THE APPRENT-BITCH

The Logic-al conclusion

2011-07-20T06:51:00.000-07:00

The Final
Transmitted July 17 2011

Previously on The Apprentice – the resurrection of The Restaurant! Hooray! Except sans Raymond, Maman and ze challonge. Boo! Helen and Tom invented MyPy and apart from a lack of basic understanding of history or geography, did very well. Jim, Susan and Natasha abused grammar and geography and made Mexican food so hideous that Thomasina Miers started to weep. Probably. Natasha was fired for not doing something on her degree ten years ago that would have held her in good stead for some random task in the future – and because Sralan’s been dying to do that for weeks now.

As an aside, I just noticed that Sralan says in the credits ‘if you think there’s anyone better than you… you might as well go home’. Just thought I’d throw that in there to start Steve SEETHING early…

At Apprentice mansions, the phone rings in the middle of Helen bitching Jim out and saying he probably should have gone home. Ha. This really is a bitchy series, isn’t it? The only one who isn’t a total bitch has been Tom. Tom goes to answer the phone. NotFrances tells them to meet Sralan in 48 hours and to bring their business plans. Jim says it’s now down to them individually and looks cocky and weird, whilst Helen has the panicked look of the kid whose parents will disown them if they don’t get 10 A*s, the best marks in the school and end up in the top 1% of the country.
Also – this ‘meet you in 48 hours with a business plan’ thing is weird, isn’t it? We never see them get 48 hours’ notice, which would imply they have time to work on their business plans. However, surely they prepared those as part of their applications anyway, so they should be automatically ready. Certainly (whoops, spoiler) tonight’s shambles doesn’t suggest they’ve put that 48 hours to any kind of good use.

Apprentice finals are a weird beast, aren’t they? Normally they’re a bit anti-climactic after the interviews round, the final result has little bearing on the task (which always, somewhere, involved “corporate entertainment” – enough to make anyone’s soul weep) and in many cases, the winner isn’t the person who performs best anyway. This year, though, the series has been pretty topsy-turvy, so the ‘interviews’ round has been saved till last.

We’re reminded who they are as they ‘get their business plans into shape’. Helen lies that she’s taken risks throughout the series, and we’re told she’s the most successful candidate in the tasks. Susan has the second-best record, and she is TWENTY ONE. But is she the shortest of those remaining?

Jim thinks he’s amazing, of course, and thinks his plan is amazing. Tom is an inventor, who has only been on three task-winning teams, and, according to my good friend Monkseal, he's been on Logic every single week. His business plan has a picture of a chair on it. He would like to win, if that’s OK please Sralan?

On the day, “plans printed” – lie, we saw they had them printed off already, and they’ve clearly had copies sent to the rottweilers ages ago – they pretend to read their plans in the cabs. I would be travel sick if I did that. They’re going to New Broad Street House, where city ‘big guns’ hang out, apparently.

Sralan says he’s not going to make his decision lightly and the interviews really will be important, honestly, really, genuinely.

In the waiting room, Susan says, ‘this is it… four interviews – boom’. Because yes, that’s exactly what’s important. Helen says if you don’t know your own life and your plan you’re in trouble. What, like when you lie on your CV?

Claude is the only old-school rottie remaining. He calls Tom a bit of a failure. Ouch.

Margaret’s back. Yay! She’s a key member of the ‘Bright Ideas Trust’ which sounds a bit like something Melody would make up. Sorry Margaret. [The idea of Melody and Margaret working for the same organisation fills me with glee. - Steve] Let’s face it – all anyone wants from this episode is an hour of Margaret ripping Jim to shreds, isn’t it? The other three interviewers/apprenti may as well not be here.

As an aside, it feels weird to be recapping this week’s Apprentice after today’s “hackgate” committee hearings. I can’t help but think that Margaret and Claude would have gotten more answers.

Mike Soutar, TRAITOR, clearly wants to be a new Dragon or something (and on the subject of Dragons’ Den – which it’s hard not to be given the way this series is going to turn out - how terrifying are those adverts with Hilary Devey in? Also – Hilary Devey, Margaret and Debra Meaden would be amazing in the interviews stage of this show, no?) with all this telly work he’s doing. He tells Jim his application is full of clichés, and asks if he has trouble articulating himself. Heh. In a rare moment of self-awareness, Jim says ‘I’m trying to get better at that’. This also makes me believe these interviews are not filmed in the order they’re shown, and he may have come to Mike after his encounter with Margaret.

Susan is meeting Matthew Riley, ‘Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2007’ (another Melody-style reference. I wish Melody had been in interviews), and a complete cock who wouldn’t look out of place in an Apprentice line-up. I seriously have no idea what he’s doing here. He makes Susan stand behind a chair and pretend she’s in an elevator. It’s a LIFT, cock. She has to pretend she’s in the LIFT, riding to the penthouse and has to pitch quickly. For why? It’s a rare person who makes me root for Susan in any given scenario, but he does. [I really wanted Susan to say that she always takes the stairs for the health benefits, and to mime her way up several flights while giving her pitch. - Steve] She says she wants to develop her skin care business and take over the world.

Mike Soutar tells Tom his business plan is obtuse. Tom says he wants to reduce the cost of back pain by developing a service to measure the likelihood of people developing back pain, and sell some chairs to fix people’s money. Mike Soutar points out Tom’s business plan doesn’t use the word ‘chair’ anywhere. Tom says ‘it talks about devices’ because he’s a geek like that, and calling a chair a chair would probably get him thrown out of inventors’ club or something.

Margaret says Jim’s application form is the longest she’s ever seen – and it’s very enlightening to discover that he wanted to be this year’s StuBaggs: ‘I’m not a show pony or a one-trick pony, or a wild stallion that needs to be tamed, or even a stubborn mule. I believe I can become the champion thoroughbred that this process requires’ – I am kind of having a gross insight into Jim’s fetishes that I didn’t want. She asks if that gives the impression he’s an ass and accuses him of not taking the form seriously. Jim claims it’s to set him apart. Margaret: ‘by swallowing the Oxford book of clichés?’. Jim cliché spouts that he’s not a one trick pony and he’s excelled in everything in the process. Lie. She reads some nonsense he’s written about tanlines and the bottom line. She asks him to tell him something about himself she couldn’t glean from the form or the process, and to try and say it quickly, without clichés. He says ‘I’m exactly what it says on the tin’. Margaret (literally) facepalms.

He lies to the others that he’s fine. Helen wonders why Tom’s still in there and if he’s getting his arse kicked.

Cut to Claude telling Tom his figures make no sense, and the business plan hasn’t listed anything about the margins he’ll make. Tom says, no but he has a ‘pretty good idea’ because he’s made some prototypes. Claude says he hasn’t mentioned the prototype in here, whether the chair works or if it can get a patent. Oh, Tom. I think we were all expecting Claude to say ‘I’m out’ there.

The smarmy cock gets Helen to do his “elevator pitch”. STAB STAB STAB. Her business is apparently about helping the nation get back on its feet. Oh, Helen. It seems to be about PAs ‘for the mass market’. Can I get them in Poundland, Helen? She claims it’s about getting people to do mundane jobs and help your work-life balance – sending birthday cards, doing the shopping, making appointments etc – essentially a PA for the non-work side of life. I get the feeling this is what Helen would wish for if she closed her eyes, as that ‘real life’ stuff just gets in the way. (It might also be the kind of thing I would wish for if I closed my eyes too, but sssh). [I have literally no idea how this is supposed to "help the nation back on its feet". I have many problems, but none of them involve the lack of someone to phone my dentist on my behalf. - Steve] Cockface asks her why on earth he’d want someone to ring his dentist for him. Er, I kind of would, as I have a phobia of the phone. But I don’t think I generally represent your average person in these matters. Helen says it’s a reminder service. Cockface says dentists give you reminders. Helen says hers doesn’t, and his must be a very expensive dentist.

The others bitch a bit in the waiting area. Tom says he’ll be impressed if her plan is any good seeing as it’s her first one, and Jim hopes she’ll be tongue-tied and unable to answer any questions.

Cockface asks her if she has any contacts and if she can get him a table at The Ivy tonight. She says business acumen is more important than contacts. He says she can’t get him a table tonight, and she says, no of course not, I’m not a business yet. He says she can’t do anything without contacts, she says ‘but it’s for the mass market’ not people who want to eat at the Ivy.

Susan’s with Margaret, who congratulates her on her degree and Susan tells her how she started her own business after earning £1500 in one weekend selling products for someone else and realising she could make a lot more herself. She talks about selling stuff at Greenwich market and shows. Her CV says she employed “over fifteen people” (so: sixteen?) at one show. Margaret asks how she paid them. Susan said it was cash. Margaret says ‘so no tax? No National Insurance’. Susan says no. Margaret says ‘your degree was in philosophy and economics? Hmm’. Hee.

Claude picks up her CV says she wants to ‘turnover one million pound profit in the first year’. Even I know that turnover and profit are not the same after several years of watching this and Dragon’s Den, and Susan says ‘that’s really stupid’. Claude agrees. She then says she will make one million pounds profit. [Oh, SUSAN. - Steve] He’s like ‘in year one?’ She says yes because she sells loads at Greenwich. He says testing things in a niche area doesn’t necessarily mean it can expand to compete with heavyweights and the millions of pounds they put into marketing. She looks flummoxed. She tells the others it went great and everything he said to her, she shot back.

Mike Soutar asks Jim about his business. Jim says it’s called Amsmart to purposely tie in with Sralan’s other businesses. A nation shakes their heads. He wants to ‘provide employability skills’ to schools via ‘e-learning’. It’s apparently quite ‘amazing’, according to Jim, but I have no idea what it is. Mike Soutar asks why he’s using Sralan’s branding. Jim says it’s all about him and asks ‘what does Lord Sugar mean to you’ and then waxes lyrical about him. This is all a bit odd. He then essentially bursts into ‘The Greatest Love of All’ and repeats that his business is amazing.

Susan and Helen talk about how business plans need to be good, and we cut back to Jim’s interview. Mike Soutar asks him how many schools he’s spoken to about willingness to pay for e-learning. Jim says it’s ‘very high’ in Northern Ireland, and eventually reveals he hasn’t spoken to anyone about it but it’s ‘obvious’ that e-learning is a key selling point. Susan lies that she is ‘so pumped’ about the next interview.

Helen tells Margaret ‘we are working harder and harder all the time’ and she would definitely use this service. Margaret basically says ‘yes, you would, because you’re a workaholic with no life’. At this point I might have minimised the window that I was typing my thesis in at the time I was watching and whistled a little bit out of shame. Helen’s CV apparently says ‘my personal and social life have absolutely no bearing on my life, my work comes first and always has done’. Oh, Helen. Even I’m not (quite) that bad. Margaret ‘I quit this show to work on my studies rather than killing myself doing both and yet I am still a force of awesome’ Mountford is kind of making us both look bad here. Maybe we should sign up for workaholics anonymous. Helen admits ‘work… sort of is my life’.

Mike Soutar asks her to tell him a joke and make him life. She grimaces and asks if she can come back to it later. Reverse Pterodactyl Helen! Reverse Pterodactyl! That’s how you win!

Jim blabs some more. Tom tells Margaret about the success of his nail file. Helen remembers her joke, which she delivers in an automaton fashion. ‘A fish is swimming along. He swims into something and goes ‘Oh dam!’’ But then she laughs and so does he.

Cockface tells Tom he is nice and says he likes nice people. His wife is nice ‘but would I go into business with her? Not on your nelly’. Er, why? Tom talks some more about his nail file and getting it to Boots. Cockface asks why he didn’t keep going with that business. Tom says ‘I don’t wanna be ~~Joanna~~ Tom the ~~cleaner~~ nail file guy no more’.

Susan and Helen talk about Tom’s million and one ideas but how there might be the odd good one there.

Cockface said an employer said Tom didn’t finish things he started. Tom’s all ‘riiiight… but that’s what inventors are like, and I’m passionate about back problems, honest’. He knocks something over and leaves. I would also knock something over. I think there are clear reasons why Helen and Tom are my favourites. At one point Helen and Tom have a conversation about how much Susan is doing their heads in because of her persistent forced smileyness. See - we have a kinship. [Helen was doing my head in by being so needlessly stank. - Steve]

Claude reads Jim’s cliché pamphlet, which also includes the gem ‘had a meteoric rise from zero to hero’ but points out that Jim’s job and salary are a bit rubbish. Jim says his salary is above average, but Claude says ‘it’s not super though’. He says Jim isn’t setting the world alight. Jim says he will set it alight one bit at a time. He says he is what he says on that paper, he really believes it, and Claude points out that it’d be handy if he could find someone else who believed it. He tells the others ‘it was a walk in the park… with people shooting you and throwing hand grenades at you’.

Cockface asks Susan if anyone can start their own skincare business, she says yes but you need to test products. He asks who they’re tested by ‘the government?’ Ugh, he is such an obnoxious wanker. Susan says she doesn’t have any arsenic in her products. He says he has a ‘pretty good radar for bullshit’ and this sounds like bullshit. He asks her how much it costs to test them and says it’s not in her business plan. She says it’s there under ‘legalities’. He says legalities just covers things like going to Companies House to register her business. Isn’t her business already registered? I don’t get how her pitch is for a new thing. Is it meant to be for a new thing anyway, or can they just bid to expand their existing thing? I don’t understand the specifics of the ‘business plan’ they have to do. He asks what it would cost, and she says £100-2000 per product, which seems a bit of a big difference, but what do I know? Anyway, in the scheme of things £8000 isn’t that much extra to pay, I suppose, although Cockface thinks it’s a huge issue. To be honest, he could be making perfect sense and I would still side with Susan, that’s how much I hate him. She admits she only put in £6000 for legalities. So she’s in the wrong, but he’s more in the wrong because he’s a wanker.

She comes out and the others note it’s the first time they’ve seen Susan without a smile.

Claude says he was ‘amazed’ at how many companies out there are doing what Helen is doing. She says yes, but she wants to make proper money, not 50-100K. I’d say that was proper money, but I’m not an entrepreneur. He asks if she has any other business ideas if this doesn’t work out. She says yes and clicheterviews that she will succeed in anything she puts her mind to.

Interviews over! I still don’t understand what Jim’s business plan is about, and I only have a loose grasp on the other three’s. The overriding sense is that they all… pretty much suck. This series has been so weird – the business plan aspect and the tasks don’t bear much relationship to each other – I know it’d be difficult to integrate the two, but… well, it would make more sense than what’s about to happen (spoilers).

The candidates all tell the camera how they’re the best one etc.

Sralan welcomes the rotties back and says it’s nice to have two young men on the panel. Soutar’s in his mid-40s, and Cockface his late-30s, so young in comparison to Sralan maybe, but you know, not young young. Also – wherefore art the ‘young’ women? Le sigh. Claude’s all ‘three young men, bitch’.

Margaret says Helen’s amazing at the tasks, but she’s a workaholic and her business plan is rubbish. Sralan wonders whether she might be better as an employee. The others agree – you’d employ her, but her business plan isn’t very good. Mike Soutar says her plan reads more localised than able to franchise. Karren says she’s very organised so it seems like she’s trying to make a business out of her skills. Which is what Sralan usually wants them to do anyway isn’t it? I don’t know any more.
Mike Soutar says Jim is slippery, and he’s like trying to nail custard to the ceiling. To go along with the jelly Nick already nailed to the wall. [Now we just need Karren to nail some sponge fingers to the floor and we've got one heck of a trifle room. - Steve] Nick asks if he ever managed to corner Jim on anything and Mike Soutar says only that he’d done no market research. Margaret tells him about the clichés and asks ‘what was all that about?’ Claude says, yes but his idea is about YOUNG PEOPLE, the YOUNG. Sralan points out that schools don’t have any bladdy money. Nick thinks Jim just composed his business plan as a ‘seduction letter’ to Sralan. Margaret points out it’s not Jim’s business, he wants it to all be about Sralan. He asks what Jim will do on day one. Cockface says ‘talk’. OK, that one made me laugh.

