Tycoon's Apprentice Comes to Aid of Nbc

Twelve months ago, Donald Trump seemed as firmly stuck in the New York of the 1980s as Michael Douglas in Wall Street. His phallic towers were an expression of power and money and perhaps a desire to get as far from the street as humanly possible.

Then came The Apprentice, America's unlikely TV hit of the season and the property developer has been returned to current day iconic status.

Last Thursday, almost 28m Americans watched a two-hour special on NBC in which Mr Trump picked the winner of a 15-week contest for a job running one of his businesses. It attracted higher ratings than CSI, Survivor and American Idol.

The premise was Survivor meets corporate America, with one person kicked out by Mr Trump every week. The players were set tasks such as sell ing lemonade on a Manhattan street corner, organising a golf tournament, or creating an advertising campaign for corporate jets. At the end of each show, on a TV set disguised as a boardroom, Mr Trump would give a dismissive wave of the hand, squint and utter the catchphrase: "You're fired."

But last Thursday it was "you're hired". The winner, Bill Rancic, who formerly sold cigars online, was given the job of overseeing the building of a landmark 90-storey tower on the site of the Chicago Sun-Times on a salary of $250,000 a year.

The biggest winner though was NBC. The network, facing the loss of Friends and Frasier, has breathed a sigh of relief at the show's success. It is an advertiser's dream, attracting moneyed people in the right demographics. Two more seasons have been ordered.

The contestants on the show get the most airtime but Mr Trump is the star. He travels in a helicopter with Trump emblazoned on the side in big letters, constantly brags and uses phrases such as "holy mackerel".

Websites have been devoted to his hair - what appears to be a bizarre comb-over kept rigidly in place and described by comedian David Letterman as "unbe-weave-able".

Robert Thompson, director of the centre for the study of popular television at Syracuse University, said Mr Trump has the "cheese" factor. "He's great fun to mock. He talks in hyperbole - everything is the most beautiful or the most expensive - he has the tastes of a French boudoir circa 1750. He's the clown prince of kitsch. He's smart enough that he can't be completely oblivious to the joke but I'm not sure he's entirely cognisant that he is such a comic character."

Mr Trump's real wealth is unclear. He came close to bankruptcy in the 1990s but now claims to be worth $6bn (£3.3bn). Forbes puts him closer to $2.5bn. He claims to be the biggest real estate developer in New York but that too is disputed. One report suggested he has developed 13 residential towers in the city but does not own them all. His casino empire, the only part of his business that is quoted, is close to financial ruin.

The success of the show has prompted much musing among the American media and business academics. One theory is that, brash and uncouth as he is, Mr Trump is an easy to understand, old-fashioned dealmaker who puts up skyscrapers. For a public cynical of Wall Street but eager to believe in the American dream, Mr Trump is easier to grasp than a company such as Enron that promised riches on the back of making markets on invisible bits and bytes travelling through wires.

As Mr Rancic was getting to work, NBC was basking in its ratings and Mr Trump was enjoying his spotlight, Bruce Leggett-Flynn, a restaurant and bar manager, was emerging into the cold from Trump Tower on Wall Street where the auditions are already taking place for The Apprentice II.

Mr Leggett-Flynn did not make it through. The casting director had grouped them into a dozen people and asked them to debate ethics and Martha Stewart. But he was philosophical. Donald Trump he said "is a good guy". But would he really want to work for him? He pauses, thoughtful. "Not really," he said. Then more certain: "Not at all."