'All the way down to my groin region'

So, last week a whole bunch of people who know nothing about food were expected to create a catering company from scratch and then cater for some allegedly high end clients, and also sell sandwiches at lunchtime, in That London. Results were not spectacular because even the two contestants who own catering-type businesses don’t actually cook, and nor should they. Yasmina won because she understood that in the world of The Apprentice, profit is everything and repeat business is nothing, so she spent shit-all on food and made an actual profit. She also managed to make a genuinely successful, non-cringey motivational speech; a feat in itself. Rocky and the boys lost their everloving minds and decided that a theme and wasting money on costumes was a good idea. And made a loss. And Sralan does not like a loss. James likened losing to his cat dying. Howard realised he was in no danger and so sat there like a fishy. Rocky went home because he seemed to think that That London necessitates charging about a jillion pounds a head for a piece of cheese on a toothpick. Alarmingly, thanks to iPlayer, I can inform you that all the Sralan is a giant tycoon, recap blah nonsense only takes three minutes. It feels like a month.


5.55 am. Lorraine answers the phone. She’s wearing some seriously cute striped men’s boxers with a bit of ribbon, and a seriously uncute turquoise camisole thing that, let’s say, does not provide her with the support she requires [What was this all about? Everyone knows the boys answer the phone. In their pants. - Rad]. The cars are coming in 30 minutes to fetch them to go to Lee Valley. Lorraine bounds down the corridor, tits bouncing around like a couple of excited Labradors, to tell everyone. People seem confused/not to care. In the background, wearing an orange hoodie, Phil looks disgusted. Quelle surprise. Kimberly removes some seriously giant curlers from her hair. Phil can’t be bothered with the boardroom experience today. James is nervous, as well he might be because he’s a gibbering simpleton, but he thinks that it’s motivational. Ben says he’s not nervous and that whoever’s up against him, ‘their arseholes will be twitching like rabbits’ noses’. I’m saying nothing. Phil and James basically laugh in his face because he’s ridiculous. He doesn’t notice.

They arrive in Lee Valley, at the Olympic training ground. There are no sandwiches in sight. Sralan, of course, claims that it is one of the greatest athletics venues in this country, because, in the words of Eve, he’s ‘only fucking with the baddest, don’t associate with lame’. Not everything has to be best, Sralan. Sometimes things are just things. Debrabarr looks like she’s going to cut a bitch, but I think that’s just how her face looks at rest. He tells them that in these CREDIT CRUNCH times people can’t afford gyms so the teams have to design a piece of portable exercise equipment, which they well then attempt to sell to retailers. Sralan mixes the teams: Kimberly and Sidegob Kate (sorry, Steve – your Grey’s Anatomy references are far too outré)[Dammit! - Steve] [Three weeks, three bloggers, three nicknames for Kate, guess Fiona has the casting vote next week - Rad] go to Empire. Philip and Noorul go to Ignite. Thank God boys versus girls is over already, though I wish it didn’t happen at all. They should make it ‘all the people sitting down in the first boardroom meeting to say hi to Sralan are one team, all the people standing are another’. Or! Make them choose their own teams after knowing each other for five minutes. That would lead to far more entertaining fuck-ups and minimise all the creeping women are bitches stuff we get.


They have two days to design, prototype and sell. The team with most orders will win. A losing team member will be fired. Obvs. Debrabarr wants to lead because she knows the girls’ skill sets now. Lorraine wants to lead too; she says she’s calmer ‘than a lot of other people’. Philip and Noorul both want Debrabarr. Lorraine asks if she can manage diverse personalities and Debrabarr says she can. Paula emerges from the shadows, and says, ‘I think it’s your own personality you’ve got to manage as well’. HA! Debrabarr displays her Will Cut A Bitch Face again, but this time it is With Intent as opposed to In Repose. Paula, having done her One Line Of The Episode, swoops her cloak around and disappears back into the night with only a tinkling of bells and a faint smell of mango and papaya shampoo (What? I just think she’d smell like mango and papaya shampoo. Tell me I’m wrong.) Debrabarr completely disregards the ‘manage yo personality, beyotch’ line and gets confirmation that people are happy with her as project manager. Lorraine is a little put out. And dressed a little like an air hostess for a former Soviet national airline. Debrabarr, rightly, says that the whole big problem is getting the product right in the first place.

