BBC to reschedule The Apprentice

The BBC risks angering fans of The Apprentice by switching the hit business reality show next week from its regular Wednesday 9pm berth to Tuesday because of a clash with an England friendly international football match.

Next week's scheduling move will see Sir Alan Sugar go head to head with Gordon Ramsay on Channel 4's The F Word, as well as ITV1's Britain's Got Talent, which is airing every night next week, at 9pm on Tuesday. BBC2's The Apprentice: You're Fired! will also switch days to Tuesday at 10pm. BBC1's commitment to screen the England v USA friendly means the network will devote two hours between 8pm and 10pm to the game on Wednesday next week.

The Apprentice, which regularly pulls in up to 7 million viewers, is one of BBC1's most popular shows and a must-see on Wednesday nights for many fans. A BBC spokesman confirmed The Apprentice's move to Tuesday next week. "The show has been moved to make way for this match. It is quite usual for us to move programmes to accommodate big sporting occasions. That is the reason for this schedule change," he said.

Elsewhere, Anushka Asthana has labelled The Apprentice as the most moral show on television. Writing in the Guardian, she states...

He started his journey as a silly posh-boy, notable only for his thick eyebrows, floppy hair and absurd manner. Then a single act of kindness propelled Raef Bjayou, a disliked contender on the hit television show The Apprentice, into a realms of chivalry. It was a wonderful moment: the 27-year-old 'entrepreneur', dressed in a smart pink shirt, leant forward, raised his hand and demanded an end to the savage attack being carried out on his fellow contestant, Sara Dhada.

'A decision has been made,' he boomed, to the delight of millions of viewers appalled by the behaviour of the other Apprentice hopefuls who were acting like a swarming gang of playground bullies. 'Sir Alan has made it.' Soon the clip had made its way to YouTube, Raef fan clubs had started to appear on the internet and The Apprentice faithful, of which I am one, had a new hero. All it had taken was a simple moment of compassion; a moment that convinced me that The Apprentice, which sees contestants battle it out for a six-figure job in Sir Alan Sugar's empire, is a show with the stiffest of moral backbones.

People who sneer at reality television, who argue it brings out the worst in its voyeuristic viewers, who insist it provides little more than a gladiatorial stage on which people have little choice but to humiliate, disgrace and hang themselves, are missing the point. What actually happens is that over time the veneers created by the contestants in preparation for the show start to slip away and one by one their true characters emerge. Yes, we watch with glee when some of them are cruelly dispatched, but only those who have lied, twisted and manipulated their way through. The people who have played fair, meanwhile, who have been kind, decent and honest are lauded and cheered in front rooms across the country. That is why Bjayou, a man who was dismissed as comical at the start - following a 'I get on with prince or pauper' gaffe - is now a firm favourite to win.

So what does this tell us? Well, conversations about the programme have begun to take on the tone of an ethical debate. 'The Apprentice generates a moral reaction in the audience,' says one female friend, an economist in her late twenties, as we gather around the television set for our weekly fix. 'We side with the ones who we believe act in a moral way. We turn against those who are bitchy, lie or seem unpleasant.' It is true that each week we find ourselves howling at the television from around 9.45pm, urging Sugar to eliminate the least-loved character - normally the one who we decide has been a little too mean or sly.

If that is the case for us, then surely it is true for many more of the show's wide base of fans, those 7.4 million viewers who tune in. The demographic covers teenagers and the retired, men and women, rich and poor. It is even sparking encouraging discussions among school pupils. One colleague says her children, aged 11 and 13, regularly discuss whether or not the contestants have behaved morally: 'They say "he's lying", "he's bullying" or "he's cheating". They are starting to think you do not have to be nasty and pushy to get ahead. It has definitely made them think in a moral way.'

And it is not just the viewers. Even Sugar, famed for his ruthless nature, seems to be rewarding hard work and honesty this time round. His message in the boardroom is clear: lie, cheat or manipulate and you 'will get fired'. Take the example of Jenny Celerier, who has earned herself a reputation as this series's nasty. When she bribed a Moroccan shopkeeper in an attempt to hamper the other team's chances, Sugar was furious and soon sent her packing. He was equally unimpressed when she appeared to lie in order to make her fellow contestant look bad. But for me and my friends, there is one thing Sugar needs to do - and soon - finally to prove the show's morality.

The self-made millionaire must dispatch the contestant who has been most sneaky and aggressive to date: Michael Sophocles. He is the 24-year-old telesales executive who claimed on his CV that he was a 'good Jewish boy' in order to impress Sugar, before admitting he had no idea what kosher was (he thought it was a Muslim tradition) and crossing himself outside the boardroom. It seems unlikely that such morals were formed in a church, mosque or synagogue, but if Sophocles - Sophocles! - a name once better known as the author of the Oedipus cycle, gets the chop, then there will be many children picking up a sense of right and wrong from, God forbid, a reality television show.