What is the most “Reithian” television series on our screens at the moment? Which programme does the best job of educating the public about the vital issues that affect the future welfare of our democracy? Newsnight? Panorama? Dispatches? For my money, it has got to be The Apprentice.

On the face of it, The Apprentice may look like just another bullying reality show, with the usual array of nitwits being ritually humiliated by a sadistic team of judges. But scratch the surface and it turns out to be a seditious attack on the managerial culture that is the scourge of modern Britain. Once upon a time, most of us were quite impressed by people with titles like “IT Consultant” and “Risk Manager”, imagining that they performed some essential service in the world of business. However, having seen them in action on The Apprentice, we now know that they are incapable of managing their way out of a paper bag.

It is easy to dismiss the programme as a ratings-grabber because it is so entertaining. After all, the spectacle of a “Global Pricing Consultant” coming completely unstuck when he or she is asked to perform some elementary mental arithmetic, like dividing twenty-one by three, is very funny. “Where on earth do they find these people?” you think. “If they stopped someone on the street at random he or she could do a better job.”

Then it dawns on you that these are precisely the sort of useless parasites who have been sucking the lifeblood out of our economy for years. In a book called Plundering the Public Sector, the investigative journalists David Craig and Richard Brooks document how New Labour has paid men calling themselves “consultants” over £70 billion to improve organisations like the Criminal Records Bureau, the Child Support Agency and the Passport Agency with catastrophic results.

Did you scratch your head in wonderment when HM Revenue and Customs managed to lose the personal details of 25 million people last year? The explanation is that the Government has been hiring people like Alexa (“Management Consultant”), Tre (“Marketing and Design Consultant”) and Katie (“Global Brand Consultant”) to “improve” our public services for the past eleven years. Thanks to The Apprentice, we have seen these people in action trying to run pubs, organise parties and sell ice cream. No wonder that when they’re put in charge of a Government Executive Agency the result is a series of monumental cock-ups.

In fact, it is nothing short of a miracle that Amstrad hasn’t gone into receivership, given the number of Apprentice “winners” who have gone on to work for Sir Alan Sugar. I can’t say I was surprised to see that he has gone from being the 84th richest man in Britain to the 92nd in the latest Sunday Times Rich List. If he employs any of the candidates in the current series -- a particularly rum lot -- he won’t figure in the top 1000 next year.