James wants to lead Empire. People called him a banana skin and he wants to prove them wrong. After some discussion, including Sidegob going ‘Are you up for it, are you up for it?’ with a genuine smile on her face (people appearing genuine on here is rare enough for it to be worth mentioning), James is boss. Howard looks lovely in a kind of beige-gold shirt and tie of the exact same colour. He suggests fitting in with what people do every day and suggests something that works in the shower. Ben gets thinky face for a bit and then says that sex sells, which yes, but then goes on about a tool that you use while having sex, which NO. Kimberly says maybe ‘personal home use’ would be better and James puts the final nail in the coffin of Ben’s creepy Sexercise idea.

Debrabarr’s team can’t even decide what bits of the body to exercise. Mona waves her leg about. Phil doesn’t care out his legs, he cares about his arse and abs. They wiggle in their seats. Nick is not impressed. Debrabarr says that ‘none of us are creative in our thinking’ and emphasises that the product will be the problem.

Ben demonstrates tricep dips, to beat bingo wings, and says that they should do like a sprung seat to make that easier as you move up and down. Actual good idea! The fact that he continues to do tricep dips for about twenty minutes while talking and then however, makes him look like a bit of a cock. James splits the teams and puts Ben in charge of design. He’s with Maj and Kimberly. Ben goes on about how this product is for those pathetic weak wastrels who can’t do pushups, unlike his magnificently manly self. They debate the name Bingo Buster. James, showing real commercial flair, suggests Rear Arm Mechanical Improver. James says that the design man will either laugh or get a hardon. Sidegob hides her face in shame. Howard suggests Wing Worker, as a joke. James goes ‘that’s it, marvellous!’. Howard shakes his head, saying in disbelief, ‘I don’t think it’s marvellous!’ Love Howard a little bit.

Philip says four foam cubes that you can stack, called the Core Cube. Like a Swedish ball. It didn’t even occur to me til I heard the right name that it’s actually a Swiss ball. [Yes, surely Swedish balls are the ones that you buy in Ikea and are made of meat? - Steve] Debrabarr wants an ankle exerciser to stop old women getting deep vein thrombosis. Right. They argue a bit. A gym lady tells them that the whole point of a Swiss ball is it being a ball and thus wobbly, which causes you to resist and is good exercise. The cube will do ‘nothing to work the core’. She also hates the ankle exerciser. One hour before designers and Team Debrabarr has nothing. [This task seems to have been actually really hard if you don't know your physiology. Interesting to have a manufacturing task that didn't just start and end with market research. - Steve]

Mona, Yasmina and Paula shop for kit to wear in the ad. Debrabarr has said the poster should have Mona and Noorul. Mona says Noorul shouldn’t be in the ad because he’s ugly and sucks, basically. Yasmina agrees and phones Phil to tell him to be in the ads, saying ‘he’s good-looking and stuff’. Phil says Noorul is good-looking. Yasmina changes tack and says that if they have Mona and Noorul, it will be the ‘ethnic minority sportswear club’. Debrabarr gets white persons’ guilt and starts going on about her imaginary black baby and how she doesn’t live in Vietnam (because Vietnam, among the many things its known for, is known for apartheid?) and she’s the boss so she won’t countenance The Rasizms. Mona says she kind of agrees, and Yasmina says she’s Iranian, so she can say stuff about people of other races without being An Racialist. This got a shitload of press attention but is basically dealt with in moments and means nothing, but here we go. A) Yasmina pretty much only said that because ‘Noorul is an ugly wimp’ is a bit harsh. B) Mona and Noorul are from different places and are thus ‘ethnically diverse’ if not skin-colour diverse. C) White people are stupid and demand to be included in everything because of Political Correctness Gone Mad so Yasmina is right in a sense even if it’s entirely peripheral to her argument. D) In the context of the show, Yasmina is totally wrong because I) Sralan will never exactly say ‘there are too many browns in your advert’ and II) there will be many other reasons to slag off your adverts, I’m sure and III) the adverts end up being close-ups anyway. E) Point D is particularly disappointing given that Yasmina won last week in large part by understanding that this show is pretend and actual commercial decisions that would be viable and relevant in the real world are utterly pointless here, but F) She wasn’t arguing for a white person, she was arguing for the moderately attractive, fairly sporty person who happened to be white. G) ‘I’m Iranian so can say racisms’ doesn’t really cut it even though she wasn’t really so much racist as missing the point.

