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.

What fantastic news that Boris has been elected. He had the balls to run -- and he's done it. The era in which politicians had to be boring, colourless automatons is at an end. Whatever else he does, he's earned his place in history: London's first Conservative Mayor. The world is now at his feet -- I hope he makes a bid for the Tory leadership in due course.

If Boris Johnson loses the mayoral election on Thursday, his supporters will lay the blame squarely at the door of Lynton Crosby, his Australian campaign manager. By all accounts, it was Crosby’s idea to keep Boris on a tight leash, suppressing his natural ebullience to make him seem like a more serious candidate.

The issue of whether politicians have to remain “on message” in order to win elections does not just apply to the London Mayoralty. One of the criticisms most frequently leveled at Gordon Brown is that he is too tightly wound. He lacks the warmth and spontaneity -- the ability to connect with people -- that more natural politicians possess in abundance. Harold Wilson had it; Ted Heath didn’t. Bill Clinton has it; Hillary doesn’t.

This question was explored in depth in The Absence of War, David Hare’s play about the 1992 General Election campaign. The central character is a political leader called George Jones, clearly based on Neil Kinnock, who is constantly at loggerheads with his staff because of his reluctance to rein himself in. Like Kinnock, Jones is a gifted orator, a politician whose idea of campaigning is to leap up on a soapbox and set out what he passionately believes in.

In the aftermath of Labour’s defeat in 1992, many people blamed Philip Gould, the campaign manager, for staging a triumphalist rally in Sheffield a week before the election. This showcased Kinnock’s emotional exuberance when it might have been better to keep it under wraps. In the Absence of War, Hare deliberately takes the opposite tack, attributing Labour’s loss to the fact that the campaign team didn’t allow Kinnock to be himself often enough.

So who is right? Should candidates for high office rely on their natural instincts or do what they’re told?

Perhaps this is a false dichotomy. The most successful politicians of modern times are those who have the ability to speak from the heart and remain on message at the same time. I don’t mean that they’re capable of giving the impression that they believe in whatever it is they’re told to say in order to win elections -- I mean really believe it.

This is a distinction made by the political theorist David Runciman in his forthcoming book about Hypocrisy. He argues that politicians like Neil Kinnock are preferable to those like Tony Blair precisely because they’re capable of saying one thing and believing another. In his view, this is better than being an essentially hollow man, tailoring your beliefs to suit the latest fashions. This chameleon-like quality was summed up by Robert Musil in The Man Without Qualities: “The most coldly calculating people do not have half the success in life that comes to those rightly blended personalities who are capable of feeling a really deep attachment to such persons and conditions as will advance their own interests.”

MGM has acquired the US distribution rights to How to Lose Friends & Alienate People.

It has become a cliché to criticise the Hollywood studios for their lack of originality. First came the sequel, then the prequel, then the remake, then the big screen adaptation of a much-loved TV series … no one can accuse these environmentally conscious Californians of failing to recycle. It seems the only time studio executives are capable of being creative is when it comes to dreaming up new ways to avoid being creative.

The latest method of avoidance is so uninspired that, as far as I know, the entertainment industry has been too ashamed to give it a name. I’m thinking of films like Batman Begins, Superman Returns and The Incredible Hulk. What are they, exactly? Take The Incredible Hulk. Is it a big-screen adaptation of the original TV series? A sequel to the 2003 film starring Eric Banna? Or an attempt to re-launch the Hulk franchise after the box-office failure of the previous effort?

What these movies have in common -- and I would add Casino Royale and Star Trek -- is that the filmmakers have been granted an artistic license to ignore what has happened in previous episodes of the long-running sagas. In the case of Batman Begins, the franchise was at such a low ebb that the filmmakers more or less pretended that this was the first time a character called “Batman” had ever appeared on screen.

Presumably, the thinking behind these movies is that the existing fans of the franchises will come and see them willy-nilly, but a new audience will also turn up, labouring under the impression that these superheroes have never been seen in cinemas before. It probably helps the studios attract A-list talent, too. If they can convince top directors and big movie stars that they won’t simply be making a sequel, but will be “re-imagining” the whole saga, they’re more likely to get on board.

One of the many irritating thing about these non-sequel sequels is their cavalier attitude to the loyal followers of the stories in question. As someone who loved the original Superman, and slavishly watched all three sequels, I was a bit put out to discover in Superman Returns that Lois Lane and Clark Kent had had a son. How, exactly, did they overcome the difficulty that Superman tried (and failed) to address in the first sequel when he returned to the Fortress of Solitude to divest himself of his super powers so he could make love to his girlfriend without killing her? Had the Man of Steel discovered some Supercondom? But if so, how did he and Lois conceive a child? Was it a defective Supercondom? It didn’t make any sense.

The truly alarming thing about these new hybrid blockbusters is that it means the Star Wars saga may not be at an end. Any day now I expect George Lucas to announce he is intending to “re-boot” the story in an “all-new” Star Wars film.