Celebrity Apprentice

“I’ve seen you but I don’t know you,” Peter Everett says upon meeting Peter Berner. “But you are ravishing!”

Rob Mills is branded by his teammates as “Mr Perfect.”

Dermott Brereton admits he is, “The master of nothing…. but I’ll have a crack at anything.”

Prue MacSween is the self-confessed “Grandmother” (Wikipedia cruelly has her listed as age 82) of the female team, largely comprised of  “gorgeous bimbos.”

And Prinnie Stevens concedes, “It’s gonna get dirty.”

Welcome to Season Three of Nine’s Celebrity Apprentice series another merry-go-round of the showbiz and sporting names attracted to a camera and Reality TV like moths to a flame.

This year’s cast also comprises Dawn Fraser, Stephanie Rice, Jeff Fenech, John Steffenson, Brian Mannix, Roxie Jacenko, Layla Subritzky and Kim Johnson.

In the opening episode everybody meets at The Star in Sydney where the compliments and drinks flow freely. It’s all fun and games and sequins, but with this many egos in one room it won’t take much of a hand grenade to set it off -and let’s face it, that’s what we’re here for.

Mark Bouris meets the cast at the Sydney Fish Markets, accompanied by his assistants Deborah Thomas and his dashing son, Dane Bouris.

Cleverly, he asks the men and the women to form two lines from most to least famous. Save for one celebrity who happily wanders to the back of the queue there’s a fair bit of jostling behind two sporting champs. It’s Australian Celebrity Apprentice. You don’t argue with a sports champ.

Mr. Bouris then assigns their first challenge: running a fish and chip shop in Bondi. Teams must purchase their stock then scale, gut and fillet their fish. 150 kilos of potatoes must also be peeled, chopped and fried. Fenech and Everett both look worried.

The teams arrive upon two different names ‘Team Fabulous’ and ‘Team Supreme’ (no spoiling on which is which).

As the planning gets underway the men do a lot of male-bonding, but the team captain struggles to keep some structure.

The women’s team is full of egos and opinions. PR experts Prue MacSween and Roxie Jacenko are quickly at odds on strategy, presumably each trying to outdo the other. Dawn Fraser takes no crap from anybody, and easily holds her own amongst those used to garnering attention.

While the series lacks the David Hasselhoff star-power, Kym Johnson gets on the phone to Hollywood pals for donations, including from David Arquette and Jerry Springer. It’s not quite the same as having The Hoff.

Jeff Fenech seems to refer to himself in the third person a fair bit. Brian Mannix drops the punchlines. Peter Everett gushes and manages to upstage them all.

On the day of the challenge the weather turns for the worse. There are novelty cheques from sponsors gagging for their 30 seconds of screen time (sorry guys, it’s more like 8), former winner Julia Morris makes an appearance, a bus of seniors is ‘hijacked’ and someone’s food would fail a basic Health Inspector’s check.

In the board room everybody has frocked up for a party. But there’s nothing to cheer about when Mr. Bouris tears apart their team strategy (or lack thereof). The claws begin to emerge here as egos fight to return for another episode. Several fly under the radar in episode one, but I suspect they have had a quick lesson on what kind of blood they will need to spill to save their own necks.

Supposedly it’s all for charity. Nah. It’s all for ego, careers and TV ratings. The charity thing is merely a by-product to make them sleep better at night.

It will take a lot to topple Deni Hines’ notorious appearance in Season One, or Julia Morris reinventing her career simply by being herself, but admittedly these didn’t happen in episode one.

I was disappointed that Mr. Bouris let the losing team’s captain off the hook by choosing the bottom three candidates himself. It felt like he was steering the outcome in order to keep some bigger names in the mix. The episode also clocked in at a lengthy 1hr 16 minutes without ads, unless Nine plans to edit it into two.

I’d still like to see another non-Celebrity version of the show which is what we had back in 2009, but having said that if you enjoyed either of the last two seasons you should be in for another rocky ride this year.

Celebrity Apprentice is coming soon to Nine.