The fitness product must retail for under £30. Sidegob, Fishy Howard and James visit a store. James messes up some exercise thing. Sidegob finds the and best-selling by far is a chin-up bar. Phones Kimberly and says don’t make it complicated and ‘don’t go crazy and turn it into a home gym’. Kim, Maj and Ben go to a gym and decide … to make it complicated. Maj, especially, wants to add in a thousand wires and contraptions and bells and whistles and, basically, turn it into a home gym [for £30. Hmmm. - Rad] . Kim tries to return to focus to bingo-wings, but to little avail.

Debrabarr’s team still have no idea. In all senses. Phil now wants the bum ball. That you sit on and wobble about. It’s actually just a Swiss ball but smaller, in concept, but we do get to hear Phil say, ‘thinking about, you’re getting your arse done as well.’ It works better out of context. Lorraine talks about some weird board thing that sits under the desk to be played with and keeps your ankles healthy. Nick facepalms. Debrabarr is like ‘we just need an idea. Any idea.’ They settle on the bum ball, but it look like they incorporate the weird ankle thing into it, too, in the end.

At the designer Ben pushes the complicated idea. Of course. In some great detail. Demonstrating exercises by waving his arms around. Stoppit.

Back at the house. People cheer and shit. Ben does some more tricep lifts because he’s a dick. Phil says they’ve been telling him how good the product is and he’s dying to see it. The PM should possibly have been there for the design part? Maybe?

The next day, the prototypes arrive. Ignite’s bum ball, now called a Body Rocka, is a plastic board, flat on one side, with a hemisphere on the other, so you can sit on it to wobble about for your core, as Debrabarr does, or use as a pushup tool, as Mona does, with much grunting. It actually looks fairly professional and decent, which is, of course, entirely due to the design agency and nothing to do with the contestants.


The home gym is now called Home Multitone. It looks shit and cheap and is too complicated. It’s a big black box, and kind of looks like an amp, or speaker. I’d like to point out that Ben is wearing a shirt with a very fine blue and white vertical stripe but white collar and cuffs, with a pink and black striped tie, and pink spotted braces. Learn to dress, you prick. Sidegob and Fishy look kind of appalled. Ben’s very pleased with himself. Phil’s not excited. Go to the fucking designer then and choose the product.

Lorraine wants to pitch. Debrabarr makes her pitch to the team and if she’s shit she’ll reassign the role. Clever! She’s a bit shit. She pronounces words weirdly. She says it’s ‘blown everything of its kinds out of the market’, which she totally can’t say without evidence, and that children can use it to have a ‘stable stability’. Debrabarr makes the excellent point that Lorraine doesn’t really say what the product is or does. But is still letting her pitch. For some reason.

Sidegob and Ben are to model. Ben’s like ‘these fat shits are disgusting and make me physically sick, but I would probably bang Sidegob’. He pumps up his muscles using a camera tripod, because he is a dick. Sidegob talks at length about her make up and dislike of acrylic nails and how if she puts on her fake tan at night, she doesn’t need to wear foundation. Anyone? Nope, me neither. Howard takes the photos. He tells Ben to be a little less QVC. Margaret looks bemused. Howard says in this amazingly sarcastic voice, ‘Oh, look at Ben and Kate, using their multihometone’. Love you, Fishy.

