‘Britain, you were hopeless in the Party Organisation challenge. You stood in the corner afraid to talk to anyone, then downed 12 pints of lager, tried to start a fight with France and vomited on your shoes. Your CV shows you have experience of starting your own empire from nothing, but the recent bits are less impressive and if you want to be in with a chance of winning here then you really need to up your game,’ Sugar told contestants. ‘But Italy – appointing teenage exotic dancers to run the show for you, what were you thinking of? You’re fired.’

The latest incarnation of the popular series sees European countries competing with each other through a variety of tasks in order to win investment in their economy and the chance to work alongside Lord Sugar’s ego. In Week One, when contestants were divided into North and South teams to set up a catering business, Britain made a rather good cup of tea to complement France’s boeuf en croute, while Greece was fired after the team they were leading went €50 billion over budget and smashed all the plates.

However, since then, things have been on the slide. In Week Two, Britain’s business model of attracting dodgy money from around the world to invest into football clubs, then selling replica shirts made in Chinese sweatshops was criticised as being too high-risk. It was, however, enough to see off Ireland, which bankrupted itself by betting everything on a vague marketing concept called ‘the craic’ to sell tar to tourists for €8 a pint.

Germany remains the strong favourite, impressing Lord Sugar by succesfully making and selling things that aren’t completely crap, something he never quite managed in his own business career. He did however express doubts as to how popular Germany’s proposal to expand the existing business model to the rest of Europe would prove.

‘The bottom line is that the Liberal Democrats just weren’t pushy or irritating enough to win over voters at last week’s local elections,’ said Clegg. ‘And as Sir Alan would tell you, in business it’s all about the bottom line.’

The Deputy Prime Minister went on to contrast the humiliation of his own party at the polls with The Apprentice’s massive viewing figures. ’Sir Alan gets eight million viewers by sitting in a boardroom full of vain, shallow, self-serving morons who spout meaningless clichés in an effort to conceal their ignorance and outlast their colleagues. It’s high time the Cabinet was more like that, so the Liberal Democrats are going to step up to the plate, give it 150 per cent, think outside the box and deliver incredible results.’

The move has angered some Lib Dems, with Business Secretary Vince Cable criticising Mr Clegg’s plan to change the name of the party to ‘Team Win’. ‘He didn’t manage the team very well at all on that last task,’ Cable complained. ‘I could have told him that we didn’t have a strong concept, but unfortunately he was too full of himself to see the granularity. I am a key cog in the wheel and he should have made better use of my extensive skill-set and unstoppable charisma. I would have given this task 200 per cent.’

And in an open challenge to Mr Clegg’s authority, Energy Secretary Chris Huhne emailed party supporters to tell them: ‘I admit that we dropped the ball on this task, but if you make myself the project manager going forward then I promise you I will give it 400 per cent and get astronomical results that will rock your world, transforming your notion of success.’

Prime Minister David Cameron has said he ‘broadly supports’ Mr Clegg’s efforts to shore up party discipline and denied rumours that he is preparing to start firing one Liberal Democrat a week until only one is left standing. ‘But I’ll be watching Nick very closely in the next few weeks; he needs to prove he’s up to the job,’ Mr Cameron said. ‘I’m not a charity. It’s sink or swim. I don’t do lifeboats – at least not since we cut funding to the RNLI by 40%.’

‘The last name on that list shows you the size of the problem,’ said UoL’s new Chancellor Lord Sugar. ‘Standards among the uneducated have fallen off a cliff and we need the funding to raise our game — especially if we’re to compete with other non-academic organisations like the School of Hard Knocks, which only recently achieved Academy status and re-opened as the Institute of a Bloody Good Kicking.’

After offering a completely free and informal education for centuries, the UoL will now require applicants to borrow £500 to buy a secondhand van and go around selling cleaning products and Amstrad goods door to door. ‘If they can make a profit doing that it will be a bleeding miracle and they deserve a degree,’ said Sugar, ‘but if not they can at least have a student debt and suffer like everyone else.’

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith praised these moves and announced some more new initiatives to support the continued provision of valuable life lessons to the general public. ‘I have decided that the Carrot and Stick system is completely out of date and is to blame for society’s current dysfunctional state. As from 2011 it will be abolished and replaced by a streamlined single choice Baseball Bat-based incentive scheme.’

‘We need to think more about what used to be known as ‘the deserving poor’ continued the government minister, ‘And as far as I’m concerned, if you live in Rochdale and have no job or education, you deserve to be poor and will be given no further assistance. It may sound cruel, but it’s done with the best of intentions — how else can we free up cash to pay a living pension to former MPs and their advisers?’

‘Quite frankly, I’ve never had to put up with a more disappointing candidate,’ Sir Alan told him. ‘I don’t know how you’ve ended up as Prime-Minister. Did anyone vote for you? I certainly didn’t. To put it bluntly, everything you’ve been put in charge of has been a mess. You’ve been given a chance as Chancellor, and you’ve spent all the money you had, plus plenty you didn’t. Then, for some reason I still don’t understand, you’ve ended up with your team ‘choosing’ you for Prime Minister, and that’s when everyone really saw what a useless oaf you are.’

Gordon tried to interupt to half-heartedly defend himself, but Lord Sugar continued tearing him to pieces for leading the government into disarray. ‘Half your team have walked out on you. When it comes to tackling the other teams you’re up against, you’ve been dreadful; they seemed to spend every Wednesday just laughing at you.’

In the long-running TV show, millions of viewers had watched Gordon repeatedly bungle simple challenges, until he lost the confidence of those around him. He remained determined to stay in charge and in what he had hoped would be a masterstroke hired TV star Alan Sugar to weed out any dead wood in his organisation. ‘But at the end of this sorry saga…’ commented one cabinet minister, ‘you’d have to say that perhaps Gordon’s biggest mistake was to hire someone who was most famous for sacking useless people.’

Brown is apparently undaunted and now plans to outline his plans for economic recovery on Britain’s Got Talent, in order to get a glowing endorsement from Simon Cowell and Piers Morgan.

A French version of the popular British reality show ‘The Apprentice’ has come unstuck as it emerged that the host was not legally permitted to fire any of the contestants.

The finalists are now insisting that they have a job for life, after an attempt to sack one competitor resulted in massive student demonstrations, major strikes across the French public sector and the burning of lorries on the auto-route.

The show has now been renamed ‘Restez en place!’ and follows the various contestants as they negotiate down their 35 hour week and threaten to work to rule over the inadequacy of a two hour lunch-break. Meanwhile the host, Alain de Sucre observes their attempts in the various tasks he set them, such as selling over-priced stale baguettes at a French market in Hertfordshire or working as a Parisian waiter without smiling. After they have failed miserably he tells them what he thinks of them. ‘Vous etes une piece de merde’ or ‘Vous n’avez pas un clue saignant!’ before pausing for effect and delivering the show’s punch-line; ‘Mais… Restez en place!’

The head of TF1 is under intense criticism for buying the rights to The Apprentice without checking if the BBC format could work under French employment law. ‘He is totally incompetent and is not fit to run a television channel,’ said one colleague. ‘Mark my words – he will certainly be out of a job when he retires on full salary in 2028.’