In the US, Donald Trump’s fifth incarnation of the “reality job interview” series seems to be heading towards a “You’re fired!” finale, due to languishing ratings. However, the UK version, fronted by the legendary Amstrad boss Sir Alan “the last thing I need is another bloody corporate lawyer!” Sugar seems to be just getting into its stride in its second series.

And yet, considering the nature of Sir Alan’s empire, which encompasses technology ranging from state-of-the-art PCs and servers to his latest scary animatronic incarnation, the Amsface (I kid you not – check it out), there’s been pretty well zero technology presence in either series.

Despite this, the winner of last year’s rant-fest was immediately plonked into an Amstrad project to redesign and re-launch a high-tech face-care gizmo that’s been around for years, and a flashy new web site for it.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that I wouldn’t even make a shortlist for a place on The Apprentice, even if I was daft enough to apply. And I know that Sir Alan’s looking for high-flying sales and marketing types who can flog you products you didn’t even know you wanted.

But the candidates’ knowledge of technology seems to extend little further than knocking up a presentation or fiddling about with a spreadsheet (they even seem scared by their mobile phones). You have to wonder what sort of message this is sending to youngsters starting out in IT and thinking it might be a good career. The only guy I recall with even a mention of technology on his CV – an IT consultant called Ben – was fired in the very first episode. He obviously made the same mistake that I did in thinking that a technology company might conceivably need a few techies at the top.

So if the UK technology industry is a lost cause, why not sound out a few real geek legends about running a parallel series?

Of course, I doubt if Bill Gates would be interested (“Your task this week is to write a ‘Hello world’ application in C# using no fewer than 40,000 lines of code.”), and Sun’s Scott McNealy just retired himself from the running.

But seriously, an interest in IT just isn’t seen as something to shout about any more – it’s seen as natural to be offhand and disinterested in new technology, unless of course it’s a flashy phone handset, a big-screen HD-TV set or a games console.

I suppose you could just write this off as one generation bemoaning the imagined shortcomings of the next, but I would love more than anything to be proved wrong. Even if it was just by an episode of The Apprentice in which the candidates were told to try to hack the ubiquitous Amstrad Emailer phones and turn them into IP desk phones…