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LIKE everyone, it seems, I'm a very big fan of The Apprentice.

In case you don't have a television, it's about a bunch of already successful business people trying to get a £100,000-a-year job with hairy, scary Sir Alan Sugar.

So he sets them lots of tasks which they promptly mess up to various degrees then blame each other as he decides who to eliminate from the competition.

But as many people have commented, two of the highlights of the show are Nick Hewer and Margaret Mountford, who stalk the would-be apprentices then grass them up to Sir Alan when they tell him porkies.

Nick, it turns out, is not just a corporate animal - he's a petrolhead of sorts, too.

He's got a 20-year-old Renault 4 and is planning to drive it the 10,000 miles to Mongolia for charity.

He hopes to go to - take a deep breath - France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, the Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan before arriving in Mongolia's capital, Ulan Bator.

I've just looked on his justgiving.com website and he's well on the way to his £5,000 target for a charity which tries to place orphaned, abandoned and vulnerable children in Central and Eastern Europe and Africa with families.

I love his comment on the site, which seems to sum up the danger of the trip: "Of course, I'll be meeting all my own expenses, including bail money, border control bribes, prison food subsidies and hopefully, repatriation costs."

So I was going to write about my admiration for someone having the pluck (and possibly lack of sanity) to take a car which, frankly, you'd be loath to drive up the A12 in, and head off on a journey of about the same distance as most people drive in a year.

And it's true - there's no doubting his courage, although possibly it's a ploy to get as far away as possible from Sir Alan's, er, robust management style.

But then I spotted something which dented my respect somewhat: That no doubt very well cared for Renault has a name.

Any name for a car is bad. Hortense is, frankly, offensively twee...

10:12am Friday 6th June 2008

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