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Sir Nobby stars in "The Trainee"

A new series of the smash hit television programme “The Trainee” is to begin next week. As in the last series, Sir Norbert “Nobby” Johnson, chairman of Mocha Re, takes on the challenge of choosing a new employee to work alongside him in the reinsurance market.

You’re rubbish!
Clear Orf!

The Trainee has become repulsive (surely “compulsive” – Ed) viewing with Sir Nobby’s famous cry “You’re rubbish!”, together with “Clear Orf!” and the well known chant “You’re sh*t and you know it”.

Each week the trainees are given a task to prove to Sir Nobby that they are not just publicity-seeking, ego-centric, absurdly ambitious yet talentless dimwits looking for their fifteen minutes of fame who would be better off in the Big Brother house, i.e. Lloyd's.

In the first week the trainees are asked to sell paid loss retro policies to customers outside a shopping mall. Future episodes see them attempting to harden the non-US catastrophe market, assess the impact of Solvency II, attend the Monte Carlo Rendezvous without suffering liver damage, and make an underwriting profit.

The trainees fall into a number of typical business categories: the brown-noser, the cocky little so-and-so, the muppet, the gumby, the geezer, the posh twit, and the total numpty.

In the last series, won by Charlotta Hardnose, Sir Nobby bemoaned the lack of quality: “The trainees were an absolute shower. Alright, some of them were quite good at dealing with brokers, technical underwriting, and creating off-balance sheet capital market solutions for US catastrophe exposures, but not one of them had the real qualities needed by a chairman of a reinsurance company – a golf handicap of 14, a good cellar, a fine palate and a Bentley.”