Ruby Wax was the sensible one.

Filming last night’s episode of The Apprentice, 'You're Fired' was as strange as I thought it might be, but not for the reasons I had imagined.

The format is as simple as it is effective. Every week Dara O’Briain interviews the fired candidate, helped out by a panel of experts and celebrities.

Generally the panel has one or two famous names, joined by an anonymous professional from a relevant industry, in this case – me.

When I arrived at the BBC Riverside studios I still didn’t know the identity of of my fellow panelists, or the fired candidate. But I was already nervous, and here’s why.

The format seems to have shifted since Dara took over from Adrian Chiles. Basically it’s funnier now, especially as a comedian is always part of the panel. The gags fly thick and fast, and it’s kind of tricky for the plucky amateur panelist to get stuck in.

However I’d done some prep and figured that at the very least the fired candidate would be just as at sea as me.

But I hadn’t reckoned on the combined might of Ruby Wax -  quick fire, practiced and razor sharp are all understatements – and fired candidate Alex Epstein, professional wally.

For those of you who don’t know, Alex is a former communications manager who over the previous six weeks has shown himself to be simultaneously lovable and deluded.

He has an unshakeable self-belief that explains both how he got himself onto The Apprentice in the first place, but also how he got himself fired from the show.

He is genuinely creative in the very broadest sense, and you can see from all the episodes so far that the other candidates really enjoyed spending time with him socially, but find him totally frustrating when real work needs to be done.

Trevor Nelson, superstar DJ and thoroughly good bloke, was the third panelist and at various stages all three of us were left speechless as Alex embarked on an unprompted round of songs, anecdotes and branding ideas. Some of them properly funny, some of them utterly bonkers and the rest simply inexplicable.

Ruby got the measure of him first. Having asked him whether he was an alien, dropped on his head as a child or simply knowingly having us on, she concluded (vocally) that he was an accidental genius and should get his own show.

Working in advertising prepares you for all sorts of unforseeables, but I can honestly say that this half hour of madness floored me.

I remember the moment the tweet arrived, which is itself unusual. Somebody somewhere was confidently asserting that Old Spice sales had dropped 7% year on year, despite the fantastic campaign featuring Isaiah Mustafa.

Really? It just didn't seem right. Firstly, we all know the numerous factors that sometimes mean even the most outstanding creative can take a while to translate into sales results. Wasn't this a bit soon to be making such an assessment?

Secondly, why the delight? There was a ghoulish joy in some of the online comments. Yes it's a competitive world, but in their eagerness to put the boot into somebody else's work, too many people ended up propogating the misinformation about Old Spice's sales.

It's easy to do of course. The thoughtless re-tweet, the rushed blog post. Within hours of the original misreporting, the bogus news had been reproduced all over the web. A particularly virulent strain of attack used the campaign's status as a Cannes Grand Prix winner to question the link between creative excellence and ROI.

Thanks to the IPA and Thinkbox amongst others, evidence of the causal link between creativity and commercial success is unassailable. And now we know the truth about Old Spice sales, this case study looks like becoming more compelling evidence. Nevertheless, for the twelve short hours that it took for 7% dip to be revealed as false, the link was being questioned yet again.

As people rushed to judgement, one of the more surprising things to emerge is that Phil Thomas, CEO of Cannes Lions, is reportedly considering a new category for effectiveness.

I hope he resists this latest extension of his fairly stretched brand.

Cannes is fantastic for it's global reach and its unrepentant focus on craft and conceptual thinking in all channels. It is single-mindedly about creativity, with no caveats or conditions.

Everyone of its jurors is selected for their experience and personal judgement. They are asked to judge - in their opinion - the absolute quality of work in front of them, and nothing else. We accept their decisions as subjective, sometimes capricious and often controversial.

Measuring effectiveness meanwhile is all about establishing undeniable, objective truths about how a campaign has performed commercially. Unlike their Cannes counterparts, effectiveness judges need to put their creative tastes to one side and focus instead on results.

Ultimately, we need this separation between Cannes and effectiveness awards. When we see a campaign performing well in both, and we know that both sets of judges have been uncompromising, we can be absolutely confident of the causal link between creativity and effectiveness.

Let's not cloud the issue for the sake of an additional category next year

Last Friday I did my first TV appearance as a panelist on Channel 4's Britain's Next Boss http://bit.ly/awoBNj , and great fun it was too. As the new boy, it was hard not to get moderately excited by the early morning pick-up, the green room nerves and even the reassuringly gentle make-up lady.

The format of the show is elegantly simple - three alleged experts are asked to comment on the previous week's campaigning by the party leaders, with particular attention being paid to the Thursday night TV Debate.

My fellow panelists were Gill Fielding, secret multi-millionairess, and Dr George Sik, prominent psychologist. Both made it quite clear backstage that their credentials were unimpeachable, and whilst neither actually said "how come last week they had Ruby Wax and James Caan, and this week we've got you?!", I couldn't help but feel both were waiting for a real panelist to arrive.

