By James Arnold BBC News Online business reporter

The master and his apprentices

First prize in Donald Trump's reality TV show, the joke runs, is a year working on the colourful tycoon's staff.

Second prize is two years.

Even the lure of a $250,000 salary, Entertainment Weekly commented snidely, can't hide the fact that "this may be the first reality series in which the winner is the loser."

Whatever the feelings of the contestants, though, Mr Trump's show, The Apprentice, has become the surprise hit of the season on US network NBC.

Cult of personality

The Apprentice kicked off last month with eight men and eight women, reportedly picked from a field of 215,000 applicants.

Their brief is to keep impressing Mr Trump - or "The Donald", as he likes to be known - until everyone else has been fired.

Two things make The Apprentice stand out from the reality-show crowd.

First, the teams are set business challenges - hawking lemonade, setting up as flea-market stallholders, marketing a new credit card, and so on.

Second, the show focuses almost lasciviously on The Donald's billionaire lifestyle.

Mr Trump, who part-financed the show, uses every available opportunity to showcase his own brand.

"Donald J Trump is the very definition of the American success story... the archetypal businessman - a deal maker without peer and an ardent philanthropist," gushes the programme's website.

Sex and money

The show has certainly succeeded in garnering media interest.

The Donald is no shrinking violet

Much has focused on the sexual divide between the contestants.

The women, who are made to wear short skirts and low-cut blouses, have consistently hammered the men, to the extent that the Donald has had to reshuffle the teams.

"Each time, the women have used their gender and good looks to get ahead," sniffed the New York Times.

And the divergence between TV and reality has been much commented on.

Really getting fired by Mr Trump is not like on TV, the Chicago Tribune reported, having talked to some of the very many people the Donald has "let go" over the years.

Fame...

Nor is Mr Trump's business clout quite what it was.

Shares in Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts, his only quoted company, have fallen from $33 in 1996 to around $2 today.

His privately-held real-estate business is much harder to value, but experts say he no longer is - as he claims on the show - the biggest developer in New York.

"Taking your business cues from the Donald is more likely to lead to fame than to fortune," wrote Fortune magazine.

... and fortune

Be that as it may, the show has helped Mr Trump burnish his credentials as a business guru.

Seventeen years after publishing his business best-seller "The Art of the Deal", he has just signed a $5m advance for a new book.

"How to Get Rich: Lessons from the Apprentice and Other Big Deals" is timed for publication when the series ends in the spring.

If the book sells anything as well as its predecessor, which shifted 3 million copies, Mr Trump's TV venture will have brought him fortune as well as fame.