They talk about Tom being difficult to pin down, but they discuss how successful the nail file has been and they don’t understand why he hasn’t continued with that. Mike Soutar says he seems flighty. Claude says his figures are rubbish. Karren says he would benefit from Sralan as he’s an inventor but can’t really do business.

Claude says Susan’s very naïve and Mike Soutar says her business plan is very flawed. Margaret says she is an entrepreneur and has worked very hard.

Final boardroom time! Sralan reminds them it’s not about a job but about coming into business with him and so he’s going to make up his mind on the business plans ‘and what I’ve experienced in the last eleven weeks’. He tells Susan her figures are silly. She says they are all ‘very very realistic’. He’s like, nah, they’re really not. Susan whines that they never pinpointed which part of her business was excessive. He points out that you don’t easily get from £1000 a weekend to turning over £4 million, and that L’Oreal, Revlon and Lancome spend a lot more than £250,000 on their marketing. Susan says ‘those were the figures I came up with’. Sralan asks if she’s listening to him. She says yeah but no but yeah. He says it doesn’t mean her business can’t work. She says ‘brilliant’. Not so good with the money, Susan.
Sralan says Helen’s amazing but her business is bladdy rubbish and has nothing to do with the business she’s been in. Helen says there’s nothing wrong in spotting a gap in the market and being the market leader nationwide would be great. Sralan says she can’t just do that when she hasn’t even started the business yet. Karren says she was good at pies and biscuits because she works for Greggs the bakers (and neglects to mention Helen was also good at the whole car seat thing as that would ruin the narrative) so why didn’t she go into that area? Helen says it was her second choice but she didn’t think it was unique enough. [I have to admit this whole "you should be in the kitchen, young lady" aspect made me a tad uncomfortable. - Steve]

Sralan asks if Tom’s plan is all about getting a chair that prevents back pain. Tom says yes, part of it. He says some of it is also going into employers to diagnose stuff. Tom says yes, kind of. Sralan says he has been in business for a long time and lists all the health and safety stuff he has to do as an employer but he would ‘give up and emigrate’ if all his employees had to have a desk chair check. I’m no expert on health and safety but don’t employers have some sort of legal duty to check people’s workstations are up to scratch, and provide suitable chairs for people with back problems? So Tom’s business strategy might be flawed, but he has latched on to a “thing” that happens, right? Tom says it will eliminate sick days and therefore will stop businesses losing money, it’s similar to losing money through electricity wastage. Sralan would prefer him to help them save on electricity. He doesn’t think absenteeism is all to do with back pain. That’s not really what Tom was saying, though? He also says he could provide people with alcohol rub and ‘bouncing keyboards’ to prevent flu and arthritis (I assume he means RSI?) but he’s not going to because…. Well, he doesn’t say.

He asks Jim when he wrote his plan ‘when I knew it would get me on the telly’ isn’t what he says, but we all know it’s the correct answer. Sralan says he wouldn’t have put this together if it wasn’t going to involve Sralan and Jim says he does this stuff anyway, goes into schools and teaches employability skills. Sralan says he thought Jim sold print. Jim says he does – essentially he goes into schools on his annual leave. Sralan says it worries him that Jim is jumping on his brand. Jim says yes, he needs the clout, but he doesn’t need Sralan to do anything, he’ll do it all himself. He said he initially thought of it as a non-profit organisation but didn’t think Sralan would like that. Sralan’s all ‘damn right, I do my “bit” thank you very much, where’s the bladdy money?’ another case of the Big Society in action, folks. Jim says they won’t make millions, which kind of undermines the stuff he had in his plan, but he believes the children are our future. Sralan says he doesn’t care, this is all about making bladdy money, he has the Junior Apprentice for that other stuff.
He ponders that maybe ‘there is some legs’ (sigh) in a chair, but he thinks if he and Tom went into a business ‘wasting time’ talking to employees that won’t work, but the chair might. Jim is a great salesperson but has no real business acumen and he wrote a plan he thought Sralan would like because of the other work he does outside of business. There was an opportunity but it’s no longer open to Jim, who is fired, as was always going to happen.

He reminds Helen how disappointed he is in her business plan. She knows what she’s doing, she’s relentless, but he doesn’t like it. She says he won’t need to babysit her. The camera cuts to Susan. Heh.

He points out Susan can do business but doesn’t understand the cost of professionalising her business and she claims she ‘absolutely understands’. He says she doesn’t understand. She says ‘I absolutely understand that I didn’t understand’. Sralan sighs that whilst he’s always wanted to be in the cosmetics industry, it’s not going to happen this time and Susan is fired. I was surprised at this, as he’s always going on about beauty, and Susan, whilst a complete nightmare of a person and often wrong about things, does have that entrepreneurial thing going for her and at least has some sort of a business to develop, whilst Helen’s plan sucks and Tom… just sucks in general at business.

Sralan says he thinks we will ‘hear of Susan’ in the future, at which point my Twitter feed erupted with jokes about us hearing about her being done for tax evasion.

He sends them out. He says to Karren and Nick that he would have given Helen a job in the old style format, but Tom’s a nice bloke. Nick says everyone likes him. Karren says Helen and Tom worked best together where she could organise him. At this point, I like a lot of people, thought Sralan genuinely might offer to go into business with both of them together. Doing the pie thing. I suppose were this not the first year of the ‘new format’ he may well have done, but it’d make a bit of a mockery to alter the rules of the whole thing the first time out, I guess.

Sralan reminds us this is the first time, and Helen says she doesn’t think he likes her initial idea, but she has a second song – a chain of bakeries. She says she had the plan all along. He asks if she’s just being really shrewd. Tom says he doesn’t understand why she didn’t start her own business before. Helen says she could also ask why someone who’d had their own business for five or six years hasn’t made a success of it and feels the need to come on The Apprentice. She delivers this almighty burn very coolly and matter-of-fact. Ouch. Tom then pulls out his major trump card – he wangled his way into an appointment with Wal-Mart to sell billions of nail files. Sralan’s face lights up at this. Game, set and match? I'd toyed with Tom as a winner several times over this series but this was the moment where I knew it was a fait accompli.

He says Helen’s brilliant at the tasks but he wasn’t keen on her plan. Interestingly, he doesn't explode at her cheeky 'second plan' idea, as he might with some other candidates. Tom might have been rubbish at the tasks but he has an idea of some sort. It needs tweaking ‘and that’s what business is about’ and anyway Sralan likes products and he's hoping Tom might invent the latest videoemailerphone-cum-beuaty-something-or-other so Tom wins, and by default, so does Team Logic. I will leave some space for Steve to explode right here… [Eh. My righteous fury has kind of burnt out by this point, but I did think it made a complete sham of the entire process to have a winner who had so plainly sucked at most of the tasks that filled up the rest of the series, and also his business idea sounded really ethically dubious, but apparently this was all decided by the nail file from the word go, so why even bother, eh? - Steve]

At least he’s more likeable than Simon Ambrose though, hey Steve? [Agreed. - Steve]
Coatwatch: no coat, but he punches the air and shouts ‘Yes’. He even removes his glasses and breaks all the laws of television that tell us people look better when the glasses come off.

And that’s that for this year. Thank you all for reading. Do join Steve, Chris and Helen over on Bitching's Next Top Model, and join us here next year to see whether or not this format will have started to make sense.

Please pack your knives and go

2011-07-14T13:56:00.000-07:00

Week 11: 13th July 2011

Previously: the remaining candidates sat on cardboard boxes (presumably to give them a taste of life as a business start-up, though obviously Susan will tell you at great length that she has got her own business and knows all this already) while Sralan gave them instructions for a task, instructions that may as well have been in Esperanto for all the sense any of us could make out of them. It involved smelling what was selling, that's all I know. The recap dings Helen for her shitty sales plan, and Natasha for not listening to Jim when he told her to restock. In the boardroom, Natasha's team was given a £100 Natasha Penalty but still eked out a win, though there was NO BLADDY TREAT FOR YOU, BLADDY NO BALLS, because Sralan had completely lost his fucking mind by that point. Helen faced a firing for the first time all series, Tom fetched himself a big plate of Bitch and Chips and proceeded to take Melody and Helen to town to cover his own disastrous and embarrassing record, and ultimately Melody was firing for perhaps the worst PMing this show's seen since Gavin in week three. And yes, I'm including Zoe on the rubbish task. I love Melody, but she didn't have a clue.

This week: interviews, yay! Natasha arrives in the bedroom, still in her dressing gown and with a towel wrapped around her head, with an offering of breakfast for Helen and Susan. I can't see any complimentary copies of Covered magazine on the tray, but perhaps she's got them tucked under the plates. Susan and Helen discuss whether they will be having interviews today: Susan thinks they will, and Helen thinks it seems likely, but you can never quite tell with Sralan, because he's a tricky sort like that. The phone rings, and Jim trots obediently downstairs to answer it. The Disembodied Voice of NotFrances tells him that Sralan wants to meet them in the City, and the cars will be there in 30 minutes. Jim asks if they need to wear anything in particular (having possibly mistaken this for ApprentChat - Apprentices You'd Like To Talk To! Call 0898 98 98 98, calls cost £5 a minute at all times), but gets just a dead line in response. So either NotFrances is a stone cold bitch, or as we suspected, she records all these in advance and some poor runner on the production team is lumbered with getting up at arse o'clock every other morning and holding a tape player up to the telephone. Natasha asks Jim if he was told about interviews, and he mopes that they were unwilling to answer questions. Helen asks him if he's wearing his "interview suit" (I cannot even begin to describe how disappointed I am that we never got to see Vinnie Disney's interview suit), and Jim zings that he'll wear what he always wears, because he looks like a million dollars in every eventuality. Oh Jim, you sleaze.

Cars leave Entrepreneur Estates. Some of the most ridiculously over-dramatic music accompanies shots of the contestants walking down a street and Sralan getting into a lift. Seriously, it's like the conductor at the symphony orchestra suddenly had a wasp land on his nose. Eventually it subsides, and Sralan arrives to meet the contestants, telling them that they're at the One New Change, which sounds like it ought to be a philanthropic initiative founded by Bono, but is in fact a shopping mall in the City. I never, ever go into the City, so I'm just going to take his word for it. Sralan segues that the mall is filled with fast-food franchises, and that's their task this week. So not interviews after all. Boo! And everyone wore their best interview clothes for nothing, except Jim, who turned up in a dirty pair of tracky bottoms and an "I shot JR" t-shirt and relied on his magnetic personality to do the work for him. Sralan tells them that he's located two empty shops for them (I bet that was an arduous task, finding empty shops in the middle of a recession) in the centre of London, and they'll kit them out as restaurants. Staff will be provided, and the task will be judged by industry experts. And if you're sat there thinking "hang on a minute, isn't this just The Restaurant operating under a massively condensed time frame?" then yes, you'd be right. Clearly, series three was such a disaster that this was the only way they could afford to bring it back, as a one-off task in a far more successful show. Still, if Sralan tells the losing team that they are "in ze challonge", it'll all be worth it.

The teams depart. In the Logicar, Helen posits the idea that the winners of this task might be the finalists. She and Tom rub their hands together with glee, and it seems Helen's officially over her wrecked-perfect-record breakdown from last week, because otherwise she'd clearly be having conniptions about being the only other person on a team with someone who currently holds a 2-8 win-loss ratio. Over in the Venturichle, Susan thinks it's good that they've got three minds on their team whereas the other team have only two. She does not consider the specific three minds that constitute her team too deeply, otherwise I'd imagine she'd not be quite so chirpy.

Fast food montage (Square Pie! Leon! McDonald's! Etc!) [Well, I know what McDonald's is, but we don't have that other nonsense up north... Rad, channelling Ellie] as the voiceover explains that Sralan is looking for a new and original fast food brand. Natasha tells Jim and Susan that she has a BA (Hons) in Hospitality Management, and for one of the modules involved setting up their own restaurant, complete with branding. Jim and Susan are heartened by this.

Venture find their site, and Natasha's excited/horrified that they really do have to start from scratch, as they basically have the bare bones of a shop unit to work with and nothing else. We are informed that they have 48 hours to put the shop together. Tom and Helen look round theirs, and Helen identifies a bain-marie, a hot cupboard and a hot plate. I have to admit, I do admire a woman who can identify an industrial bain-marie on sight. I wonder how many of those they had in Greggs? Natasha burbles about "inception", yeah, and "creating a vision", because that's exactly what Natasha does. I'm slightly disappointed that the editors don't add a massive "BURRRRRRRRRRRR" on the soundtrack after she says "inception", though. (Incidentally, if you haven't watched this yet, you really must.) Similarly, Helen thinks they need to be lead by their concept, and determine what their USP is.

Over on Venture, Jim asserts himself as project manager. Neither of the other two looks especially thrilled with this, but they go along with it anyway, and Natasha offers to support him with her degree. Jim patroniserviews that he's got "two girls on board who probably appreciate a bit of direction." Over on Logic, Helen wants to be PM (surprise surprise), as she has run food outlets before, and Tom likes being project-managed by her, so the deal is done. And if I were running this show, this is the point where I would run into the room and fire Tom on the spot for being such a fucking shirker, because he has only PMed once, and lost, and this would've been his last opportunity to redress that, but he didn't even bother to fight for it. Helen's already got two wins under her belt as PM, and therefore doesn't need this; also, she's the type to PM from behind so he could probably get himself a PM victory with minimal effort by deploying Helen effectively, and I'm sorry, but it just really, really annoys me that he doesn't even try to put himself forward.

Next, it's time to pick a style of food. Tom considers Mexican or West India, but not Spanish as he thinks the market is flooded. Helen wonders if there's a fast food chain that just does pie and mash. Yes, there is - it was even on the montage earlier. They brainstorm around pie and mash, and Tom opines that it "tends to be heavy, which tends to be male rather than female." BULL. SHIT. I work in an office where women massively outnumber men, and the women in my office are big fans of Square Pie (although the one near our office closed down recently, so not so much any more). Helen suggests mini pies: "they're more suitable for ladies." GIVE ME STRENGTH.

Over on Venture, Susan wants to do Mexican food because it's "really fun", and they can have cactuses and people wearing sombreros. No, really, those are her reasons. Jim points out that Mexican offers lots of healthy options, like "fisheaters", chimichangas (which are DEEP FRIED, for fuck's sake), burritos, nachos...seriously, these are his healthy options. I don't even want to picture what the rest of his menu is going to look like. Possibly just a big slab of lard with a jalapeño pepper on top. Natasha is "not sure about Mexican, but I'll go with it." Susan asks if either of them eat in Mexican restaurants much. Natasha has, and Susan has, so they consider this to be appropriate experience. Karren pulls a face of disbelief in the background.

Next in the seemingly endless bits of admin is the need to decide who'll create the dishes, and who will work on branding. Jim wants Natasha to be their chef, but she points out that she can't cook, adding "have you ever seen me cook in the house?" Suddenly that breakfast she prepared for Helen and Susan appears a lot more sinister. Jim reminds Natasha that she has a hospitality degree, and Natasha sniffs that she has the degree, but not a lot of work experience. Karren interviews that Jim's misusing his team's skills by allowing Natasha to be on the branding team and not the cooking team, where her experience lies. Yes, but Karren, what if she was telling the truth and genuinely cannot cook? I mean, this team's already in enough trouble as it is.

