I once tried to watch The Apprentice but found I couldn't. Too cruel. Nonetheless, I'm intrigued enough by this apropos comment of Rowan Pelling's on the appealing side of failure to want to offer a reflection on it. Failure, Pelling suggests, can be creative, leading one on to better things later. And it's people's failures more than their successes that define them. Also, we like under-achievers.
The question this raises in my mind is whether more encouragement should be given to failing. Should we not value it more and teach people how to fail - not merely in the sense of instructing them in coming to terms with failure, but in the sense of urging them actually to strive for failure? And should we not, ourselves, try to fail more than we are accustomed to doing? But the problem is, if we tried to fail, would we be failing when we failed?