When Deirdre Barlow was sent to jail for a crime she didn’t commit, questions were asked in the House. Surely similar high-level outrage should surround the firing of The Quiff from The Apprentice (BBC One). Gordon, if you want to garner some easy public support, then speak out over the outrageous injustice of the ejection of the divine Raef – and, more presciently, the continued and inexplicable survival of the dead-eyed ratfink that is Michael Sophocles.

The Quiff was team captain for this week’s task – create a TV advert for a brand of tissues. He and Michael reminisced about their love of performance and musical theatre: “I played Sebastian in Twelfth Night,” Raef said to which Michael offered a few bars of Fagin: “Can a fella be a villain all his life?” From not knowing what a kosher chicken was, Sophocles celebrated “one of the great Jewish characters”.

Puzzlingly, their team chose the single and childless Siân Lloyd, the ITV weather forecaster principally known for losing her freaky MP boyfriend to a Cheeky Girl, to play a worried mum packing her kid off to school with a tissue. “They’re using me for my acting skills, not my weather symbols,” she noted. But the boys didn’t care. Raef and Michael were happiest wiping yoghurt off each other’s noses.

Claire came up with a pretty box and a name, “I love My Tissues”.

Lucinda, wearing another killer beret, wound up Alex and Lee by suggesting they shoot a gay-themed advert for their tissue, “Atishu”. The two men whinged they would never buy a tissue if gays advertised it. Despite Lee (his “That’s what I’m talking about” was in abeyance) pleading for the team to unite, Lucinda scolded Alex, the ineffectual heart-throb, with a “Naughty naughty naughty” when he offended her. She couldn’t understand why they had put a picture of a woman blowing her nose on the cover of their box of tissues. “It’s quali-eeeeeeeee,” Lee replied.

Raef said he was aiming for a “nonWoody, DiCaprio-esque” style, focusing “on gesture and action” in their ad in which a young boy and girl shared a moment, while Lee, Lucinda and Alex oversaw a hideously wooden family trio (scary dad, singsongy mum, devil child with runny nose). Lee delivered a thuggy presentation to a group of advertising experts about “Atishu” being aimed at something called the “female genre” and “the muvvver communiii-eeee”.

Their adverts may have been more garish, the other team’s more stylish, but as Sir Alan exploded at Raef and co (calm down dear!): “I do not know what your bloody advert is about!” To Lucinda, Lee and Alex: “You won! Your horrible ad, your horrible box threw it in people’s faces!”

Raef tried to raise the tone of the final boardroom: he was determined it would not degenerate into a back-stabbing bearpit. Some hope. Snake Sophocles said that “everything good about the ad came from me”. The one very small part of me that still likes him does so for his unself-conscious way of calling people “dum dums”.

Still, Sir Alan is a fan despite his mounting calumnies. Raef was too posh, too elegant and, according to the Gnome on High, full of “hot air”. This wasn’t true (he seemed just kind and decent) and so for the first time Sir Alan fired the wrong person. Despite being barbecued by Snake Sophocles, Raef said they were still friends. Raef: buy a Biggles flying scarf and keep The Quiff.

Shifting loyalties and betrayal also clattered around the not-so jolly hockeysticks of My New Best Friend (BBC Four), which followed four girls in their first term at Cheltenham Ladies College. Friendship is hard enough without the distorting prism of boarding school. Cliques, isolation and homesickness all affected Daisy, Nanae, Annabelle and Lydia in different ways. Lydia had the most circumspect approach – “You don’t want to become someone’s personal stalker”. Daisy felt betrayed when her first close friend started to ignore her. Nan felt only a “semi-Cheltenham girl” because she was a day pupil.

Why their friendships flamed into life, burnt brightly, then died the girls couldn’t express – but all seemed privileged and confident so it will probably all work out. Someone we assumed to be the headmistress said at assembly that she wanted her girls to learn the value of “compassion and tolerance”. The Apprentice contestants must have missed that assembly.

Out of the box

— The Simpsons’ voice artists are at it again. After disputes in 1998 and 2004, the key cast members Dan Castellaneta (Homer), Julie Kavner (Marge), Nancy Cartwright (Bart), Yeardley Smith (Lisa), Hank Azaria (Moe) and Harry Shearer (Mr Burns) want a raise from $360,000 an episode to a cool half-million, according to the US trade paperDaily Variety. Digging in their heels, the actors have refused to record new episodes until their demands are met. Ay caramba!

— A major new TV adaptation of Robinson Crusoe has just been announced, to be filmed in the Seychelles. Sam Neill and Sean Bean are among the cast but the eponymous role goes to a younger hunk, Philip Winchester (Thunderbirds). The last TV adaptation of Defoe’s novel was way back in 1964, a much-loved version starring Robert Hoffman.

tim.teeman@thetimes.co.uk

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