriguing” discoveries that supported their theories. Nowadays such programmes lure the gullible with optimistic noises about unsolved mysteries (and usually spurious Nazi connections), and then hit them with sceptical historians and hard science to poo- pooh such ideas. Yet Lincoln was undaunted by academic scepticism, convinced that we’re ignoring the geometrical genius of the ancients.

You could understand his obsession, however. The hunger for symbols and secrets is normal and thanks to the internet and the democratisation of knowledge, public faith in intellectual authority and our willingness to trust received wisdom has been dissolving. Unless, of course, the person speaking looks convincing on television. You can’t help but trust David Attenborough in his authoritative jungle shorts. Or listen to Sir Alan Sugar as he enjoys a God-like status in the boardroom of The Apprentice. To be shown spreadsheets of his businesses would spoil the fantasy and the world, on television at any rate, would be a duller place.

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