Celebrities + Apprentice: great combo

Lennox & friend

Comic Relief has featured a couple of episodes of Celebrity Apprentice. But these were only shorts. What's good about the series being shown late on BBC1, on Monday evenings, is that it's a full - length series, Celebrity Apprentice USA.

To start with, I didn't think I would be grabbed. I've heard of about 5 of the participants - Stephen Baldwin, Gene Simmons, Nadia Comeneci, Lennox Lewis and the ubiquitous Piers Morgan - but the rest were unknowns.

But get all those egos into one show, and make them deliver on real challenges, with the proceeds going to a charity each week, and it becomes a winning combination.

In the second show, the two teams had to produce a TV advert for Pedigree petfoods promoting a homeless dog scheme.

In the men's team, Gene Simmons (Kiss) and Stephen Baldwin decided to run the show single handed as project manager and director, and sent everyone else back to the hotel. Except for their acting talent, our own Lennox Lewis. The idea was that you have a big heavyweight boxing champion going all soft and mushy over a poor unloved pug dog.

So convinced were they of success they didn't even take the brief from the client, and managed to offend one of the judges, Trump's daughter Ivanka, in the process. (Both judges are Trump offspring. Isn't nepotism great?).

So you were imaging they were setting themselves up for disaster and the women's team, led by a TV executive with a most peculiar face (the effects of botox) would cruise to victory.

And quite the reverse happened. Lennox was so engaging in the ad, and it was so simple, everyone adored it and Pedigree will now use it on TV.

I had to smile because the lessons learnt from this episode are not conventional:

• get on with it if you have a great idea and don't bother consulting with clients or colleagues
• it's OK to ruffle the feathers of people you don't think are that important (Ivanka Trump) if you're convinced you're going to succeed.

Nadia Comeneci

Just a pity that Nadia Comeneci was fired. The women celebrities are all a bit nicey-nicey with each other and the one that should have got the boot didn't even get nominated.

Worth setting up your Sky+ folks. Catch the first two episodes on iPlayer.