Over on Logic, Tom knows little about the making of pies and wants to be on branding duty. Helen visibly flinches and says that as project manager, she's wary of not having "ultimate autonomy over the concept and the branding". God, Helen is fucking terrifying. [Yes, but this is what's so amazing about her - Rad] Tom simpers that this is what he does with all this inventions, and has been doing for the last eight years. Helen, realising to her great distress that she can't be in charge of everything, so she allows Tom to do the branding, as long as he keeps her fully informed at all times. You'd think, given that it's a food-based task, and Zoe got dinged on the biscuit task for being PM and not being present during the manufacturing of the food, that Helen would consider having charge of the food to be a good use of her time. Then again, Helen was PM on that task as well and didn't go to the factory and was never criticised for it, because the capriciousness of the judging on this show did not begin with the £100 Being Natasha Penalty last week, so who fucking knows? Basically, Helen secretly wants to fire Tom and do the whole task by herself, but given that she's not technically allowed to do that, she's just trying to give him as little real work to do as possible so she can bathe herself in shiny shiny praise when she wins, because that's what always happens, except for last week which was all totally that bitch Melody's fault and nothing remotely to do with Helen's utterly nonsensical strategy. Anyway, Helen's all "I'm trusting you here, Tom, big time", and being so in a completely gross way, because everyone's really, really awful this week, and she is their queen.

10.45am. Natasha and Susan are in Soho (now there's a spin-off with real potential), and Susan is reeling off a list of Mexicana: banjos, sombreros, moustaches, cactuses, and so on. I thank all the deities I can think of that we were spared the obligatory "do the Mexicans use soap? Do they have dentists? Do the Mexicans love their children? Will you buy me a Mexican for Christmas?" conversation that obviously happened at some point. They walk past Clone Zone, but do not, sadly, go in. Natasha and Susan establish between them that neither of them has ever been to Mexico, nor do they speak "any Mexican". Then they both say "arriba" repeatedly. Ay, dios mio. Susan says that she's thinking of "a happy Mexican-looking man with a big moustache" - and they happen to be walking through porno central while she says this, which is quite funny, because I'm sure one of those establishments has got just what she's looking for. Behind them, Karren listens in horror, quietly contemplating a change of career, or possibly a change of gender.

Nearby in a Mexican restaurant, Jim is shown the ropes by a curiously co-operative member of staff. I'm guessing he realises these people are not serious competition in any way. Jim asks how long a take-away client spends there, on average, and is told that in peak times they operate 85-90 transactions every 15 minutes, which isn't quite the response to the question that was asked, but does at least give you the gist. "The line's moving at lightning speed," the man explains. Jim asks what's most popular, and is told that burritos do good business. He also, amusingly, says that he's looking to do something out of the ordinary, so he wants to know what they don't do. The man suggests chilli con carne as an option, and says that they're currently doing a trial on tortilla soup [blee - Rad].

North-west London, now, and Helen is at the catering plant used by Bigham's Pies. Helen tells the Heston Blumenthal impersonator in the kitchen that they're looking to do three mini-pies (FOR THE LADIES, LEST WE FORGET), and two main ones. Helen barks that they're looking at steak and red wine, chicken and mushroom, and spinach, broccoli and cheddar. She tastes the cheese and onion pie, and finds it too cheesy, looking almost on the verge of tears because it is not PERFECT. I wish we could go back to the days when Helen was the boringly competent candidate, before she became this terrifying, highly-strung, obsessive horror that now sits before us. I mean, I wasn't overly fond of the other Helen either, but this one is far, far worse. Eventually, however, she finds a recipe that she approves of, and the pies are mass-produced, ready to be delivered to her restaurant and reheated by some goon on minimum wage. Helen yammers that she's happy now, although not entirely satisfied with her costings on the steak pie because there's a lot of good-quality steak in there. Ultimately, however, she decides that since she's being judged by industry experts with finely-honed palates, she'd rather take a hit on her margins and serve top-notch products. She says all of this while clawing a groove six inches deep into the table with her nails. Helen is INTENSE, people.

Tom, meanwhile, is off being all the things I hate most about "creatives" - wandering around a baby boutique and muttering things like "the fun-ness of that, could we turn that into a mini pie?" No, Tom. You cannot. Do you know why? Because it is a child's hat. God only knows how much Helen would freak if she saw this. She'd probably have him sectioned. Tom madterviews that he's trying to create a very modern image around the mini-pie, while maintaining a "very British" theme to it. The latter part of the deal seems to involve taking a lot of pictures of cards with Union Jacks on them. Tom throws out some names like Micro Pie, Pie In The Sky, Brit Pie, and then spots a sign in a shop window discussing Qype [What is Qype? Is it like Skype? - Rad]. He reads this as "Qypye" and then starts mentally tossing around the ball of "Qye Pye". Tom calls Helen to announce that he's "just dyslexically misread something" (heh) and come up with some genius ideas involving "pie" being spelt "py". Few things irritate me more than words being deliberately misspelt for the purposes of wacky branding hijinks, so please accept my apologies if I have some sort of breakdown during this next segment. Tom suggests "MyPy", and Helen offers a very clenched "okay" while flicking through pages of her own name suggestions in her own notepad, which include things like "Pie Cottage", "Piesight" (see their light!), and my personal favourite "Piehi". Between them, they decide upon "MyPy - say hi to British pies." I really hate MyPy, not least because it looks like it should be pronounced "mipey", which sounds like a word your nan might use to describe the weather.

(Just out of interest, does anyone else get a kick of watching this show on iPlayer
and getting the "click to resume" message? Click to REZ-HOO-MAY.)

Jim heads off to his chef and works on recipes for chilli beef, a fajita kit, and a Mexican soup. The stoves are fired up and the taste test seems positive...so we cut to Natasha and Susan, the branding team, sitting in an office looking really bored. "Sombravo?" Susan suggests. What does that even mean? Susan notes that Mexican restaurants are always "El" something, and then asks "what does 'el' mean?" Oh, Jesus Christ. [Well, if she had to ask if the French loved their children.... - Rad] Although I suppose I sympathise on some level, because I frequently find myself saying something very similar during Britain's Next Top Model. And this is where it really goes irrecoverably wrong: Natasha rings Jim to say that they're struggling, and he suggests "Caracas, as in the little Mexican shaking things?" Natasha and Susan like this idea, then Jim realises that what he's actually thinking of is "maracas". "What does 'Caracas' mean?" asks Natasha. It's the capital of Venezuela, dear. It's not very Mexican. None of them realise this, however, so they agree on "Caraca's". Yep, with an apostrophe. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt here and hope that they were planning to build it as a chain run by a mascot called Caraca, if only to preserve my sanity.

With that out of the way, they move onto the logo. Natasha suggests getting creative, by using different coloured peppers in there somehow. Susan objects strongly to this, because she thinks all their potential customers are drooling idiots, and since peppers aren't exclusively Mexican, that'll confuse people and they should stick with something clear like a sombrero. You know what else isn't exclusively Mexican? VENEZUELA. She is really picking the wrong aspect to nitpick here. The two of them can't agree, so they phone Jim again. Susan details her pepper-related worries, and Natasha snots that if Susan has a better idea she should put it forward. Then, while Susan tries to say that she wants sombreros, Natasha takes the phone out of her hand, leaving Susan to do her best open-mouthed "THAT'S SO UNFAIR ~~ZOE~~ NATASHA!" face, because where Susan excels above all else is in the field of acting like a wounded child. They bicker some more, and Susan stresses that she "cannot stop thinking how much of a failure this is going to be." (Spoilers!) Jim makes the call not to use peppers. Natasha shrugterviews that Susan's just being contrary for the sake of it, and she doesn't mind people disagreeing with her ideas if they have a better one, but that's not what Susan's doing. That...doesn't really tally with what we've seen, but I hate Susan, so what the hell: Team Natasha! TEAM SUSAN! Melody will always be the queen of saying she hates other people's stuff without giving alternatives. Miss you, Melody. -Joel Susan whineterviews that she and Natasha don't get along, and Jim knows that, so he made a mistake leaving them to work together. For a young entrepreneur with a skincare business, Susan kind of has the face of an old lady. I'm just saying. Their final logo, then, is CARACA'S, with a sombrero atop the C. Classy. In the kitchen, Karren pointedly asks Jim who came up with the name and the menu, and he takes credit for both, noting that "there's a theme developing."

7pm. Tom and Helen have another branding phonecall about potential names for their pies, and Helen wants them all to be named after people who are influential figures in British history. Presumably this means they will have a Cheryl Cole pie. That'll be the one that looks nice, but is kind of flaky, short on filling and leaves an unpleasant aftertaste. Tom likes this idea, and asks "was Byron the guy who was writing at the same time as Shakespeare?" No, Tom, he was not. Perhaps you're thinking of Christopher Marlowe? Mmm, Marlowe Pie. "Was Byron a vegetarian, do we know?" is Tom's next question. Maybe if you want a name for your vegetarian pie, think of famous vegetarians? That has to be more sensible than thinking of famous people and then trying to work out if they're vegetarians or not. They're not really sure about this, so Tom moves on to explorers: "We have William Drake." Er, who? I think you mean Sir Francis Drake there, Tom. Dunno where William came from; perhaps he confused him with the poet William Blake. Next on the list is Christopher Columbus. That'd be the Genoese Christopher Columbus. "Didn't Columbus discover the potato in America?" asks Tom. "Yes, he did," replies Helen. No, he didn't: that'd be Sir Francis Drake again, or possibly Sir Walter Raleigh (depending on whose version of events you believe, if either), and it wasn't discovered in America. I know I have the benefit of google when I'm doing these recaps, but I was terrible at history when I was at school and even my grasp of it is far less muddled than Tom's and Helen's. Nick sucks a really big lemon. Tom suggests "Columbus mash".

Over at Caraca's (*shudder*), Natasha and Susan are briefing the designer, with conflicting ideas of what they want. Tom's doing the same at Mipey, via the method of talking to himself while the designer stands next to him smiling politely. Tom's branding ideas involve Big Ben and red buses. You can just smell those creative fires burning, can't you? Meanwhile, Helen micromanageterviews that it's scary to put her trust in Tom when this is such a massive thing to her. I'm not sure Helen has the capacity to trust other human beings, to be honest. [This is kind of why I love Helen. I just know I'd be the same if I were on this show. Other human beings always screw things up. Team Helen! - Rad] Her biggest worry is Tom not being able to replicate what's in her head, because heaven forfend Tom actually injecting any of his own thoughts or opinions into this task. That is not the Helen way.

8am the next morning, and both restaurants are starting to take shape. Jim and Susan speak in vaguely offensive cod-Mexican accents upon seeing Caraca's (GAHHH), although I'm more willing to forgive Jim because he's wearing an adorable red-and-white stripey top. I now want him to add a bobble hat and a pair of glasses so I can spend the rest of the episode playing Where's Jim? Meanwhile, Tom and Helen arrive at Mipey, which is still a work in progress but basically looks like the EDL threw up in it. Thankfully, this concept meets with the approval of Helen's brain, so Tom is off the hook.

Nick looks over their "say hi to British pies" menu, and checks off the Nightingale, the Drake...and the Columbus. "He's British?" Nick questions. Suddenly Helen is not so sure, and throws the question over to Tom. Tom's response: "Oh, you are kidding me." Heh. "Still, there we are," says Nick, vaguely apologetically. It's no "anyway, I'll leave it with you", but I guess it'll have to do. Helen briefs the Sralan-supplied staff about the pricing structure, and is scarily clear about everything in that very Helenesque way (though credit to her for coaching them in upselling and meal deals and whatnot), while Nick appears to be trying to commit suicide by shoving a pen up through the roof of his mouth and into his brain. I can imagine Helen might have that effect on some people, yes. We had a ghost in a painting at my university that was rumoured to do something very similar, but that's another story.

Now, remember when Tom and Melody did roleplay in the biscuits task and it was amazing? Now think about how much less fun it would've been with Helen in a pivotal role. Except you don't have to imagine, because here it is: Helen plays a customer, while Reasonably Fit Temporary Employee plays himself. I kind of want Susan to run in at this point yelling "remember, you're you and I'm me". Anyway, they run through the sales script, where the staff are instructed to ask "have you eaten 100% British before?", which you just know is either going to result in "yes, I had a roast dinner on Sunday" or some kind of disgusting oral sex-related comment. Helen, being a giant nerd, of course answers, "I haven't, no, what would you recommend?", because that is exactly the way a fast-food customer in central London behaves. Their signature dish is a variety of three pies. So presumably their mini pies for ladies thing sort of went nowhere, because they're not really that much lighter if you're eating three of them. Unless they're just following the Marjorie Dawes school of dieting. They go through a dry run, which seems to go pretty well, apart from somebody forgetting to remove the pies from their foil trays before putting them in the box for the make-believe customer. Oops.

Over at Caraca's (*sob*), the hired kitchen hand, whom we shall call Conchita in the absence of knowing her real name, is working in the back by herself while Jim touches up the décor. While Jim and Natasha consider the prime location for a poster, Conchita emerges and pleads with Jim to organise the kitchen, because they are not even remotely ready. Jim promises to go into the kitchen with her in a minute to go through everything. In the kitchen, moments later, Conchita tells Jim that she is just the hands, while he is the brains, and he must tell her how he wants it all managed. I bet Conchita would've given her eyeteeth to have been assigned to Helen's team at this point. Jim tells her that he wants hot fajitas, hot chilli and hot soup, and Conchita asks if this means he is planning on making the hot fajitas during service, because that will be time-consuming. Jim declares himself the "Nacho Man". With half an hour to go, Natasha and Susan go through the last stages of cleaning and preparing the front of house area, while Jim puts a sombrero on a cactus. Sigh. Over at Mipey, Tom and Helen and their associates are looking a lot more organised, and are ready for service. "Ooh, I'm excited!" Helen exclaims. Reasonably Fit Temporary Employee laughs nervously, as well he might.

It's 2pm, and they're open for business, with two hours to serve customers. Two people enter Caraca's, pretty much looking as though the production staff have had to forcibly shove them in there. There is a hammer and a box of pins on the floor. Professional! Natasha and Susan busy themselves with customers and showing people to their tables, while Jim prepares some truly rank-looking nachos in the kitchen. Susan appears in the kitchen too, panicked, saying that they have more people than chairs, because they weren't banking on having so many eating in.

People troop into Mipey, and are greeted by Helen in full cheerleader mode screaming "BRITISH BRITISH BRITISH!" at them. Despite this, their service seems much slicker, their food looks far more appetising, and everything just seems...well, better at Mipey. Over at Caraca's (*shoves knife into own hand*), the queue is enormous and Susan is not doing a great job of keeping everyone calm, while in the kitchen, Jim is overwhelmed with orders. A customer complainterviews that the fast food is not very fast, as he's been waiting ten minutes for his fajita. Oh, boo fucking hoo. Shots of people yawning and looking variously antsy, pissed off, or both. Those who have food aren't impressed either: one remarks that the cheese on his nachos hasn't been melted, while a mild-mannered gentleman informs Susan politely that his fajita was pretty much stone cold, while Susan apologises helplessly. I do feel slightly bad for Susan here, as I imagine she got rather a lot of this. Then again, it was only for two hours, so maybe Susan can just suck it up. Karren restaurateurviews that Venture spent too long worrying about the décor, to the extent that they never bothered to establish a workable system. Over at Mipey, however, a tattooed builder-type is impressed with the quality of the steak in Helen's pie (fnar). Tom grinterviews that things are going well, and with a turnaround time of under three minutes, he thinks they're officially fast food.