Yasmina is taking the photos but Debrabarr tells her how to take photos in excruciating detail. Yasmina is a little upset and says that under Debrabarr you’re just being barked. Nick says Debrabarr can’t leave well enough alone and is ‘in there with the long finger’. [I await the prostate exam task with eagerness. - Steve] Nick hates Debrabarr.

James picks a picture for poster – it’s Ben opening the box, but not Ben exercising. You can tell Ben’s annoyed he didn’t get to show off his masculine manliness.

Lorraine practises her pitch. She’s really fucking awful. She says ‘dumb-balls’. Sat in the car she’s like ‘I’m not sure’. Debrabarr looks appalled but doesn’t do anything. CUT HER OFF. You still have time to make someone else pitch.

Powerhouse Fitness. They pitch the Body Rocka. Noorul does some exercises on the Body Rocka while Lorraine stumbles and blurbles through her pitch. She calls it functional, as though it’s high praise as opposed to something that is a basic necessity for something to work. Noorul does ‘advanced’ exercises and talks about his groin area. Debrabarr says that Lorraine pitches like she’s hearing impaired or a bit stupid. But still doesn’t pull her off the pitch.

Totally Fitness for Empire. Sidegob demonstrates the thingummy with Ben. She explains its many functions and the guy goes ‘all bases covered’ and seems moderately impressed. Sadly, while Sidegob, who’s doing a good job, is talking about how easy it is to store, Ben fails to close it up and fiddles about with it, basically giving the lie to Sidegob’s pitch. The Totally Fitness men say they target the mid-to-high end of the market and are not going to direct people to that when there’s a £2,000 home gym going in the same store.

At Totally Fitness again, the Body Rocka is pitched. Lorraine says that it works on ‘instability’. I think she means inner stability. They try to sell it as a rival of the Swiss Ball. Mona explains her exercises a bit, talking about her bottom muscles. The guy is like, you can’t do enough on it, compared to a Swiss ball. Debrabarr goes on about the portability, which is about all she’s got going, but the man says they sells thousands of Swiss balls. Phil calls it the iPod of fitness products for no real reason. As they leave, Debrabarr leads them in a rousing chorus of ‘Backstreet’s Back’, where she goes ‘Rock your body’ and the rest of them go ‘Yeah-eah!’ It’s bizarre and kind of cute.

John Lewis for James and co. Sidegob pitches with Ben again. She’s actually fairly good. Better than she was at describing canopies. Afterwards, Howard says to Ben, ‘Can I suggest you don’t slap your own arse … While it was helpful to point out the arse area, I’m sure they know which bit it is.’ Love Howard! Continue making moderately bitchy but also relevant comments, Fishy, and we’ll get along fine.
Howard tells Ben not to slap his own arse.

Lorraine pitches to John Lewis. She’s still shit, calling it ‘dynamic’ and ‘inspirational’. Noorul explains how he’s tightening his buttocks – the John Lewis guy goes ‘I’ll take you word for it on that one’, finally referring to the elephant in the room of Mona and Noorul referring to their intimate areas – and also says he’s working his ‘glutus’. Really not so hot with the Latin, our Noorul. [Glutus is just as cute as Caesar. Glutus is just as smart as Caesar. People totally like Glutus as much as they like Caesar. - Steve] Debrabarr says you want some? They say exclusivity? Debrabarr’s like umm? NOOOOO!! Don’t do it! Sralan hates exclusivity. [In fairness, I think his main objection to it last year was that Princess Lindi was in no position to actually offer it because she didn't own the product. That's not the case here, so possibly if it made good business sense, he'd support it. Maybe. I don't know. - Steve] Phil says we need a serious offer, the guy’s like ‘what’s serious?’ Yasmina steps in and says it’s £14 a unit, and says take 20,000 for 6 months’ exclusivity. John Lewis say no. They kick in the music of doom, but seriously, the fact that they’re asking for exclusivity in the first place is a good sign, no?

