Sir Alan Sugar would have made a great East End gangster - a fact that the Amstrad boss knows and probably rather enjoys.

It was presumably these straight-talking, hard-nosed qualities that made him the ideal choice when work began on the British version of The Apprentice, the US business variant of the Pop Idol format that saw Donald Trump whittling down a bunch of would-be entre-preneurs.

Next Wednesday the public will get to see the former Spurs chairman take up the Trump torch when the show begins its run on BBC2, continuing that channel's tradition of biz-nertainment programming.

From his first appearance behind a suitably villain-esque modern boardroom table, Sir Alan is theatrically menacing. Warning his aspiring apprentices never to make the "fatal error" of underestimating him, he adds: "I don't like liars. I don't like cheats. I don't like bullshitters; I don't like schmoozers and I don't like arselickers."

No danger, then, of incurring Sir Alan's wrath, if it is stated that whatever his undoubted business acumen, he comes out of this series as a deeply unattractive, strutting, sexist throwback.

On the other hand, he is positively benign by comparison with most of the 14 young hopefuls whose fate he holds in his hands over the next three months. Even allowing for the exaggeration of their personalities by the programme-makers, it is truly terrifying to think of any of them as the future face of British business.

The format is simple enough. The fearsome 14 compete for a £100,000 job working for Big Al, sorry, Sir Alan. Each week they will be set a business project to complete, at the end of which Sir Alan will bid farewell to the weakest link.

Having met Big Al at his east London HQ, the 14 are packed off to live on an cowboy ranch in Utah where they are beaten senseless and deprived of all comforts until they become decent human beings . . . ohno, that was Brat Camp. These business brats are sent to live in a fabulous riverside house in Chiswick, west London, from where they are then summoned - on an Amstrad e-mail phone, of course (you wouldn't expect the no-nonsense businessman to be shy about product placement) - to their first assignment.

They have already been divided into girls' and boys' teams and have chosen pro-ject managers for their first task and names for their "companies". This offered, incidentally, the first great gender divide. The boys spend a few short minutes before opting for "Impact" and hitting the champagne. The girls take what seems like for ever to come up with "First Forte".

For their first task the two teams have to buy £500 of flowers and sell them at a profit, with no useless stock left at the end of the day. The girls' first instinct is instructive: "titty tops and short skirts".

From here on, the 14 young horrors dominate the show. We see Saira, the horribly in-your-face, 2,000mph project leader for the girls' team; she is a ferocious fighter you would not want to be up against but she is also overly aggressive, easily stressed and apparently unable to deal with anyone who disagrees with her. Then again, she faces a backbiting and sometimes back-stabbing team.

There is Matthew, a 39-year-old, 6ft 9in mature student whom we first see whacking his head on a ceiling just as the narrator informs us he is founder of the Tall Society. Matthew is fabulously bombastic, self- importantly telling us he "doesn't suffer fools gladly", which is always a bad sign.

There's Miranda, the estate agent who subverts the girls' team by selling off the stock at a loss very early in the day. Sir Alan is flummoxed by her approach, observing that anyone can sell at a loss: "I could sell £10 notes for £9 all day."

There are exceptions. Paul, one of nature's salesmen, has a patter and persistence that are a pleasure to watch - but only from the sidelines. Tim, the boys' first project manager, seems a voice of calm reason, even though he currently works for London Transport.

The gender divisions are striking. The girls overplan and discuss everything ad nauseam. The boys act on impulse - an approach that is clearly better suited to some assignments than others. Next week they have to design a child's toy. At the flower market, the men seem far more cohesive and organised than the girls, who engage in last-minute rows over everything from ribbons to lilies.

It would be wrong to reveal much more before the programme goes on air. Both teams do make a profit though one does significantly better than the other.

The project manager of the losing team has to choose two other team members to face the "firing line", and the three troop into Big Al's boardroom to face the music. Sir Alan gives each of the three a bit of pasting before pointing at one of them and spitting out the show's catch phrase: "You're fired."

This is a pacy, funny and utterly addictive programme; genuine water cooler TV. Sir Alan may lack Trump's vulgarity but there is an earthy gravity to his performance which seems more British. The show also devotes far more time to what one might term business content than did its American forerunner, which was essentially Big Brother plus a bit of commerce.

Rather like Dragons' Den, BBC2's current biz-nertainment show, The Apprentice has taken a pop format and turned it winningly towards a slightly more serious subject. For once you should believe the hype. The Apprentice is compelling TV, which will be with us for many seasons to come. We can only hope that none of us ever ends up working with its cast.