With that, the test run is over. Susan sighterviews that the experience was mad, and they were completely disorganised, and lots of customers left because they didn't get the food they wanted. Susan reports back to Jim that a recurring problem was that the nachos and fajitas were cold. "Give me solutions," Jim retorts, and I would've loved it if Susan had just gone "...we serve them hot?" She tells Jim that he needs to make sure everything they serve is perfect. Jim appears to not really be listening. Later, he looks over their feedback, and one example reads: "Table was dirty for a long time, very long wait for food & service, not enough seating, food tasted cheap." Ooh, OUCH. As he reads out another comment - "friendly, but slow" - the camera cuts to Natasha. HA! Nice one, editors. Mipey, however, have better feedback, with people responding to the UKIP theme and the general presence of pies. The only real concern is people finding it difficult to eat out of a cardboard box. Wusses. I'm slightly surprised there wasn't more feedback along the lines of "truly terrifying woman greeted me at the door, who almost made me turn around and walk back out again". One of Jim's feedback forms reads "crazy waitress" - that has to have been referring to Natasha, surely? Poor Susan, meanwhile (this is how bad things are getting, I'm actually saying things like "poor Susan" and meaning it) is stuck wiping tables while Jim reads out this list of their failures. They look on the bright side: at least Sralan wasn't there to witness any of this.

The next day, 7am. The teams leave Entrepreneur Estates, ready to demonstrate their wares to Sralan and his gaggle of industry experts. Jim tells his teammates that the key to success will be staying calm. And possibly heating up the fajitas. In the Logicar, Helen tells Tom that she's happy with the service, so they just need to make sure the quality is there for every meal. In the Venturichle, Susan tells Jim that yesterday's set-up was basically a shambles, and outlines her idea for a new arrangment that's more of a self-seating nature while she and Natasha stay at the counter. This seems like a more sensible idea (although now perhaps they'll have people standing up for 10 minutes waiting for cold fajitas, rather than being able to sit down), and Jim agrees. So at the restaurant, Susan makes up "ORDER HERE! COLLECT HERE!" signs, while Jim explains to Conchita that they need to go slower and make sure they get things right. Because yesterday's problem was clearly that they were going too fast. Oh, Jim. Jim gets Susan to eat his hot nachos. She seems mollified.

It's lunchtime, and Sralan is on his way to Caraca's (*bangs head against wall*), complete with an entourage that includes representatives from Domino's and McDonald's. Oh, NOW I get why they put an apostrophe in it. Susan greets them effusively as we're informed that the experts will grade the restaurants in four categories: the first of which is customer service. Natasha upsells Sralan to some nachos to go with his fajita, and then he stands around impatiently while Jim and Conchita take a long time to cook it. Meanwhile, one lady orders a fajita without peppers; I think Susan planted her. Sralan wonders where his nachos have got to. A customer asks Natasha how long the wait is, and Natasha says "five to ten minutes, top-end", which she thinks means they're doing well. That just about sums it up, really. The second category is the quality of meal and menu: Sralan likes the taste of the food, but he thinks it's all a bit messy. Someone else opines that they can't be making much of a margin on the fajitas. Category three: brand identity. Despite the clichés, people seem to enjoy the clarity and coherence of the message. Category four will involve a pitch on how the franchise will work long-term, so Jim, Susan and Natasha come out to speak to the experts.

Susan opens by discussing the name, claiming that it's catchy, memorable, fun to say, and "very Mexican-sounding". Oh DEAR. She adds that they included the sombrero to inject a bit of personality, because when you think of sombreros, you think of sun, fun and Mexico, which doesn't rhyme with sun or fun, but never mind. A figures-minded type asks them how many customers they intend to serve in an average hour, and how much that would earn them in profit. Jim, clearly not having thought this through in any great detail, hypothesises that they're looking at 60 people over a two-hour lunch period (one person every two minutes, are they out of their fucking minds?), with an average spend of £7, which is "£4,800 in terms of their spend". Oh Jim. 60x7 is not 4,800 no matter how much you fiddle the numbers. Where exactly do you think all those zeros are coming from? Are you just borrowing them from your team's collective IQ? Karren shakes her head at him, and he revises his figures to £4,200. Eventually, someone throws him a bone and informs him that it's actually £420. Someone else asks about the brand identity, and how the sombreros and cacti fit into the contemporary world, and Natasha delivers a lengthy non-answer about chill time and hanging up your sombrero. Jim cracks a parting gag about Sralan not having settled his bill [are you sure he didn't mean it? You can't tell with Jim. I keep expecting him to go full blown psycho at some point - Rad], and then everyone leaves.

Now it's Mipey's turn to be evaluated in the same way. Helen asks the delegates if they've ever eaten 100% British before, and the answer is a unanimous "yes". HA! She recovers well, though, and says that this means they'll clearly enjoy the quality of the Mipey ingredients. Sralan orders a steak and red wine pie, and Helen talks him into having mash and mushy peas. His meal is served almost immediately, and he remarks that that was quick. "We're fast food!" smugs Helen. More orders pile in (pie-l in?). The delegates like the clarity of Mipey's message and the fact that the provenance of the food is displayed. Tom burns himself on some gravy.

Tom and Helen emerge to do their pitch, which has clearly had a bit more thought-put into it than Venture's. Tom cannily introduces it as the "first" branch of Mipey, and outlines his ambitions for a franchise of 500 stores. He describes it as "unashamebly (sic), 100%, completely, brilliantly, British" and then hands over to Helen for details. Helen launches into her spiel about the glowing results of yesterday's survey, but suffers something of a brain fart halfway through, resulting in her just saying "menu" over and over again, until Tom prompts her, and then she admonishes him for putting her off. Professional! At the end, Tom thanks Helen and meekly apologises for interrupting her. I think the line between cordiality and open contempt is wafer-thin with these two, even if they have managed to stay on the right side of it so far. A lot of people online seem to have remarked positively on the "chemistry" between Tom and Helen in this task, which I have to say I was rather surprised by: she seems to treat him like the over-eager child getting in the way of Mummy's Very Important Work. I almost expect him to start suckling at her teat [I love team Tom and Helen - but I think this is a throwback to them being all moral and prudish on the lads' mag task - Rad]. They get good feedback about the food quality and the competitive pricing from the delegates, and as soon as someone mentions Helen's favourite word ("margins"), she breaks into a detailed speech on how much they're making. It sounds good, anyway. The only real stumbling block is when someone asks whether they'd change the menu in summer, and Tom offers a rather weak answer involving "cold pies", but it's clear the editors are struggling to find a loss-leading edit here.

The scores are collected for Caraca's (*removes own testicle with rusty scissors*) and Mipey. Helen obsessterviews that they've worked really hard, and feel like the brand belongs to her. Er, them.

The next day (presumably), and the contestants are on the way to the boardroom. Natasha thinks that they pulled it out of the bag in the end, and that they have a strong chance of winning. Helen is determined to make the final. Susan "relishes every opportunity to have a dialogue" with Sralan. Tom thinks he's a perfect business partner. Jim thinks he's got exactly what it takes. Well, that was useful.

NotFrances sends them through to the boardroom. Sralan starts with Venture, where Jim explains the plan to go with Mexican food, as it is something a lot of people seem to enjoy. Sralan cracks a joke that Mexican food is "hot" right now, ho ho ho. He asks where the name Caraca's (*performs frontal lobotomy on self with chainsaw*) came from, and Jim cops to it, saying that it was catchy. Sralan points out the whole "capital of Venezuela" thing, which it turns out Venture had worked out at some point between the branding and the boardroom (or, more likely, had pointed out to them), and Natasha explains the Caracas/maracas confusion. Sralan tells them that maracas are Spanish (o rly?), and Karren gets pleasingly schoolmarmish about it: "Be honest - you thought it was a made-up word, all of you." Hee. Sralan asks about the dummy run, and Jim admits to the style-over-substance problem that they had, at which point Karren points out their abysmal lack of a coherent order system, and praises Susan for spotting the flaws therein and implementing a new procedure. Blimey, Karren liked something Susan did - there's a turn-up for the books. "Good team leader?" Sralan asks, and Natasha says that he wasn't massively decisive, and Susan says that he was "okay".

Over to Logic, where Helen was PM, obviously. Sralan asks where the Mipey brand came from, and Tom says that it was all down to him misreading a sign. I bet he says that to all the girls. He says that he was keen to mix an old tradition with a new angle, and that's how Mipey was born. Sralan asks them how their dummy run went, and Tom explains that they actually did two, as we saw. Sralan then suggests that Tom could let Helen talk for a bit, and Helen snarks "that would be nice" as politely as she can. Seriously: LIGHTEN UP, HELEN. The last time we had someone so humourless on the show, she was Helene Speight, and looked what happened there [I liked her too. And Zoe. Miserable bitches are obviously my candidates of choice - Rad]. Helen proceeds to explain through gritted teeth that she went to make the products while Tom did the branding, and was terrified throughout that she didn't have complete control of everything. Or something. I may have editorialised that slightly.

Time for some results, as if we even need to be told. Despite the four criteria, we're simply going to be given an average scores. Venture had an average score of 4/10, while Logic netted a much more impressive 7/10. Helen's face at this point reads WHAT? SEVEN? SEVEN IS A SCORE FOR FAILURES! WE PRODUCED PIE PERFECTION! I WILL ACCEPT NOTHING LESS THAN TEN!

Despite that, Logic win, and are both in the final. That's their only reward, but it's reward enough for them both, I imagine. As she gets up to leave, Helen whispers "thanks Jim!", which is presumably in response to him congratulating her, but let's face it - it's much funnier to pretend it's her thanking him for fucking up the last task and giving her an easy ride into the final. Outside, Tom and Helen hug, and are adorable.

Sralan tells Venture that two of them will be in the final, but one will be fired today. And it will be Natasha, because he's made no secret of his desire to fire her for weeks now. In Loser Café (which has a Pukka Pies sign displayed outside, just to add insult to injury), Venture drink their teas in miserable silence. Outside, Jim blameterviews that Susan and Natasha's inability to play nicely together was the reason that the task failed. Natasha claims that because of the job she was doing, she couldn't see the "trail of destruction" (you were behind the counter, Natasha, you weren't IN SPACE) that Susan was at the centre of. Susan arroganterviews that she's stronger than Natasha and Jim put together, and really wants to make the final. Natasha yeahterviews that Susan should be fired for being uncooperative. Jim vows to fight for his rightful place in the final.

Boardroom Day. NotFrances sends Jim, Natasha and Susan in to see Sralan. He begins by saying that as this is week 11 of "this process", he's assuming they have some sort of superior knowledge that's allowed them to make it that far. Susan: "Yep." Hee. (Other people who made it to week 11 or further, just as a point of interest: Paul Tulip. Michelle Dewberry. Simon Ambrose. Lucinda Ledgerwood. Lee McQueen. Kate Walsh. Stuart Baggs. Just saying.) Sralan is holding a piece of paper, which turns out to be Logic's detailed business plan, and he would like to know what Venture's business plan was. Susan admits that none of them actually considered it, and Natasha puts it down to a "lack of communication" because they never discussed it as a group. Sralan tells Jim that it was embarrassing when he couldn't correctly multiply 60x7, and Jim insists that he's dead good at mental arithmetic, and that was an "uncharacteristic error". Sralan points out that even without the mathematical fuck-up, a gross income of £420 over two hours will not sustain a fast-food enterprise like this.

He goes on to say that fast food restaurants are where you go to the counter, order, pay, take your food, find a seat, and sit down, ideally in under a minute. He asks what their system was, and ultimately answers his own question, identifying it as "oi! Who ordered the nachos?" Heh. Sralan asks why it was so slow, and Jim blames the equipment. Karren disagrees, and says that it was slow because they couldn't determine whether they were a fast-food restaurant "or a waitress restaurant". Is that what we call the other ones, then? Jim blames Natasha and Susan for not sorting things out, as they were front of house, and says that he was "in naive bliss" in the kitchen. I believe this is now officially known as The Rebekah Brooks Defence. Natasha goes for the equally brilliant strategy of basically admitting to lollygagging while taking the orders because she knew she couldn't keep up with the ones that they already had. Sralan brings up Natasha's Hospitality Management degree, which has now become an International Hospitality Management degree somewhere along the line (presumably Melody was involved somewhere) and Natasha says that it was a long time ago, and her career has proceeded in a different direction.

Time to talk about the food. Sralan thinks it looked like dog puke, and asks why their priority was not to get the food right. Susan plays Monday morning quarterback, saying that Jim should have used his visit to the Mexican restaurant to find out what their top sellers were, how quickly they could be prepared, and what ingredients they used. Jim says that there was a deeper issue beneath all this, that he was a babysitter rather than a project manager because Natasha and Susan didn't get along. Natasha asks why, then, did he insist on making them work together if he knew that? Jim rather fumbles the point and says that he'd had feedback from Natasha that Susan was "like a child" to work with, at which point Natasha hurriedly says that she doesn't want this to get personal, and that she'd rather keep it professional. Sralan asks Jim if he felt he was doing this task by himself, and Jim counters that it was not even that, it was more that he had "manic enthusiasm" from Susan, while Natasha provided "apathy and despair".

Sralan sends them all out so he can bitch behind their backs with Nick and Karren. He thinks that Susan is good in the boardroom, but wants to know what she's like the rest of the time. Karren says that you need a sieve with Susan to help you sort out the useful stuff from the utter guff she spouts the other 75% of the time. Sralan is unimpressed with Jim's lack of a business plan, while Karren's disappointed in Natasha for not using her (International) Hospitality Management skills - she thinks Natasha might have lost the initial spark that she had. I think Natasha's just sad that she never got to edit issue two of Covered.

NotFrances sends them back in. Sralan asks Susan who should go out of Nataha and Jim, and Susan picks Jim, because while he's charming and good at selling, he doesn't have the entrepreneurial skill and originality that she does. Natasha gets the same question, and picks Jim too, because he can't manage a process. Jim picks Natasha to go, and she says that she'll "take that as a compliment" (why? Even in Natasha's brain, how or why does that make any sense?) and that Jim has got a "dark side". Susan agrees with this. Funny how this is the one thing Susan and Natasha have agreed on all week, isn't it? Natasha thinks that Jim is underhand, and has charmed his way out of trouble with his project managers, but that it didn't work with her. Susan goes in for the kill: "Jim, at the end of the day, there is a reason why you have project managed twice, and you have lost both tasks SO BADLY." And, well, she's got him there.

Sralan wants to know who's culpable for the ultimate failure of the task. Jim pulls the "anyone but me" card, saying that because Susan self-identified as a Mexican food expert and Natasha self-identified as a hospitality expert, it's all their fault. Susan points out that saying she ate Mexican food doesn't mean she thought she was Thomasina Miers. Jim says that if he had a hospitality degree, he'd grab at a task like this because it would suit his real-life skills, since that's always a tactic that's worked flawlessly on this show. Natasha counters that she doesn't work in hospitality and it's not an area of interest to her; she works in construction and property recruitment. She also adds that Jim's the one who's bigging up her degree here, not her. Which is sort of a good point, although she was quick enough to bring it up herself at the beginning. Jim whines that he's being caught in a deliberate pincer movement by two people trying to save their own skin.

Sralan tells Natasha that her degree obviously gave her skills that she should have used on this task, although he phrases it via a tortuous first-aid-related simile. Natasha says that she wasn't interested in the food and restaurant side of her degree, at which point Jim snots that she wasn't interested in the task. Sralan breaks out the first aid analogy again, and this is really getting boring now. We all know you're going to fire Natasha, Sralan, so why are you dragging this out? Natasha says that what she took from her degree in this task was the customer service side of things, which she used in the front of house (possibly not the best defence, considering what a shitshow that was), and Jim starts burbling some bollocks about Natasha's fight or flight instincts kicking in, except when he says "fight" he points to the door, and when he says "flight" he points to Natasha. I think he got those the wrong way around.

Susan, perhaps wisely, interrupts here to say why she should stay in the process, rather than attacking anyone else. She tells Sralan that she's only interested in his opinions, not anyone else's, and that she has an exemplary record both as a saleswoman and as a project manager, where Jim has lost twice as PM. Jim says that Nick and Karren will tell Sralan that he's passionate and honest (Nick and Karren look appropriately sceptical of this claim), and Sralan basically calls him a blabbermouth.