Powerhouse Fitness. Sidegob pitches again. The man says it looks a wee bit 1970s. Ben performs some exercises, but using the machine closed up to do tricep lifts and whatever from, as opposed to the step and the cables and stuff. Their selling point is that it’s a box, basically. But, you know. So is a box.

NotFrances sends them through. Sralan looks at the products and says ‘some interesting stuff there’. It’s kind of sad how much better the Body Rocka looks than the Big Ole Box Of Springs That Is Also A Box.

Sralan asks if James a good leader. The whole team’s silence speaks volumes. Ben pulls a face and says he was hardly Winston Churchill and Sralan says it was more like Churchill the nodding dog. Product placement! The giggle politely. Sralan asks if they like their product. Ben says that it’s amazing, almost as amazing as his huge girthy manly penis that is manly and amazing. James didn’t like the end product but did think the idea was sound.

Debrabarr. ‘Good leader?’, asks Sralan. They all say yes noncommittally. He specifically asks Mona, who says, ‘Yeah, she was okay’ but in a way that makes it not damning with faint praise. Sralan confirms that it was Phil’s idea, which it sort of mostly was but not exactly. Phil says he was proud of the product. Sralan asks who pitched. Debrabarr says Lorraine was an okay pitcher and certainly tried her hardest. Which certainly IS damning with faint praise. Debrabarr says Lorraine gave 110% and Sralan goes off on a weird little rant about how that’s 10% wasted, then. You funny little man. [I think he was trying to call them on 110% being nonsense in some bizarre way - Rad] Phil says she was fantastic and it’s easy to criticise at a later stage. Lorraine gives a little strangled ‘thank you’.

Powerhouse placed no orders for Empire. Ignite got an order for 80.
Totally Fitness also placed no orders for Empire. Sidegob shakes her head but kind of looks amused. Ignite got 100.
John Lewis ordered 500 from Empire. James suddenly sits up, alert, thinking that maybe he hasn’t utterly failed after all. Nick tries to create tension by saying Yasmina went in too high with the exclusivity option and she’s stupid and made of fail and blah. But John Lewis still ordered 10,000. Holy shit. A 10,180 to 500 victory. Owie. James looks crushed. Sidegob still looks amused.

Sralan says that Phil and Lorraine deserve special thanks but let’s be honest. Phil’s idea bore the slimmest resemblance to the product they ended up with, which was rendered good by some very good designers and prototype-makers. And in terms of pitching, well, man. They succeeded despite Lorraine, not because of.

The winners get to listen to Katherine Jenkins in a private recital. That’s really really not a treat. Poor bastards. Sralan makes a funny about how the Empire doesn’t strike back, and sends them off to the café of death. Ben says in the café of death that the product was good and they were unanimous on that. Outside, to camera, James says the product looked like a rubbish box with wires, an upsidedown telly and that’s his hunch where they went wrong. No shit, Sherlock. Maybe if you’d paid any attention to the product that you were trying to sell you’d have been able to intervene. Ben says to camera that he’ll be vulnerable in the boardroom but he’ll ‘bite James’s bloody teeth out’ if he turns on him. I don’t even know what that means.

Fucking Katherine Jenkins sings Fucking Hallelujah and it’s the worst thing ever. Bizarrely, Debrabarr and Yasmina are holding hands. I guess they’ve made up over Racismgate. Maybe Yasmina promised Debrabarr that her imaginary black baby can be in the next advert they do, pinky swear for reals. [I'm hoping for Hot Lesbian Action, personally. - Steve] Mona either looks really moved, or like she’s having some gastric pain, or just really bored. Paula continues to be my stealth hero by looking distinctly unimpressed.

Boardroom, Sralan says he doesn’t know what it is, ‘that product over there’. He tells them, in case they hadn’t realised, that it’s always the product that will win this sort of task. James, as PM shouldn’t you know what the product actually is? James says that, like, Ben was very enthusiastic, so he thought he might get in the way and he didn’t want to jeopardise the creativity ‘by being there’. Fire his ass right now. He didn’t want to fuck stuff up by his mere presence. He’s talking about himself and saying that shit.