Still, all three of us were soon led on stage in front of the studio audience, none of whom said "how come last week they had Ruby Wax and James Caan, and this week we've got you?!", but I could see it in their disappointed eyes.

A few sound checks later and we were off, with Krishnan Guru-Murthy firing the questions about various clips of Mssrs Cameron, Brown and Clegg. And it went in a blur. Sure, it takes a while to get into it but in fact the whole environment is pretty benign. It must be hugely more challenging sitting on the panel as a politician or similar, with the chairman and audience trying to catch you out.

For part-time pundits the reverse is mercifully true. All the host, the director and the crew ask of you is to avoid anything slanderous, libelous or just plain dull. There is a fair amount of off-screen interaction with the audience to keep everybody relaxed, but basically the screened version was pretty much exactly what we recorded.

The one thing that struck us all, the audience included, was how even though David Cameron put in a materially better performance, none of us in the studio agreed with the polls that put him ahead after the debate. I guess it's a question of relativity. Expectations of him were and remain so high, that unless one of either Clegg or Brown imploded - which they didn't - he was never going to regain the initiative that the Tories seemed to have lost since the first TV Debate was aired.

Everywhere we turn, including today's revelation in the Telegraph http://bit.ly/cTuAnU that Labour allegedly attempted to get agreement from the other parties that the final TV Debate should in some none-specific way be downgraded, we can see clear evidence that the debates have likely changed electioneering here forever. 

Until we know the result however, it's going to be hard to figure out just how important the change is.

It’s testament to the durability of Have I Got News For You http://bit.ly/9LdEmd that it emerged pretty much unscathed last night.

Aired at the same time last Thursday as the Party Leaders’ Live TV Debate, the topical news quiz risked becoming the latest victim of Cleggmania.

Some of broadcasting’s sharpest brains had clearly rehearsed, and landed, some pretty good “Nick Clegg is an irrelevance” gags.

Of course they weren’t to know that over on ITV Mr Irrelevant was busily morphing into the best Churchill since Winston, according to the Sun at least.

The effect was pretty weird. Nobody can blame any of the TV talent for failing to predict Nick Clegg’s sucker punch, and most loyal viewers of HIGNFY are well aware that Tuesday’s edition often loses some of its timeliness.

But it really was like watching archive footage, graphically underlining how just a few short days ago Nick Clegg’s profile was entirely different.

On Twitter meanwhile, HIGNFY fans were rather enjoying the ludicrousness of the situation and imagining the discomfort of the participants as they watched themselves perform apparently from a bygone era.

Real time media, world class content and unlucky scheduling all collided to somehow undo each other. It felt as oddly uncomfortable as enjoying the quiet airspace over the weekend whilst simultaneously hoping that the airports miraculously open up for business asap.

It’s hard to believe that businesses have ever been more front and centre in the first week of an election campaign. In fact, despite our political neutrality here at RKCR/Y&R, http://www.rkcryr.com/

Two of our clients were front page news. Firstly, Cameron’s first day of campaigning proper was against a glorious backdrop of true-blue Warburtons

Secondly, Sir Stuart Rose’s unveiling of great Q1 results was interrupted by Gordon Brown’s gun-in-mouth moment as he apparently accused sixty of UK Plc’s most senior CEOs of collective naivety.

Given the acres of coverage given to business and industry during the recession, and the rise and rise of “business-entertainment” like The Apprentice and Dragons Den, it perhaps isn’t surprising that business people have figured so prominently. The media and the public are acutely aware that private sector employers play a critical part in the nation’s health, wealth and well-being.

All of which makes Vince Cable’s attack on CEOs in Saturday’s Guardian pretty astonishing. Cable is one of the most respected politicians in the land, with economic credentials that either of the other parties would die for. But as the NI debate raged between Labour and The Conservatives, the Lib Dems struggled to find a voice.

Cable was reduced to saying, in effect, that CEOs are too rich to be allowed a voice in the national debate, describing their intervention as “barefaced cheek”. It’s worth quoting William Shawcross’ subsequent letter to the Guardian in full, to gauge at least one reaction:

 
Vince Cable has finally shown his true colours after months spent posing as a reliable and sober analyst of this country's appalling economic predicament. Cable denounces the heads of many of the most important companies in the country for daring to suggest how the British economy should be saved. He even asserts that it is "barefaced cheek" for captains of industry to be "lecturing us on how we should run the country". In other words only politicians like him are entitled to express views – not those who manage successful businesses employing millions of people.

Quite apart from reinforcing a growing sense that politicians believe themselves to be a breed apart, by framing business’ contribution in purely fiscal terms, Cable entirely discounts a critical dimension of British corporate life – the ability and desire to make a positive societal contribution.

Yes, it’s easy to be be cynical and label all efforts around Corporate Social Responsibility as merely marketing with a caring face. But to deny the very real positive impact of the likes of M&S’s Plan A or Cadbury’s adoption of Fairtrade cocoa is simply lazy.

At a recent Business In The Community