Time for the final decision, then: will it be Natasha, Natasha, or Natasha who goes? Sralan chews Susan out a bit for her poor relations with some of her contemporaries, and she gets the false-steer summary, but ultimately gets told she's in the final, as does Jim, so obviously it's Natasha who gets the boot, for her lacklustre performance in the last few weeks. We all knew this was coming, and so did she. Jim and Susan are dismissed, and head into the lobby to give Natasha a perfunctory kiss and handshake each.

Coatwatch: long and dark, yeah? Accessorised with a charcoal-hued scarf. Natasha taxinterviews that she's not willing to compromise her dignity, and can leave the process with her head held high. Oh, Natasha. I think it was your complete lack of self-awareness that made me love you so in the end.

In the car back to Entrepreneur Estates, Susan tries a "no hard feelings, eh?" speech with Jim, clearly a bit drunk on glee from being in the final, but Jim's having none of it, and has a go at her for smelling blood back there and trying to take him down. He accuses her of being dishonest, and she disagrees, unsurprisingly. He claims that she has less business acumen than Natasha, and Susan counters that she must have more than both of them, because she (say it with me now) started her own business.

Tom and Helen are wondering who, if anyone, will be joining them. Susan comes in first, and tries to fake them out that they're just the final three, but then Jim appears saying "anybody order a final four?" and there is much hugging and giggling.

On Sunday: interviews, hooray! They'll be handing over their own business plans, and being grilled over them. Someone will be have a plan riddled with errors, someone else will be full of shit, and someone will be deemed "a bit of an ass" by Margaret. And someone's getting hired at the end of it, regrettably. Although to be honest, I'm almost (almost!) Team Susan after reviewing this episode. She's the best of a bad bunch. She and Helen are the only viable options, and Helen pretty much wore out her welcome with me this week. [I can't see Sralan's "partnership" with any of them working out, to be honest. All four of them have huge fatal flaws and would be awful as business partners, so there we are, but yeah. It'll probably be Susan. I don't know if I could bear to watch You're Hired if she does win though - Rad] Anyway: one way or another, we'll know who wins come Sunday night. Join us soon for the final result!

More complicated than quantum physics

2011-07-08T04:34:00.001-07:00

Week ten: 6 July 2011

Previously on The Apprentice… Tom invented the concept of emergency biscuits, Melody invented PopSquits, which appeared to be a lump of dough rolling around in cornflakes and marshmallows but which, we were assured, were the new popcorn, whatever that means. ASDA gave Jamie Oliver a heart attack by ordering a ridiculous amount of Helen and Jim’s chocolate star slab on flapjack Special Stars which Sralan immediately branded a ‘Lord Sugar special product’. Nobody really fancied the half’n’half digestive biscuit and chocolate things masquerading as Bix Mix, despite the presence of amazing role play in their pitches, and Zoe was fired for not going to the factory to taste the product. *Shrug*.

This week…. Susan tells Helen she might make it through the process without losing, and Helen says ‘that’s the plan’. It was at this point where I became convinced she’d get the boot this week, not least because this would be the traditional shopping channel task slot (a nation mourns) and she would DEFINITELY have gotten the boot on that task a la Naomi and Miriam.

In the cabs on the way to meet Sralan, Susan talks about how she’s all super shiny and special and happy to be one of the super special last six standing. Melody and Tom don faces of thunder. Hee. I thought this year’s final six might be the worst ever, but then I had a look at the very serviceable Wikipedia pages for the previous years (ssssh, don’t tell my students) and series four had Lee, Lucinda, Helene, Alex, Claire and MICHAEL SOPHOCLES, so it probably wins, or, er, loses. How on earth that series got the four-way final I’ll never know.

They meet Sralan at a grotty old warehouse in North London full to the brim with the kind of tat you rarely see outside the confines of 99p stores and seaside ‘gift’ shops. Oh and chandeliers. WHERE WERE YOU IN WEEK THREE?

There’s a lame sponge/squeezing joke before Sralan’s shadow looms through the shelving. Only one shadow, thankfully, so it’s unlikely the Vashta Nerada got in, although I can just see Helen or Melody’s face on a node. Natasha’s notsomuch: “Natasha yeah Scribbins yeah has left the warehouse yeah, Natasha yeah Scribbins has been yeah saved yeah” doesn’t quite have the right dramatic tone.

Sralan waxes lyrical about how, when ‘e were a barrah boy guvnor, he used to spend his days here and come back two or three times a day to replenish stock. Pay attention, this is the important bit.

He’s spent £250 for them on £1100 worth of old tat and he wants them to “smell” what will sell best. SPOILER: Those hoping for this week’s task to be a scientific experiment on the scented merits of Jo Malone vs Diptyque vs Glade Air Wick will be disappointed.

Anyway, he wants them to buy stuff, sell stuff and buy more stuff and it’s OK if they have some stock left but the team with the “greatest amount of assets” will win. Notice he doesn’t say profit. He lies that this task must sound simple. A nation tries to figure out what needs to happen – and if the audience are struggling, Lord (Sugar) knows the candidates won’t have a clue. Memo to Sralan: never break with format. Can we have our shopping channel task back now?

Sralan moves Susan to Venture and Helen to Logic. He doesn’t want to hear any excuses from anybody and tells Tom specifically to stop being an innovator and designer and get in the thick of it. Tom nods. ‘And if you nod your head any more I’m going to put you on the back seat of my car’. I think, given a) tonight’s killer product (whoops, spoilers) b) Tom’s status as the nation’s favourite, nodding Toms would sell better than a babyglo carseatbackpack full of Special Stars. Quick, Helen, sell this idea for all your worth!

They open the cases to find what the voiceover tells us is £250-woth of goods (so not £1100 worth?) including, in Melody’s (verbatim) words, “12 different sunglasses. Not different, but 12 sunglasses that are different”. It’s gems like that which have made her an international ambassador you guys.

We’re told, far too quickly, a whole heap of information about the task: they must reinvest their takings in the most profitable products and continue to sell them. Cash, and the wholesale prices of any remaining stock will be added together and the highest total will win. So presumably having stock left over is fine because it’s still worth money. That’s what the voiceover says. I’ve had to watch this four times now to clarify.

Melody wants to PM for Logic because she hasn’t done it since week one. Helen says she’ll be completely behind her. Melody says she wants to do it because it’s close to Sralan’s heart and it’s about good management, which she can deliver. Susan wants to PM because it’s what her parents do and she wants to play at being a grown-up too. Natasha says she’s got more experience “operationally”, whatever that means. Susan says she’s very good at predicting what will sell. To which, I refer you back to week four. I really don’t get why she’s one of the favourites to win. Every time I see Susan I think of this and this. Maybe it’s more a case of people hating other candidates even more than it is of anyone actually liking her? Anyway, every time I see Susan my brain goes shutupshutupshutupshutup – which is pretty much its response to Natasha as well. Therefore, Jim, who is clearly an evil aggressive bastard, is now my favourite on team Venture. Go figure. [Natasha is my favourite member of this team. I don't even know how that happened. - Steve]

Anyway, even Nick thinks Natasha’s a better choice and Jim chooses Natasha. Susan whines “I would ask you respect my judgment”.

London porn. In the taxi, Helen starts well by saying the key is to find one or two items that will sell well. The voiceover tells us their market is “the whole of London”. Somewhere, a mightily pissed off Zoe is all ‘so NOW they can target everyone, can they?’

Jim and Natasha are selling brollies on Hackney. The weather looks pretty grim so this seems like a decent product. A kid apparently fleeces him by giving him a tenner. Natasha sells some nodding dogs. Nick says the people who bought then have appalling taste. Jim continues to work his charm on “the ladies”. So far they’ve sold £72.50. Susan, meanwhile, is stuck in a car behind mounted police. She then tries to doorknock posh houses with cheap duvets on behalf of “Venture Household Goods” and gets the comedy music. She whines in the cab about the products being rubbish. [Sending Susan off by herself for several hours is probably the best PMing decision Natasha ever made. - Steve]

Helen and Melody are in the car, and Helen suggests hitting up retailers and offering discounts. Wrong task, Helen. Melody points out they would have wholesalers already but then decides they could undercut that price – it’s not clear how unless they’re planning to make a loss. They go to a pound shop and offer him some ladies watches for £25. The man’s all ‘this is a pound shop’. Melody says ‘yeah, I understand’ and outside claims she thought he would go for it. So does not understand. They then try and sell towels and duvets to a hardware shop. Helen asks if they’d buy from them instead of a wholesaler to save delivery costs. The man’s all ‘no, you weirdos, wholesalers deliver to us for free’. Where has the glory of Helen gone, guys?

You know the week of KITTEH when Steve died of cute? Well this is my turn….
Tom selling nodding dogs to tiny children! Tiny children offering £5 for the £7.50 item and being kickass negotiators. Tiny children! Tom being adorable! *RAD EXPIRES*.

Over with Jim and Natasha and Nick reminds us again that they need to buy more stock and says they’ve been paying no attention. Jim points this out to Natasha. Natasha says ‘you do know why, yeah?’ Jim’s all ‘no, not really’. Jim sounds flustered and Natasha’s like ‘yeah, will be fine and stuff, yeah’. She phones Susan, who’s sold one duvet set. Jim is flustered. Natasha accuses him of being flustered and then almost screams “I’m happy for you to take on some responsibility as well”. Jim backs away from her really quickly, terrified. Hee.

Helen and Melody are still on their fools’ errand and sell some duvets to a cheap trader for £10 each who says he’d buy more if they had them. He says he’d buy 30 tomorrow. Helen seems excited by this.

6pm and neither team has bought more stock. Oops.

They all, painfully, try to attempt mental arithmetic. Tom has sold out of nodding bulldogs (who'da thunk it?). Jim and Natasha reckon the dogs and umbrellas sold. Susan is sent to get umbrellas but then gets distracted by shiny tacky bracelets and buys those instead.

Melody and Helen are on the way to the wholesaler, but they don’t do duvets (why does YouTube have no clips of that sketch?), so they have to buy those tomorrow. Melody decides to buy horrible travel kettles and digital photo alarm clocks. Were these things even in their original set of products? Helen then says a ‘mobile phone emergency charger’ is a good idea. A what now? Tom is pretty shocked by the products and the lack of nodding dogs. It’s not clear why he wasn’t at the wholesalers as well, other than to cause team conflict.

Susan explains her bracelet choice by saying she’s sold them before and knows that they sell. What, like the beauty tat you wanted to waste money on in Birmingham?
Over at team Logic, and Helen’s gone a bit mental with the fear of defeat and offers to take PM responsibility off Melody because she thinks she’d be better. Melody says, no, she put herself forward to take responsibility. Helen sulks. Tom’s all ‘where did the old Helen go’?

Melody and Tom sell the weird-ass digital photo frame alarm clocks (which Melody calls the best thing ever) and phone chargers in shopping centres, while they send Helen to the City. She tries to sell bike lights to pedestrians and sells one phone charger, which makes her deliriously happy, and she does a little dance. No, really, that's what happens.

Jim’s team are reselling ‘top products from yesterday’ – nodding dogs and umbrellas, which, if you recall, IS WHAT THEY WERE TOLD TO DO. I mean, this is a team comprised of Natasha, Jim and Susan I’m defending here, people. Nick tells us that Jim’s now worked his Jedi mind tricks on him and he likes him after all. I picked Jim in a sweepstake so if he wins, I’ll be rather smug. Last year’s choice: Jamie. Oh. Jim sells stuff to ladies and hugs them. My mum loves both Jim and Tom. The battle for the nation's ovaries is well under way.

Susan and Natasha try to flog the ugly bracelets. Somehow, people seem to buy them. There is no accounting for taste. It annoys me that Susan got to be flukily right again. Natasha starts to go into full-on meltdown and argues with Susan about nothing in particular. Natasha lies to camera that she’s being a hard and directive project manager. She has another row with Susan.

Tom tries to tell Melody that they need to smell out the best-selling item, which is the charger on this day. Helen rings a wholesaler for the duvets, but they’re closed, at 2pm. She wants to go back to the one they started at. Tom says it’s miles away. Helen asks if she should go or stay where she is and sell stock. Melody says she would prefer her to go to the wholesaler. Karren doesn’t understand the logic. Neither does anyone else. Tom and Melody go to restock, whilst Jim and Susan keep selling. Jim panic-calls Natasha and says they need to reinvest. Natasha says they reinvested yesterday and they’ll have too much stock. But this doesn’t matter right? They get the stock added to the sales? I had to watch the opening four times to learn this.

Nick says Natasha hasn’t realised this is a restocking challenge and thinks it’s about sales. It is a bloody weird task, isn’t it? I mean, they have to sell, but they have to buy more than they sell, to sell stuff, but it doesn’t matter if they don’t sell? [Seriously. This had the potential to be a really good task, but they ruined it by not making the rules clear to the contestants or the viewers, so it's just a bit of a muddle. - Steve] Jim tries to call Natasha in a panic and she ‘yeahs’ him down. Jim says she has no idea how the task works. To be fair, judging by the collective ‘whuh?’ on the internet during this episode, neither does anyone else.
Helen rings the shop to flog duvets… and they’ve closed. She says ‘that’s a shame’. Oh, Helen.

6pm, time for a stocktake. Everybody knocks their prices down to sell at the last minute. Does last minute selling count, when they were told the leftover stock would be added to the total? I AM SO CONFUSED.

Jim declares the day a disaster, Melody says she did her best as PM, the nation weeps for the loss of the shopping channel task.

Boardoom time. Sralan reminds them it’s about ‘smelling what’s selling’ and hopes they signed on to the plot. Really not. It’s about as complicated as a mid-season episode of Damages. Helen goes into full-on meltdown and slags off Melody. Sralan lies that he told them the strategy clearly. I mean, the idea of reinvesting as a task was good, but the parameters of the task needed to be way, way clearer.

Helen makes it clear that they didn’t understand by saying that they wanted to question whether to go to retailers or the public. Melody agrees with him although she went for the whole stupid retailer idea in the first place, then she tries to claim it worked with the going into the retailer thing. Melody clarifies that they went into a pound shop, but clearly doesn’t understand what a pound shop is. Tom points out that he was a Cassandra as well, albeit not as mental as Lorraine. Sralan asks if they replenished the nodding dogs. Helen barks ‘No!’ and that’s that.

Sralan says he hears Susan thought his merchandise was a load of toot. It was, though, to be fair. He balls her out for selling duvets to Knightsbridge. They point out that they bought more nodding dogs. Nick has transferred his candidate love from Susan to Jim, who’s apparently swallowed a whole blarney stone. They confirm that they reinvested…. But the second time they did this, they spent £20. Sralan balks. Natasha said they replenished a lot on the first day so needed to sell more. He says there’s no shame in having stock left over because you’re replicating a business. Natasha says she understands it but, yeah (i.e. no). Sralan says they had no courage and no balls. And a lack of clear task instructions.

And here is where it goes very, very weird.

He demands Natasha’s team have a £100 fine, even though they were doing what he asked them to (just not very well) and doesn’t seem to fine Melody’s team, even though they didn’t do what he asked. I’m not sure Sralan even understands this task, you guys. Or, as some people have suggested, maybe he just really, really hates Natasha enough to fine her for just existing. [THIS TASK MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE *cries* - Steve]

Logic’s sales and stock are: £1204 and their purchases were £476. Total assets £728.

OK you guys, I do not understand these figures ONE BIT. If the assets are the stock and the sales, then isn’t the figure £1204?

Venture’s sales and stock: £1154, purchases £303, pointless fine £100, total assets £751.

This is just all ridiculous. Bring back Simon Ambrose wanking a trampoline.

Venture win. Sralan says it’s not a great win and then tells us he has to stick by his rules because he’s an honest trader, which is why Venture were fined randomly, Logic weren’t, and Venture aren’t getting a treat even though they didn’t make him a bladdy loss, and why you shouldn’t come moaning to him when your amsmailer electronic beauty video phone games console goes on the blink.