Margaret steps in. They started off targeting women. Margaret asks Kimberly, as part of the design group and also a woman, if she thinks the Torturous Box of Rusty Springs and Razor Wire For To Make Benefit Of Health appeals to women. Kimberly says that on reflection, and in a quite measured, not turning on her team sort of way, that actually no, probably not. Maj gets all up in her grill for no fucking reason going on about how she said she’d buy it before and she needs to make her mind up. Fuck off Maj. Kim says that what she actually said is that she’s not the person to ask, because for exercise she plays tennis and goes dancing. Margaret gives an unwarranted eyebrow-raise.

Sralan asks who went to the designers. Ben says it was him, Maj and Kim, using ‘myself’ wrongly in the process. Sralan starts on Maj saying he doesn’t do anything and sits there, via a bizarre segue about his grandson’s maths homework. Maj says he doesn’t ‘talk for talking’s sake’. None of them mention the fact that the entire problem is that Maj actually did talk, and was the one that suggested changing the simple bingo-busting device into some weird cross between one of those Chinese finger traps, a Slinky, and one of those little wooden ducks in the under-fives’ playground that rocks back and forth, rendering it complicated, almost certainly too expensive to produce for their mandated £30 pricepoint, unappealing, more useful when it’s locked up and used as a big block of wood, and severely unportable, thereby missing pretty much everything they were supposed to do.

Sralan tells off Howard for sitting on the fence. He says that he isn’t and that it’s always easy to blame the PM, but in this case it comes back to the product and Ben got so excited that he had blinkers on. Ben’s like ‘You never said nothing!’ Howard’s like ‘I said I wanted to carry on brainstorming’. Ben’s like ‘You never said NOTHING! And you never had no ideas! All you did was write things down! Also you’re a faggot!’ The last isn’t said, but you can tell he’s thinking it.

Sidegob, leaning forward on the table and sounding utterly bored, probably because she realises how far from the firing line she is, says ‘in terms of aesthetics, they said it looks like a box’. She’s so stirring. It’s kind of great. Sralan says that yes, indeed, the box does look like a box. Powerhouse says that the best thing was taking the sample away at the end. Ha! Sralan says they missed the target audience. A lump of wood with no creativity. They sit there wondering why they didn’t get any orders, but Sralan, he knows. It’s because ‘the whole thing sucks!’ Sralan asks Sidegob who she blames; she says the design team. Maj leaps to Ben’s defence because at least there was an idea, and says that the blame goes to the project manager for ‘wrong decisions’. Mealy-mouthed cunt. ‘Manager for wrong decisions’. That means NOTHING. James tries to say that Maj was a bit of a follower this week but Maj jumps in to say that James fucking loved the product when he saw it and he’s suddenly changing his tune. Ben says that he’s ‘never seen anyone so pleased as when it was whipped out the next morning’. I’m saying nothing.

James entirely rightly says that he couldn’t say it was shit once it was already there because it would destroy morale. Sralan tries to pick a fight over it, but whatevs. James is buffoon, and he freaks me out because he looks like he was built on a slightly different scale from normal people, but if he’d turned around and said that their prototype, which couldn’t be changed, was shit and he didn’t like it, it would have achieved nothing. He should have been there to prevent it being shit in the first place, of course, but once the job’s done there’s no point in bitching people out over it.

James brings back Maj and Ben. Howard, Sidegob and Kim go back. Sralan has a little chat with Nick and Margaret. Margaret says Maj was a ‘bit of a passenger’ and again, no, he was integral to fucking up the whole thing. Nick says Ben should know more, bodybuilder that he is. Sralan is wise to the fact that Ben so far has been an ass with nothing god to say about anyone. Then says that basically James should know better by the age of 31.

They come back in. Sralan says to James that Ben and Maj will turn on him. James says, slightly more eloquently than ‘I didn’t want to fuck it up just by being there because I suck so much that it distorts space-time and can actually break prototype exercise equipment’, that Ben was so enthusiastic and seemed so sure of himself that he felt confident that he didn’t need to micromanage. That’s a better reason for why you let them go off by themselves, certainly.

