FOOTBALL managers use an age-old trick when they want to get rid of a player. They talk to the media about how they're uncertain about his future, they're not even sure that he wants to stay on, that maybe he'd be better suited somewhere else... And by planting the seed that he has no future, he usually leaves of his own accord.

So I found it strange to see Bill Cullen talking in such vague terms about Michelle Massey (right), the winner of The Apprentice who he hired on a one-year contract about four months ago.

"I don't know if Michelle will stay on working with me," he said on Tuesday, "I think she has other ambitions... It's just the feedback I've been getting about her... She's in the motor business working on digital, but maybe she needs to be in digital full time."

Idea

For someone who seems so at ease with uttering the famous 'you're fired' line when The Apprentice cameras are on him, Bill seems strangely vague and ambiguous about his latest recruit's future.

Here's an idea Bill. If you want to know what her ambitions are, why don't you just ask her?

Sorry, TV critics, but your smug bile is lost on the viewers who love Charlie

I'm no particular fan of Charlie Bird -- the wholesale waste of taxpayers' money that characterised his stint as RTE's Washington Correspondent, and his unapologetic attitude towards the job he did there on behalf of the national broadcaster, still irks many people.

But the manner in which his new show, Charlie Bird on the Trail of Tom Crean, has been savaged by critics, shows more than just an unwillingness to forgive -- it points to a failure, not in Bird, but in the TV critics themselves.

Knife

All week, they've been queing up to stick the knife in, each one trying to out-do the other with a bon mot, a savage put-down, and a gratuitous insult lobbed in for good measure. Charlie is self-indulgent. Charlie is a cry-baby. Charlie's in the way of the scenery...

Everyone had an opinion about the show. Hell, even explorer Ernest Shackleton's second cousin, twice removed -- I'm not making this up -- gave his tuppence worth yesterday, saying that he felt the show was a waste of money, and nothing more than an ego trip for Charlie Bird.

Twaddle

Which is of course absolute twaddle. If nobody in Ireland watched the show, then yes, it would have been a waste of money. But quite the opposite has occurred -- the viewership figures have been huge, and the gap between what critics like, and what Irish viewers like, has once again been explosed.

Reading their smug, patronising bile, you'd come to the conclusion that most critics don't hate bad shows -- they hate popular ones. The Rose of Tralee? A joke. The Late Late? Boring. All Ireland Talent Show? A pantomime. And what do all these shows have in common? They all get high ratings from the viewing public...

And for the past two weeks, the viewers have been voting with their eyes. Record numbers tuned into Charlie's first show 10 days ago, a sign not just of the interest in the Tom Crean story, but of the drawing power of Charlie Bird.

And having had time to digest all the negative reviews, weigh up all the criticisms that appeared between the two episodes, what influence did critics have on the number of people watching the concluding part of the series on Monday? Absolutely zilch. In fact, the viewer figures went up...

Irrelevant

And so the critics have perhaps, in a quiet, rare moment of introversion, been left to wonder whether anything they write has any effect on their readers. And whether, rather than Bird, it is in fact they, the TV critics, who are the self-indulgent, irrevelant ones.

Viewers 1, Critics 0. Which is, let's be honest, the right result.

Gorgeous Georgia's star shines brightly

Gorgeous Georgia's star continues to rise with Ms Salpa now attracting interest from OK! Magazine. I haven't heard of it myself, but apparently it's a British version of VIP.

This all comes courtesy of some pics that have circulated of her alongside Calum Best and Abi Titmuss, her British co-stars in the new series of Celebrity Salon. "Georgia's phone hasn't stopped ringing since they started filming the show," said an insider.

Well, that's what happens when you give your number to horn dog Calum.

Hughes joins happy couples of AM couch

MARK Cagney has a rock-solid relationship with his wife Audrey; Sinead Desmond and husband Davy are an almost impossibly fun, loved-up couple; while Anna Daly is expecting her first child with husband Ben.

And now comes the news that the final cog of the Ireland AM presenting quartet -- Alan Hughes -- is engaged to be married to long-term partner Karl Broderick. Alan and Karl are individually two of the nicest people in the business, and together one of its most charming, funny and down-to-earth couples.

I don't know what there is in that Ireland AM couch, but we could all do with some of its magic.

Sorry Sean, but I've no sympathy for you

SEAN Quinn seems like a decent and honest man, but God am I sick of his self-pity... "My mistake was to place an overreliance on the Irish banking system, and the predictions for continued growth by the country's leading financial experts," said Sean.

This is the man who bought €3bn worth of shares in Anglo, which are now worthless. And why did he buy them? To give something back to the country? To help those less fortunate than himself? No, he bought them because he thought they were a surefire way of getting even richer -- ie. he gambled, and lost.

If he'd put €3bn on a horse, and it came in last, would we feel sorry for him? No, we'd call for him to locked up. So please Sean, enough with the 'woe is me' act...

- Michael O'Doherty