However, given the treat was only to drive around in vintage cars, I’d say they lucked out there.

Natasha continues her meltdown and calls Susan a child. Whilst I don’t doubt this was partly the case, we didn’t see Susan being her usual whiny self this week which suggests a) Natasha is trying to cover her own back and b) Susan might be getting a winner’s edit. If Sralan goes into business with Susan then he deserves all he gets, frankly.

Loser café, Helen says it was hard to respect a leader who didn’t know what they were talking about, disregarding her own lack of understanding of the task. Melody sobterviews that her team didn’t support her.

Sralan asks why Helen threatened to overrule Melody and she says she’d have had a better strategy. Nick asks what her strategy would have been and Helen convinces me she’s a goner by confirming she completely misunderstood the task once more, saying she wanted massive orders from retailers. Sralan tells her she missed the point. He asked Melody why she ignored Tom. She said she wanted electronic goods, not nodding dogs. Sralan says the point was to ‘smell what was selling’. Melody says ‘yes’ like she understands, but she clearly doesn’t. Tom says the other two completely ignored him and retells the shaggy duvet story.

Sralan points out petrol costs a lot of money and Karren points out that the shop was closed. Sralan says Tom will plead the fifth. Tom says yes he will, but he admits he should have yelled it down more strongly. Helen says she asked Melody if she should travel or not and Melody says yes. Tom claims he wasn’t involved, Melody says he was standing there. Melody says Helen didn’t check the time the wholesalers closed. Melody reminds us that Helen ‘tried to take my job from me’ and says she should be fired for the first day but it’s unfair for the others to say she was a rubbish PM when they didn’t have a plan. Helen says she had a plan but Tom conviced Melody otherwise. Oh, Helen. Although I don’t think Tom convinced Melody of anything, really, so in thrall was Melody to the (former) glory of Helen.

Karren points out that Helen is usually good but didn’t understand this. Sralan calls Tom the nodding hindsight man. Karren says he tries to get out of his comfort zone – like Stella did when she sang ‘Knees Up Muvva Brown’ remember?
Back in the boardroom, Melody says she believes ‘the best things in life are not free, the best things in life are earned’ and her PMing was what won the first week’s task. Helen says she won the task because she decided to do fruit salad and ran the factory. [I find this assertion deeply suspect. If Helen was so key in the winning of that task, you'd think the editors of that episode might have noticed. - Steve] Melody pointed out that she made the appointments in Paris. Karren reminds us that Melody took the sales for herself. Melody says she’s been in the business she’s in since she was 13. Isn’t the business she’s in just, er, talking about young people? So when she was 13, she was a young person so… oh, I dunno. It’s no eggs and sweets anyway. She then says, and I quote, that she ‘set up one of the most successful democratic bodies in the world’.

She also tells us that her project was in the Queen’s speech on Christmas Day. Fortunately you can read said speeches online. Here’s 2010. Was Melody: a) King James 6th of Scotland, b) A member of the Paralympic or Commonwealth games committees or c) A member of the armed forces? Now, to be fair, maybe this was filmed in 2010, so we should refer back to the 2009 speech instead. So she is either again, a) A member of the armed forces or b) One of the Commonwealth Heads of Government. Whichever, it’s more impressive than a field of ponies.

The most impressive thing about all of this is that she says it all with a straight face. The second most impressive thing is that, despite this wealth of expertise, she doesn’t want to solve the banking crisis, or cure AIDS, or put an end to world hunger. No, she wants to set up some random business selling shonky old toot with Sralan. Oh, the Big Society.

Helen claims she’s won every task. Sralan points out she was on teams that won every task, like Paul Tulip, and he was rubbish. Sralan then tries to make out she’s just an assistant because she's a bladdy woman or something, and she’s never started her own business. He wants to know what her experience is. She says she’s worked for very successful businesses. Sralan says Tom’s right up his alley because he’s a product man, but he’s too quiet when he sees problems and Tom admits he’s seen solutions to problems too late. Tom says Helen and Melody are naïve - Helen is support for a CEO but has never run her own business, and Melody’s business is all about talking. Melody says it isn’t. Tom says no-one understands what melody does. But she’s a, a, transpondster!

Tom says it’s an amazing opportunity. Sralan’s all yeah, I know it is, it’s my opportunity. He says he doesn’t understand what Melody does or what they’d do if they had a business together. Helen’s strategy was totally wrong. Tom isn’t speaking up and Sralan keeps giving him last chances - but he did sell and that’s to his credit. He says the person going isn’t a failure, he just can’t work with them, and it’s Melody, though she gets a 'with regret'.

He tells Tom and Helen that Melody is a woman of exceptional ability (although he can't quite define what kind of ability) and sends them back. There are hugs as she goes. Coatwatch, creamy-beuge, Another scarf (gold, purple and white). She cabterviews that one day she will tell Sralan what she does, when she herself has figured it out, and it’s definitely more than just talking. There's probably a bit of arm-waving as well.

Back at the house, Susan says Tom is invincible. Helen pouts that he was naughty and she still needs to forgive him. [Oh fuck off, Helen. I am so over you. - Steve] Have we stumbled across some weird sexplay here? Next time! Not interviews. Oh. They apparently seem to have wandered into an episode of The Restaurant. Let's hope it's an episode from when it was good and not from that series where they completely ruined the format then, because what kind of a reality show would do that? (Sob) [I hope the losers end up in Ze Challonge. - Steve]

I've been craving an Apprentice recap all day

2011-07-02T04:24:00.000-07:00

Week nine: 29th June 2011

Last time on The Apprentice: almost exactly the same as every other time. The teams have been shuffled so much it's impossible to tell who's Logic and who's Galvanised. Tom was right, but too hum-haw and ineffective to do anything about it. Susan was right, but more by luck than judgement. Melody used her sheer force of personality and belief that she was right to bend everyone to her will, but was utterly wrong about everything. And Helen shone her beatific light on all who gazed upon her and won. Again. Some more. More precisely, they went to Paris, sold stuff, and Leon got fired for drawing a teapot.

Sralan comes to the house on Sunday night. The Apprentices have been having a day of relaxation, of braiding each other's hair and talking about boys, so they're all in various states of dressing gown and pyjama laziness, except Tom, who's wearing a body warmer indoors. Tom lets him in and then everyone panics and runs around before gathering in the kitchen. With no further ado, Sralan tells them to design a new biscuit, its packaging and so on. There's a development kitchen in Wales. For some reason. Just to make things awkward, I expect. Then they pitch to three supermarkets. Most orders wins. Someone gets fired. And so on and so forth.

Sralan decides to mess with the teams some more for no real reason. Helen, Natasha and Jim are Galvanised, though Sralan does just say 'a team' at fist. Even he doesn't know any more.

Voiceover man says that the biscuits have to retail at £1.99. Interesting that they take such an important decision out of their hands.

Being as she works at Greggs, Helen steps up to PM to general consensus. Oh, no! I hate when people should be good because of their real life experience. Though the connection is fairly tenuous here. Susan puts herself forward as PM, saying she puts ingredients together in her current job. Zoe point out that that's ingredients for face cream, not for food, and says that she works in food and pitches to supermarkets. And also Susan's last pitch was shit. And she smells. Susan says Zoe shouldn't bring up old things. Or the fact she smells. Zoe is duly voted in. Nick's not in love with Susan any more, saying Zoe a was better choice and saying Susan was 'a yapping puppy'.

Helen wants to make kids' biscuits for after school. Melody says sharing cookies, heart shaped, even for Valentines. Susan says no, because it's too niche. Zoe agrees. The teams have to split off, some going to the kitchen. Zoe says she'll go to the kitchen; Melody and Susan are like 'NO. Branding matters'. Zoe says OK and that she's happier working with Susan than Melody or Tom. Susan and Zoe's love-hate relationship is so weird, you guys.

Jim is the only one going to the kitchen for Galvanised, and in the car suggest to Helen variations on a theme of 'Munch Men'. Natasha thinks 'Men that munch' sounds a bit rude. Dirty girl. [Also, "munch" is one of my least favourite words in the entire English language. It's so awful. - Steve] Tom's idea is an emergency biscuit, called a 'Mercrunchie'. Which is an advertising idea, not a branding one. In the same way that 'Lucky Fish' on the petfood task, with the goldfish being saved because the cat's tempted away is a very good idea for an advert, but isn't a brand in itself.

At the kitchen, Tom tells the baker man he wants something unique. We see Jim playing around and asks how feasible a biscuit for children is; the man says very. Jim feeds Karrren a popping candy biscuit and she kind of freaks out. Tom and Melody are also faffing about. Tom has an idea for a biscuit within a biscuit – an outer ring and a different middle. Melody, fairly astutely I think, says that she thinks big and works down to details but Tom starts with details and tries to build from there. Melody has an idea for 'the new popcorn', as a snacking while watching thing. Little balls of dough with marshmallows and cornflakes in. Mmmm, yummers.

Susan to-cameras that she thinks she and Zoe will work together well on the biscuits, but 'on a personal level she's one of the bitchiest, back-stabbing people I've ever met'. I don't care, I love Susan's willingness to say how much she hates people.

Susan and Zoe look biscuits, realising £1.99 is high-end. Susan asks what colours would jump out, so Zoe says pink and orange. Classy! Susan says purple which is better. A little bit.

Jim's got a focus group of kids and mums at the bakery. He runs it really well, finding out the flavours they want, and establishing that the kids (and mums) like star flapjacks and associate the stars with gold stars at school, as well as getting some packaging ideas from the kids about having shooting stars on it. He phones Helen and Natasha and says the kids want star flapjacks; Natasha says the flapjacks seem the most unhealthy; Helen confirms that the flapjack was runaway favourite (from what we saw, it was) and decides that they'll run with it. If only the teams could always be this well-mannered and efficient. Properly done market research followed by queries that were dealt with, followed by a firm decision. It's all a bit disconcerting. Then it goes a bit wrong, because they try and say that they're biscuits for after school, but the slogan is 'any time is treat time'. Natasha points out that these are contradictory; Helen kind of snits that she has to go with it unless Natasha's come up with something amazing in the last minute or so. Jim to-cameras that 'someone's got to be bullish'. Oh, I bet you find that such a fucking struggle. He calls himself a 'sharper cookie' and says that he likes Helen because she's passive, 'and who doesn't like that?' God I hate Jim, you guys. Anyway. Special Stars go into production. They're flapjack biscuits with a chocolate star on top.

Tom and Melody go to their focus group of old people. Oh, and some young ones also. Hey young people. Tom tries to pitch his emergency biscuit and, in his own words, 'lead balloon'. The two-in-one biscuit idea is very popular. Melody tries to pitch her disgusting balls of dough and cornflakes and gets very short shrift. Tom says that they might call them 'Popscuits' which unfortunately just sounds like Pop Squits with its attendant diarrhoea issues. Melody's heart-shaped biscuit, which will be half-coated in chocolate so you can snap it, is also very popular. As voiceover man says, 'Result: stalemate'. Melody and Tom phone Zoe and Susan; Melody says they loved the hearts. Zoe says no. Melody says HEARTS!! Zoe says NO, and makes the rather unfortunately worded observation that Melody probably badgered the focus group so much they said they'd go for the 'bloody hearts'. Bloody heart biscuits. Controversial.

Tom jumps in to say they LOVED the two-in-one idea. Melody doesn't like it. He's somehow incorporated the half-coated idea from Melody's. Melody still doesn't like it. She makes sure we know.

Helen and Natasha are off to design packaging. Karrren says again that the slogan and the idea don't really match, and also that 'any time is treat time' is a bad idea and a hard sell what with the whole 'eat what you like, piggy, who cares?' issue. Natasha tries to explain the idea to the packaging man, saying that they're 'opening up time'. I'm sure the biscuits are nice, Nat. They're not magic, though.

Susan and Zoe have a bit of a giggle in the car trying to think of names. They seem to get on really well when they're not tearing each other to shreds. At the factory, Tom to-cameras that they're going for the middle to lower end of the market, and not a luxury item. [That Tom thinks £2 for a packet of biscuits is "not high-end" makes me wonder where he gets his shopping from. I'm guessing "outer space". - Steve] Oooh, plot point! They've decided on the name Bix Mix.

Zoe and Susan are doing packaging for Bix Mix; they want purples and golds, and to look classy. They've got a nice font, with the lines from the Xs looking like ribbons. Nick says that he thinks they've done well and that the biscuits could stand out.

Little scene of Natasha and Helen looking at pictures of the Special Stars, and saying they look a bit sickly.

In the car, Melody has decided that they're going to do a role-play in their pitch, where they're lovers. Tom giggles, and then gets a bit wistful. I'm not sure that Tom has ever felt the touch of a woman.

Next day. The biscuits arrive at the house. I think both look good. The Bix Mix box looks quite classy but I'm concerned that the purple plus the chocolate makes it look like a Cadbury product. Melody asks if they've got a target market, and Zoe basically says their market is everyone. Helen tries the Special Star and likes it.

Zoe and Susan discuss the pitch plan, which is really only notable for Zoe saying 'I don't give a shiny shit about Melody'.

The teams are doing a tasting session at supermarkets; we see the Special Stars box. It does look good actually, and very suitable for the target market of kids. This is … really dull. People try biscuits and say things about them.

Before their pitch, Melody again asks who they're aiming their product at and say you've always got to have a target. Zoe says their market is everyone. Couples, girls' night in, kids, families, sea captains, gondoliers, diamond miners, ninjas, Bonnie Tyler, jockeys, the corpse of Rasputin, computer programmers, coffin-dodgers, ballroom-dancers and Elizabethan brothel-keepers, and she wants to keep it open.

They're at a Sainsbury's pitch. Melody and Tom do their roleplay, with props stolen from the Apprentice house and it is glorious. Tom's seemingly got an erection, judging by the pillow in his lap. They 'squabble' about what 'movie' to 'watch' and 'settle' on a 'chickflick', which Tom agrees to as long as they've got something good to eat. Melody says she's been craving Bix Mix all day, and Tom goes 'Bix Mix!' but manages to make it sound like an 'Oh god, must I?' not 'Yay!'. Seriously, it's the same tone of voice as 'A colonoscopy?' Melody says 'I've been craving Bix Mix all day. You know when you think about something all day and just can't wait to eat it?'. [BAM-CHICKA-WAH-WAH. - Steve] Yes Melody, we're familiar with the concept of cravings. Tom says Melody can have the chocolate half because he loves her, but she just loves the plain half so damn much that she's happy with that. Melody asks if the biscuit was made in Heaven, and Zoe steps in to say 'No, it was made by Logic, here in the UK'. It's just all such a clusterfuck of bad judgement and poor execution. It's wonderful and I would literally watch an hour a week of Tom And Melody's Domestic Bliss.

Nick does not approve of the 'playlet' and calls it a 'very very odd way to carry on'.

Zoe says the concept of the biscuit is sharing. Sharing between everyone. Sharing with lovers. Sharing at school in your lunchbox. Sharing with Ban Ki Moon at UN council meetings. Sharing with aliens on the craters of Mars. Sharing with Elaine Paige backstage at Cats in 1987. SHARING! The Sainsbury's lady says that they're pitching too broadly and need to focus for who they're aiming at.

Helen and Jim pitch. The Sainsbury's lady says 'no, lots of mothers will not like the any time treat'. Natasha fields it, but not brilliantly. Karrren says that it looks like Helen and Jim hate her, which is not lessened by them in the car basically telling her to shut up and look pretty.