Srlan says Maj just hangs about not doing anything. Maj says he can’t do more than he’s told to, and that he can’t just ask for more stuff to do. Yes you fucking can. You take stuff on. You volunteer. Sralan says maybe it’s a lack of confidence in Maj’s abilities. Maj is like ‘I’m very confident’ and Nick’s like ‘No, maybe everyone else has no confidence in you, dillweed’.

Sralan goes on about Ben having the only idea. He says that nobody else had any ideas at all. Not true! Howard had something about using stuff in the shower. Which, okay, rubbish, but could maybe have gone somewhere. Maybe. And they might have had more ideas if they hadn’t settled on Ben’s sprung seat quite quickly: ‘you didn’t keep suggesting things after we already made a decision’ isn’t really a valid criticism. James says that idea is one thing but translating into action is another, because he trusted Ben to take the idea, which was good, and translate it into something better than that piece of chipboard and rust. Ben says blah blah blah and then that James bringing him into the boardroom was ‘the stupidest move he’s made yet’ and then sits back looking incredibly pleased with himself for his little bon mot. Seriously, we’re talking Smug Level: Louis Walsh right here.

James says ‘I did almost everything right’, only just stopping himself from saying ‘I did nothing right’ and his only mistake was trusting Ben with his heart instead of seeing the Fail with his eyes. Phil, panicky moron that he is, gets a bit overwrought. Ben is an unprofessional cunt and goes on about James nearly crying. Only thing grosser than crying in business is picking on someone for crying in business.

Sralan says ‘boardroom twice in three weeks, James?’ James is like, ‘I’m getting better! I’m 31 years old and have almost learnt basic concepts like paying attention and doing up my shoelaces!’ Ben is like ‘it’s easy to pass the buck to the designer but you’re the project manager and you should have been managing the project and ensuring that I didn’t get distracted and lightheaded when all my blood flowed to my penis when I got a massive erection from seeing my own reflection, allowing Maj to sneak in and add a lawnmower and a cocktail-maker to the exercise machine. Kim was probably thinking about puppies or rainbows or something.’ Ben and Maj both want James gone. Shocking.

Margaret thought James was a decent leader but falls apart in the boardroom; she sees a Jekyll and Hyde side to him. Maj is hanging around too much and isn’t really doing anything: can a leopard change its spots? But he’s not doing nothing! He’s been very busy ruining things! Ben stuck his neck out and ‘it would be grossly unfair’ for you to go. Which kind of made me think Ben would go, because Sralan is, of course, the master of the grossly unfair firing. Sralan fires Maj for not contributing. Good. Good that he was fired. Not good reason, because he did stuff. Just bad stuff. Sralan tells James he was so nearly out the door, like several times of ‘seriously dude. You were so nearly doneso. You don’t even know it. So close.’ but Margaret saved him because she sees some spark in him or something. James is clearly not long for this world; frankly, fire James too. And Ben, for being an asscrack.

They’re not making Coatwatch fun this year. Black. Kind of a Nehru collar. Dullzorz.

In the taxi, Maj is annoyed that James is ‘still fighting for a job with Sralan.’ I wouldn’t worry, sweetie. It’s not like he’s going to get it. [Eh. He hired Michelle after she spent the Topshop task sipping champagne in the VIP area. I wouldn't rule anything out. - Steve]

Derbrabarr says that Ben should go, right, cos it was his idea, right? Howard says that Ben distracted them with his sex sells rubbish and Sidegob says it distracted them from ‘proper ideas’. Debrabarr says she doesn’t really care cos their failure is her success, ‘not to be nasty’. Kimberly says ‘it is kind of nasty, but that’s okay’. Ben and James return. People cheer and so on. Debrabarr, weirdly, leaps on James. Like, pretty much wraps her legs round him jumps on him. It’s odd.

Next week, beauty products including porny shots of Mona and Ben in the shower (separately), and ‘Tequila and Dog flavour shower gel’.