Jenny Bathurst: "I often feel like I’m a contestant on The Apprentice"

My favourite reality TV show of all time just has to be The Apprentice. I’m sure that due to its popularity and longevity you will be familiar with it but just in case you aren’t, the series follows budding entrepreneurs competing in various tasks in a bid to win a major investment from Lord Alan Sugar. Really, it’s a similar line-up of contestants every year: one man who is convinced he is the most handsome creature to have ever walked the earth, a group of women who don’t seem to understand the concept of being silent when someone else is taking, and always a group of people who are convinced the ground they walk on should be worshipped by all.

And, let’s be honest, we all laugh at them. That’s half the fun of it, isn’t it. Yes, that makes me sound like an opinionated and spiteful hag, but it’s true. We laugh at their ridiculous business decisions, their ignorance that seems so absurd from the comfort of your sofa and their cringey interactions with members of the public. I suppose we think it’s okay because they’ve chosen to put themselves on television and ultimately, the editors of the programme don’t make any efforts to hide any blunders, but it’s such enormous pressure for those individuals who are desperate to achieve their goals and know that their sacrifice for such an opportunity is to be laughed at by millions.

I think in life I often feel like I’m a contestant on The Apprentice. Not because I’ve had too much lip filler or am a terrible haggler, but because I obsess that every tiny move of mine is being examined under a microscope by every Tom, Dick and Harry that passes me by. I suffer from a chronic illness which means I have to do something that is pretty socially unacceptable in most social settings: lay down. PoTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome) causes my heart rate to consistently rise whenever I sit or stand, meaning that after about ten minutes I experience unbearable symptoms extinguished only by reclining and regaining the blood to my brain. Now this is okay in the summer if you’re planted on a blanket surrounded by picnic food, but when the rain is pouring in the middle of December and you’ve had to fashion a blanket out of Tesco bags to place on a bench, it’s not quite so glamorous.

It is a constant narrative in my mind: I can either stay at home, away from judgement and shame, or experience the outside world and risk others pointing and looking. Because it happens. I’m sure I would have had a good look a couple of years ago if I was walking down the street and saw a girl laying on a bench with her head on her boyfriend’s knees.

But something I have had to learn is people don’t care, because we are, by nature, pretty selfish. We are so wrapped up in our own flaws or differences that anything slightly radical is forgotten in a blink of an eye, and every time I risk my physical health purely to avoid the chance that someone might think I’m ‘not normal’ I’m doing a disservice to myself and my mental health. However, if you ever come across a future series of me on The Apprentice wearing a colour block business dress and spluttering in the boardroom, I totally give you permission to laugh at me. Let’s give ourselves some grace, shall we?