In the car on the way to Asda, Melody says again that they need a target market. And again on the Asda shop floor, that she said 'from the beginning' that they need a target market. Zoe goes off on and says that Melody is 'naughty' for saying that because she didn't say it from the beginning because at the beginning Melody wanted heart-shaped biscuits. I really don't understand Zoe. This is exactly the same as on the rubbish task when Susan said she 'secured the meeting', obviously meaning that she closed the deal and Zoe went off on one about how that wasn't what happened because Edna made the phone call and Susan is a lying bitch. She just takes these obsessively literal interpretations of people's words and I don't know if it's because she genuinely doesn't understand what they mean, or if she's just trying to bluster her way through any criticism or questioning without actually dealing with the pertinent issue. If it's the former, it's sad. If it's the latter, it's just really really unpleasant. Melody says that Zoe doesn't need to take a tone; Zoe says she hasn't (which, please, you called her naughty!), she just said nicely; Melody says you haven't said ANYTHING nicely (Ha!), but we're about to pitch so let's not argue; Zoe says then Melody shouldn't wind her up. Which: wind you up by taking the advice from the previous client and making sure you follow it for the next pitch? Yeah, what a bitch. I mean, I have no doubt that Melody is near-impossible to work with, but Zoe's massively defensive attitude and nitpicking to the extent that she ignores what people are actually saying are just hugely counterproductive.

Anyway. They go upstairs in the supermarket to pitch to the Asda ladies, who are sitting on the shop floor on garden furniture. Stay classy, Asda! The pitch is now best female friends, so we get another roleplay! This time it's Melody and Zoe as best friends, which, gosh, that's going to be a push. Cushionwise, it's now Melody who's got an erection. She does almost verbatim her 'I've been craving Bix Mix all day' thing again. They snap and share, and Melody asks why Zoe got the chocolate. Zoe says it's because she's special. It's fun, but it's no Melody and Tom. The Asda ladies have NO patience for this bullshit. Susan steps in to do the actual pitching and is quite fluent and confident, saying that they're aiming for sharing and that girls can share, 'as you see from our little girly tiff'. Zoe stares absolute daggers at any- and everyone. Susan then stumbles a bit. The Asda lady says you're pitching it as indulgent, but it's a bloody Digestive. Susan says that you can snap it, and no other biscuit does that. That's not strictly true is it, Susan?

In the cars, Tom and Melody discuss how much Zoe hates Melody.

Helen and Jim are at Waitrose. Helen says 'Special Stars is what children are all about'; all parents think their kids are stars and a star is a reward. Waitrose lady says health is important, do you really want to be pitching sugary chocolate death at kids? Helen fields it fairly well and says it's a treat and that people know what's healthy. [Also, if you're THAT worried about health, then...don't buy biscuits. It's not that difficult. - Steve]

At Waitrose, there is no roleplay. SWIZZ. Zoe pitches, with Susan on back-up. The Waitrose man seems fairy enamoured of the idea and likes the sharing concept, and says he likes the idea and the packaging and the pitch, but not the actual biscuit.

At Asda, Helen lets Jim pitch. Asda lady asks how they're going to market it. Jim outright lies and says that they're going to be everywhere. TV adverts, magazines, they're going to be in the next Harry Potter movie, Jordan is marrying a tub of Special Stars, Special Stars are going to be projected on to the Houses of Parliament, Special Stars will be the official snack treat of the 2012 Olympics, Lady Gaga has agreed to get the Special Stars logo tattooed on to her face and England will in fact be changing its name to Specialstarsonia. Karrren says that Jim 'needs to be really careful' and is trying to be everything to everyone.

Next day. Zoe to-cameras that Melody sucks. Helen to-cameras that she, Helen, is amazing and wins everything and wants to win again some more. Boardroom time. Susan looks very very nervous when she sees the Special Stars packaging.

Sralan asks who the Logic boss was. Zoe was. Good team leader? Resounding silence. Nick says that [Waitrose] thought the concept of sharing was 'smack on target'. Sralan wasn't convinced by the idea of the roleplay, making the utterly redundant point that he couldn't have done that at Dixons.

Helen admits that she's not directly involved in products, but was still confident of knowing the market. She says that the idea was Jim's, and we rehash the any time is treat time. Karrren mentions that Jim talked utter shit, and Jim says he 'stands by it'. Sralan calls him Biggest Bullshitter in the World. Jim says his lies wouldn't affect the original order. Sralan says of course it bloody would because the shop's going to want the one that has billions of pounds of advertising spent on it.

Sralan looks at the figures and says 'Bloody hell'. None of the shops ordered ANY BixMix. How sad! The Special Stars got an order for 800,000 units if they give exclusivity to Asda. Helen grins and say 'We'll agree to that'. And seriously, any semblance that this show had of being a real thing is out the window. They're not making Special Stars. Asda aren't going to sell them. And they only 'won' on the strength of Jim talking so much bullshit that Sralan called him out on it. I'm sure all the other pitching tasks throughout this show would have gone very differently if people just lied and made stuff up to entice the buyers. How dumb.

Treat is, like, tea and cakes at a hotel. Great.

Sralan says something is fundamentally wrong and that 'at least one' of Logic is going.

At the hotel, Jim fapps himself on his 800,000 units versus none, on his pitch! That was utterly false and undeliverable! Bravo us! He then says 'that takes the biscuit'. God I hate Jim.

At Loser Cafe, Tom makes the valid point that the product and the packaging/branding didn't fit. Zoe says the problem was the biscuit itself. Which, yes, and we saw the Waitrose man saying literally that.

Back at the boardroom, Sralan says he knows what the problem is, do they? Zoe says the product wasn't premium and Susan agrees. Melody says that they also didn't have a clear target market, which is also true. Susan says it's Tom and Melody's fault. Tom says he didn't know he was going high-end and wouldn't have used Digestive if he had. [TWO POUNDS! I know we're in That London and everything, but even we balk at paying two pounds for digestives. - Steve] Sralan says then why didn't Zoe go to the factory; she's got manufacturing experience after all? Zoe says she wished she could split herself in half (Sralan makes a 'you split the biscuit!' joke that gets absolute tumbleweed in response, not even the normal psychophantic apprentice laughs). Then he goes off on one saying that branding and product don't matter, because it's all about the product. Which annoys me because if she HAD gone, he'd have been saying 'the product don't matter! You've got to have an idea and a brand!' [Also, Helen didn't go to the factory, and no one complained about that. - Steve]

There's a big debate about how the biscuit came about. Tom says it's because they merged all the ideas. Melody says that she had ideas. Tom's like, 'ideas that people hated!' and Melody's like 'Oh, they were old and Welsh, who gives a shit what they think?'

Sralan says that the supermarkets didn't think anything gelled about the product. Melody says that she strongly pushed for a proper target market (true fact) and then Zoe got all up in her face. Zoe says 'very dramatic, Melody' and Melody, amazingly, leaps on this and says 'It WAS very dramatic, actually. I'm not used to that sort of behaviour in a public place'. Zoe says that Melody's got a reputation for bailing when things turn bad, Melody says no she don't honest and besides I haven't worked with you for weeks, so you don't know what you're talking about. Zoe then says that Melody shouldn't worry because after the boardroom, Melody said that Sralan loved her and her awards so she's clearly safe anyway. God, what a bitch. That's totally uncalled for. I think that Zoe just gets panicky and cornered and lashes out; I'd rather that than her grinding bullying behaviour being calculated.

Melody and Zoe fight each other for about fifteen hours.
Sralan asks Susan if she's got an agreement with Zoe not to bring her back. Melody says Zoe's built her alliances. Which, yeah. Zoe and Susan are total BFFs. Come now. Susan says no, that's bullshit, but she thinks that while they failed to put across the ideas, the ultimate failure is the product itself. Sralan warns Zoe not to bring people back for personality issues. She says of course, and brings back Melody and Tom. Susan goes off, they go out.

Karrren does a rather uncanny Tom impression, bobbing her head and saying 'I'm learning' and making the point he needs to step it up. Sralan says Zoe should have known better, being in the industry. Karrren thinks that Melody has to be watched because her interaction with others is not good.

They go back in. Sralan wants Tom to defend himself. Tom says he didn't go for a premium product. Sralan calls him Hindsight Man. (Wow, that would be a shit superpower.) Zoe says that Tom shouldn't still be learning to read and know the price of biscuits, and the biscuit was shit and had a 'horrible common wheaty taste'. Eurgh. They rehash all the arguments from before. Zoe should have gone to the factory. Melody had ideas. The focus group hated her ideas. Who cares, there were ten of them and they were Welsh.

Melody and Tom think Zoe should go. Zoe says Melody's a bitch but Tom should go. Sralan says Tom is just too slow to get stuff done and so on and is always after the event; Melody's a bitch and he's supposed to work with them; Zoe's a good contender but she should have been at the factory. (We know what I think about that.) He say it's unfortunate that he hasn't seen enough of Tom, but Zoe should have performed on this and didn't so she's fired. She just goes off without saying anything (though on You're Fired, we did see a quick 'thankyou' so nasty editing!). Melody doesn't shake her hand. Tom tries to kiss her goodbye but she's having none of it. (Should have been a double firing. Tom's sweet and smart but he's also utterly useless. Cut him loose.)

Zoe says in the car that the product was shit and she shouldn't have gone. Melody says that Zoe's a mean old bitch. At the house, Susan's like 'Eh, they're all shit, get rid of any of them'.

Next week: they … are buying things? And then selling those things? And then buying more things with the money they make and selling those things? I think? It looks a bit odd.

Unchained Melody

2011-06-26T05:27:00.000-07:00

Week Eight: 22nd June 2011

Previously: Sralan decided that the world was crying out for the editorial skills of the remaining candidates, but that no one in their right mind would actually be willing to pay to read them, so as a compromise he set up a task that involved creating a "freemium" magazine. Natasha declared herself the editor of Tits, Yeah? magazine for Logic and made sure we all knew about it, while Tom and Helen clutched their collective pearls in sheer horror after every single one of her decisions. Over on Venture, Jim edited Old People Are Worthless And Should Just Die Already magazine, alienating his entire potential readership along the way with an ill-advised title, an appallingly-designed cover and a general misunderstanding of what they wanted from the magazine. Logic managed to sell all of their advertising to one agency and won the task, while Jim blamed everyone but himself for the failure of his magazine, chiefly Susan for being a "meek little mouse". Ultimately, Glenn was fired for being "an engineer", even though he was no more or less of an engineer at this point than he was when initially selected for the show, making this the third utterly pointless firing in a row. Can we make it four?

The phone rings at Entrepreneur Estates, and is answered by Zoe while we're treated to a strange shot of an albino spider crawling up...something. I don't know, it's still early. Give me time to have some coffee and wake up properly. NotFrances informs Zoe that Sralan would like to meet them all at "St. Pancreas International" (I'd laugh, but I always call it that too) and that they need to pack an overnight bag and bring their passports. The cars, as always, will be there in 30 minutes. Helen dries her hair. Jim emerges from the bathroom clad only in a towel; somewhere in the viewing audience, Ed Hunter nips off for a stealth wank. Zoe tells everyone they're going to St. Pancras International, and Leon wonders if they're going away. "Do you think?" replies Zoe, dripping with sarcasm. Leon gets excited about going on the Eurostar. Coincidentally, I went to France on business the day after this episode aired, and having never been on the Eurostar before, I was expecting it to be all glamorous and magical. Ultimately, it was kind of just a slightly dirty train. This is why you should never meet your heroes. [The one time I went on it, they made me sit backwards despite me requesting a forwards-seat and I felt really travel sick throughout. Boo to Eurostar! - Rad]

The candidates troop out into the waiting Apprentaxis as Melody wonders whether they're off to Paris or Brussels. Not that it matters, she'll have masses of influential friends there, wherever their final destination turns out to be. Tom's suitcase makes a last-minute attempt to escape from the boot; Tom has to get out of the car and put it back in with a mumbled "shit". This is possibly the most positive thing that happens to Tom throughout the next two days.

In Apprentaxi 1, containing Jim, Zoe, Susan and Leon, Jim wonders who hasn't been project manager yet. "Tom," the others all reply in unison. In the other Apprentaxi, Tom wonders if anyone else hasn't PMed yet, and is informed by Melody, Helen and Natasha that nope, it's just him. Back in Apprentaxi 1, Jim demonstrates his French skills to the others with a little Only Fools And Horses skit, the genesis of which the editors decide to ignore, and subtitle it to make him look like an idiot anyway. I'm against such practices, because I really don't think anyone on this show needs any help to make themselves look stupid. Melody surprises and delights the others in her car by informing them that she used to speak six languages - y'know, for when she's doing work at UN level. Helen and Natasha exchange a look suggesting that this is far from the first time they've been exposed to this particular branch of Melody's rez-hoo-may. She probably talks in fluent Swahili when she's pissed. Melody reminds the others, not for the last time, that she runs a global business.

St Pancras Station, which is apparently the venue for this year's Stock Footage Film Festival. Seriously, the exterior shots of the Eurostar throughout the episode are about as convincing as the exterior shots in Snakes On A Train. The station is deserted, so God knows what time they filmed this. Nick and Karren are waiting, of course, and Sralan rolls up to tell the teams that they're off to Paris, representing some "rather unique" British products that he wants them to sell to French shops. He's set them up one appointment with a leading French home-shopping brand, but apart from that, they're on their own. Half of the teams will be going to France right away to conduct market research. On products they haven't actually seen. Yeah, that's going to end well. Sralan tells Tom he's project-managing for Logic this week, and Helen is sent over to Venture to balance the teams, where they will get to make their own decision. Sralan adds that they all have individual order books, so they'd better bladdy well sell, even though he's not looking for bladdy salespeople this year. The next train is leaving in 30 minutes, so they'd better get going. Incidentally, there is a minimum 30 minute check in for Eurostar services for us mere mortals, so these bitches are getting special treatment.

In his Bentleyterview, Sralan says he doesn't want his next business restricted to the UK, so he wants to see how well these people can cope in an unfamiliar environment.

On Venture, Susan volunteers to be PM because her job involves a lot of product selection, but subsequently interviews that she knows nothing about France, has never been there, has never met a French person, couldn't point it out on a map, probably would struggle to spell it, etc etc. Over on Logic, Tom designates Leon and Melody as the advance attack team, at which point Leon confesses that he can't speak French, so he's just going to let the funky music do the talking. And by "the funky music", I mean Melody. Tom dismisses them with a cheery "ciao!", and I seriously hope that was just him being generally cosmopolitan rather than actually thinking that's how you say "goodbye" in French. I mean, his surname is Pellereau, for crying out loud. Which is French for "inventor who looks like Michael Sheen, if Michael Sheen didn't have a chin". On the Eurostar, Leon sing-songs "looking forward to breakfast!" and mimes biting the air, which Melody imitates. It's kind of cute. It's also super-gay, but it's fine, because Leon HAS A GIRLFRIEND. You'd think Leon wouldn't want to appear so keen considering he's on his way to Gay Paree, but maybe it's just spray tans that give him gay panic. Jim and Helen are also sent ahead for Venture.

The PMs and their chosen assistants (Natasha for Tom, Zoe for Susan) head off to examine the products they'll be selling. There are ten British innovations not currently available in France, and although the inventors of all of these products are there to show off their wares, for some reason the candidates' first encounter with them all will be in a giant room with no people in it. Susan and Zoe attempt to make sense of a toy costing €2, and ultimately fail, while Natasha declares an electric bike retailing at just under €1,700 to be "quite appealing". Susan tells Zoe that she's looking for volume, and therefore wants products with mass-market appeal. One product they try out is a child's bean bag couch, which unfolds to reveal a sort of airbed thing, only instead of filling it with air, you shake the couch so that all the beans flow down into it (rrp €325). It looks like it'd be a pain in the arse to set up/take down, but it appeals to Susan's inherent childishness, not to mention her smallness. Natasha likes it too, but she and Tom have slightly more trouble setting it up. Next, they look at a postcard box that has cress in it, retailing at €10. I like cress as much as the next person (did anyone else ever have to grow cress for a primary school project, and then you got to make cress sandwiches at the end of term? That was the BEST DAY EVER), but this baffles me, quite frankly. Tom thinks it's sweet, Susan takes an instant dislike to it.

