Penn Jillette on Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice secrets: "He's a whack job"

Magician Penn Jillette has spilled the secrets about what US presidential nominee Donald Trump was really like while presenting The Celebrity Apprentice. 

Spoiler: he branded the Republican presidential hopeful "a whack job". 

After the comedian – one half of Penn and Teller – appeared on the NBC reality show in 2012, he immediately wrote a tell-all book called Every Day Is an Atheist Holiday. 

And given Trump's almost daily presence in global news headlines, Penn's thoughts are naturally getting some attention again now.

In the book, Penn sets out his views on Trump, who he refers to as "the modern-day Scrooge McDuck", in extensive detail.

He doesn't hold back about The Donald's hair, writing: "I live in a glass house. I've always had ugly, out-of-style hair. 

"Trump's hair is a lot better than mine – but as I sat there for hours half listening to Donald carry on, it struck me exactly what his hair looked like. 

"It looks like cotton candy made of piss. That revelation came to me, and I had to type it here. But my hair is worse."

Trump "just does what he wants, which is mostly pontificating to people who are sucking up to him", Penn said of the controversial property tycoon.

"When he was into his free-form rants in front of a captive audience, he would talk about articles written about him and defend himself against charges made, as far as I could tell, by random bloggers with a few hundred hits," he added. "Attacks that could have no impact on his life at all.

"It sounded like this cat was Googling himself, being bugged by what was written, and then defending himself to people who were trying to improve their careers by playing a TV game with him."

He continued: "The nightmare of Trump is not that he doesn't care what people think; it's that he desperately cares what people think and… he's doing the best he can."

And Penn, who also appeared on Dancing with the Stars, is delightfully honest about other aspects of The Celebrity Apprentice – even when it comes down to his decision to appear on the programme.

He explained why he went on the show in the first place in four words: "celebrities are desperate pigs". 

And he also made light of what it was like working with the other celebrities, adding: "Everyone is panicked, desperate, yelling, swearing, attacking, backstabbing, failing to get laid and acting crazy."

What about the tasks? Here's what Penn made of them:

"Anyone who isn't in showbusiness could accomplish everything the show called for and have time left over to do their laundry, cook their supper and post pictures of their animal companion on Facebook."

Ouch.

It seems Penn isn't not the only person who doesn't have much time for Trump –  his Hollywood Walk of Fame star is constantly vandalised and has even been defecated on by visitors' dogs.