Next Susan and Zoe look at a "flexible gadget grip and display podium" (at least, that's what Susan calls it, reading from her notes. Zoe simply calls it a "spider thing". Unless she's daydreaming about a potential Spider-Man/Fantastic Four crossover). It looks like a load of pipecleaners, and I think the basic point of it is for people who change their phones quite often to be able to simply adapt it to fit whatever shape of gadget they currently own, rather than buy a new one every time. It's a nice idea, though I don't think I'd pay €18 for it when I could probably make one myself that was about as aesthetically appealing. Susan thinks it's expensive but innovative. Tom and Natasha look at a teapot light. Not a light for your teapot, you understand, but a light shaped like a teapot. Why? How? Why? It's €140, and Natasha thinks it's a good option, but Natasha seems to have felt this way about pretty much everything. She's basically the Charlotte at this point. Susan doesn't like the light, prompting Karren to give a mymumterview that Susan rushed around the room and decided far too quickly what she liked and what she didn't. Karren thinks this is incredibly decisive, but also immature. Karren clearly hates Susan so much. I think Karren and I might be soulmates. [Make that a weird menage a trois - Rad] Montage of Susan asking Susan-type questions: "Are the French eco-friendly? Do the French go camping? Are the French very fond of their children? Do the French have arms? Do French people have houses with roofs? Can French people read?" Seriously, after her behaviour this week and last, I really want to see what would happen if Susan had to talk to an old French person. I think it would BLOW HER MIND. Karren, in another despairing interview, points out that you do not have to have been to France to know whether French people love their children, and that the whole thing is "beyond stupid".

The final product that we see is a booster seat for kids that folds into a backpack. Zoe makes more sense out of this product than I managed by suggesting that you can pack your kids off to someone else for a lift, and they'll have no excuses because the booster seat is right there in the backpack. Also, I guess if you're on holiday or something and renting a car, this might be quite handy, though I bet once the novelty of wearing the booster seat on their back had worn off, you would have a seriously tired and cranky child to deal with. Tom likes the baby seat, and feels there's a massive market for it.

Embarrassing Eurostar Stock Footage. Susan rings Jim and Helen to tell them that they're keen on the booster seat, and the chair bed. Jim suggests they call some shops selling children's things, and Helen takes the first call, getting as far as "bonjour" before realising that she has "forgotten...the...English", so Jim takes over and asks "je voudrais parler au responsible de magazine, s'il vous plaît?" No, Jim, that was last week's task. Also, that was you. Fortunately, the person on the other end of the phone realises she's speaking to two English people with little to no grasp of the glorious French language, and shifts into English to help them out. Tom and Natasha phone Melody and Leon, and say that they're keen on the pop-up postcard, the teapot light (Melody: "very British, yah"), and the carseat rucksack. Melody is instantly not keen on this one, wondering why anyone would want to do this rather than leave it in the car. And I can kind of see her point here [ah but it'd be useful for folks with kids who don't own a car, so these would work as portable seats for any car you take your kids in. As someone who occasionally gives lifts to people with kids, this'd be useful - Rad]. Nick bitchterviews that Melody is expressing dislike of products that she hasn't even seen, completely missing the point where the design of the task dictates that half the teams are supposed to be conducting market research on PRODUCTS THEY HAVEN'T EVEN SEEN. So cram it sideways, Nick. Tom tells Melody and Leon he wants them to do market research, "completely independent of your own personal thoughts" (at which Melody pulls a face, or rather several faces), and after hanging up, Melody sniffs that they've not chosen the right products for Paris, adding that it's not like it's MANCHESTER or something [They don't have shoes in Paris? - Rad]. Or indeed Birmingham, where no one can afford a wedding dress. And where everyone is SO POOR. Leon thinks they should call back and say they're going to Paris, not a car boot sale. "Or 'Up North'," adds Melody, not content with alienating the viewers of just one city.

Now, a chance for the teams to meet the makers of the products, before they decide what they want to sell. Wouldn't it have made more sense for this point to come before they phoned the candidates on their way to Paris? Susan and Zoe meet a guy with some sort of espresso machine, which he says has been growing "slowly and organically" in the market place. Zoe interprets this as "it hasn't done very well", and she may not be entirely wrong. For once. Tom and Natasha meet the inventor of the teapot light, who insists that it's a quality product, though Tom still seems unsure. Zoe and Susan meet the inventor of Spider-Thing, and are charmed: Susan loves the product, Zoe loves the margin. Tom and Natasha meet the inventor of the Cress Card, and book it because it also has a good margin. Both teams are taken with the backpack carseat, and Tom relates to him as someone who has worked "in the baby industry before" (likely translation: has donated to a sperm bank in exchange for money). Tom likes it, but is unsure whether it's appropriate for the meeting they have as arranged by Sralan.

PARIS PORN! This is a nice change. Leon et Melody descendent dans le Metro, and Tom phones them to say that he wants more information about tomorrow's pitch, specifically whether the carseat backpack is something they'd be likely to want. It's slightly unclear here regarding how much of this message Leon and Melody actually hear, since the signal's dropping out, but they obviously get enough of it to pick up on Tom's keenness for this particular product, and Melody checks, in a tone of disbelief, that he's more interested in that than the teapot.

Melody decides that they should ask people which of the two products they prefer. She asks questions in French, and one man scoffs at the very idea of the teapot light. She explains the carseat backpack to him, and he seems to already be familiar with the general idea, interestingly. He says it's a good idea. Melody is slightly surprised by this. Another woman, also on the subject of the car seat, responds "oui, je pense que c'est une bonne idée". Now, my French is a little bit rusty (as you've probably gathered from my occasional attempts to drop it into the recap to look clever) but Melody's translation of this, for Leon's benefit, as "she thought that it was okay" seems rather distant from the actual truth.

Jim and Helen also conduct market research, on the street rather than in the Metro. They ask a woman who has a baby strapped to her chest (smart thinking) which product she likes best, and she's keen on the backpack carseat. Susan phones up, and Jim says that the consumers are keen on the rucksack, so Susan and Zoe decide on the car seat and Spider-Thing. Back in le Metro, a woman tells Susan that lots of people in Paris use the Metro (imagine a person on the Metro saying that!) and another says that families often use the Metro together. Melody interprets this as a clear vindication of her feelings on the carseat, while Leon tells her "this is great! First-hand research, you can't even fudge the figures." Admittedly, the editing of the shots doesn't always indicate which translation Melody was giving to which statement, so I don't know how much she was just being shafted by the show here, but I don't think it's a massive stretch to assume that she may have editorialised to some extent when translating.

Melody phones Tom and says that her research indicates that people here don't use cars very much, so the carseat might not have mass-market appeal. Tom asks for feedback on the teapot, and Melody reports that this was far more positive, and indicates that this is the better option. Nick pulls all sorts of blowfish faces in the background. Tom stresses to Natasha that three people on the team want the teapot, and he thinks he'd be a fool to go against that and pick the car seat, even though he passionately believes in it. Natasha's kind of bored of him at this point, so Tom tells Nick that they're going for the teapot lamp, and the postcards. Nick sends them off to Paris. [I don't get why they didn't go for the car seat and the lamp. I mean, the cress postcard thing? Why? - Rad]

Outside a café, Jim and Helen are cold-calling, trying to book appointment. Jim, without a shred of irony, begins one call with "'Allo 'allo?" Oh dear. He manages to book an appointment for "tomorrow demain" at noon. Melody calls up someone and asks if they speak English. He does, a little, so Melody continues the call in English. Leon doomedterviews that Melody's just got them six appointments, while he's not doing anything because he can't speak French. Even though Melody just made an appointment in English. And if you didn't pick Leon as this week's most likely boot when he openly admitted to NOT DOING ANYTHING, then I can only assume you have never seen this show before.

8pm. The other candidates arrive. "J'adore Paris!" Tom exclaims. Zoe and Susan gleefully display their products to Jim and Helen, as Helen fumbles her way around Spider-Thing and Susan once again earns super-lolz by demonstrating that she fits in the carseat. Susan's stature: the comedic gift that keeps on giving. Helen hands over a list of appointments for Susan and Zoe to attend, and offers to brief them. Susan says that this is exactly what she wanted.

Over in the Logic suite, Tom shows off the teapot light for Leon and Melody, to fits of giggles. Leon thinks it's expensive, and not what he pictured. Melody panics, having stood in strong support of this item, and backtrackterviews that this wasn't what she expected and it doesn't look like fine bone china. Tom interviews that he's disappointed with their reaction, but he thinks it still has strong selling points.

Huit heures le matin. Susan's team sets off to their individual meetings. Still at the hotel, Tom says that he wants everything to be fair, which Melody interprets as "the appointments that I spent time and effort making yesterday, you're going to take away from me?" Tom reminds her that this is a team game. Melody says that she's more than happy to set up some appointments for Tom and Natasha, but she's going to sell at the appointments she made. Tom: *dithers*

Jim and Zoe head off to a fancy boutique with an owner who speaks little English. The carseat backpack, which Jim claims to be "phenomenal popular dans le United Kingdom", is not well-received, and neither is Spider-Thing. Out on the road, Melody remarks that there's so much traffic. Indeed. If only, when attempting to discover how much the citizens of Paris use their cars, she'd actually LOOKED AT A ROAD instead of asking people who were on a subterranean railway system. I mean, who could've predicted this? She and Leon arrive at a ridiculous-looking design store, where the owner compliments Melody on her French. Melody shills the teapot light, doing a pretty good job of describing it as "contemporary" while also "classic". Because God knows in the 1920s you couldn't MOVE for teapot-shaped lights in the houses of the well-to-do. Le patron likes the Alice-in-Wonderland-ness of the product and places an order for 50, at a total of €3,250 for Melody's order book. Melody's hopes for a market for the teapot light are reignited.

Tom and Natasha head off to the fixed appointment at La Redoute, and Tom suggests flipping a coin to determine who gets to lead the pitch. Professional! Natasha counters with Scissors Paper Stone, and since Tom goes for paper and Natasha goes for scissors, she wins. I feel that both their decisions in that game were pretty much perfect as far as representations of their personalities go. They enter with their products covered over by a Union Jack (oh dear) and Natasha asks "parlez-vous Anglais?", and I hope that she at least had a back-up plan in case the answer had been "non." Natasha presents the teapot, in a pitch that starts well (singing the praises of bone china) and rapidly deteriorates (speculating on how people might say "that's fantastic!" upon seeing the product). Les Redoutes wonder what the minimum order would be, and Tom suggests ten. Nick duh-terviews that La Redoute is "one of the most formidable commercial organisations in France", and therefore ten units is absurd. One of the buyers questions whether they actually bothered to study the market properly before arriving at the ludicrous ten-unit decision, and Natasha attempts to salvage things by raising it to 50, but I think it's too late to save face at this point. In the car, Tom blames Melody for not researching La Redoute properly. I can appreciate he's annoyed that he asked her to do it and she didn't, but I think that reasoning only goes so far. After all, this appointment was set up by Sralan, and similar arrangements within the UK tend to involve large corporations that the candidates wouldn't have been able to gain access to by themselves, so a little bit of lateral thinking from Tom and Natasha here would've avoided that incredibly embarrassing situation.

Swish design shop. Jim and Zoe try to sell Spider-Thing, and land a trial order netting them €900. Meanwhile, Helen and Susan are heading for La Redoute, and Susan rings for a progress report, to discover that things are going slowly. In direct contrast to Tom and Natasha, Helen absolutely smokes the La Redoute presentation. It probably doesn't hurt that she was previously aware of the company, and has indeed shopped at La Redoute herself. She says that the carseat is a great product for the working woman, and when one of the buyers suggests the price is too high, she counters that the modern woman will pay anything for convenience, and she thinks their TARGET AUDIENCE OF WOMEN will consider this a reasonable price to pay, and not only that, but they can boast about being the first people to bring this product to France, showing how much they care about their customers' children's safety. Good answer. Also, the male buyer on the far-left of the table is very handsome. Not that this is relevant, but I thought it merited a mention.

Melody heads off to another home store, and sells some more teapot lights to another attractive Frenchman (that's it, I'm moving to Paris), while Leon also charms him into buying some Cress Cards. Outside, Melody and Leon discuss how they have great products that have gone down well with their appointments. From there, we segue ironically to Tom and Natasha, who are trying to fix appointments of their own, and Tom hits a wall with a woman who doesn't speak English at all, and ends up asking, in extremely scattered French, to speak to the "postcard manager". This appears to be one of many language barriers that give them problems. Tom closes a call by wishing someone a "bonne holiday" and signing off with "ciao!", so I'm guessing he really does think that's how you say goodbye in French. He is a DISGRACE to the name of Pellereau.

Stuck in the traffic that her market research told her didn't exist, Melody realises she can't get to all of those pitches, so she offloads one of her appointments to Tom and Natasha - one of the ones where she forgot to get a name for the contact. Heh. Tom runs his hands through his luscious hair.

Susan and Helen pitch at a design store, to a woman who seems unequivocally English, who likes the products, but not for her shop. She calls in for a progress report with Jim and Natasha, and Jim likens the process to "pushing treacle up a hill". Snerk. Susan advises them to keep an eye open for children's shops or mobile phone shops. Zoe's all "yeah, thanks, that hadn't occurred to us."

Tom and Natasha turn up to Melody's appointment at the interior design showroom, where they are told the teapot light is "an idea, not a concept", though the hard-to-please owner is more taken with the cress cards, and Natasha clocks up her first order of the day, for €1,015. Tom and Natasha are thrilled. Melody and Leon head to their final appointment, where Leon demands a chance to sell teapots instead of cress for a change. Melody is all "well, frankly I would've sold both products at every appointment but for some reason I pity you, so I threw you the cress as a life-line, but sure, non-French-speaking boy, go ahead. KNOCK YOURSELF OUT." The man who owns the shop is impressed with the teapot lights ("j'aime beaucoup!") and orders 35 at a total of €2,240. Then Melody sells the cress cards, saying she wants a big quantity order, and sells €3,800 worth of cards. Oh, Leon. That may have been the wrong time to assert your authority.

With all of their appointments over, the teams are hunting for random sales. Driving around Paris, Susan spots an independent phone shop that happens to have a big online store. She pitches Spider-Thing, very well I have to admit, and the woman in the shop orders 1,000 pieces initially, until Susan talks her up to 1,500 pieces at €7.50 each for a total of €11,250. "I've got Euro signs in my eyeballs now," Susan grins. She passes the tip-off on to Zoe and Jim to look for independent mobile phone shops and they run around the streets (with Zoe and Helen both bearing carseats on their backs, hee) looking for more places to pitch to. Melody calls Tom, who promptly drops the phone. Apparently she really is that scary. Leon asks Tom if he's made any sales. Tom non-answers that "we've had a lot of difficulties", and interviews that he hasn't made any sales by himself. They try to sell the postcards in a book shop, with no joy.

Sales time ends. Melody considers moving to Paris and setting up a business. Around 8 million residents of the UK respond "don't let us stop you". In the Apprentaxi Of Irony, now Jim and Zoe can see nothing but mobile phone shops as far as the eye can see. Back to smelly old England, and the boardroom.

The phone rings, and NotFrances sends them in. Sralan asks Venture if Susan was a good team leader. Jim thinks she made a bold move to become PM, which Sralan thinks is not the answer he wanted, so Jim responds that he didn't see a lot of Susan, but she led from the front when it came to sales. Susan explains that they picked the backpack carseat and Spider-Thing because she wanted products that weren't too niche, at which point Karren leaps into action regarding Susan's idiotic questions from earlier, like "do the French love their children?" and "do the French drive?" Helen, not having been present when this happened, quietly cracks up. Susan explains that she's never been to France, and Karren points out that you don't really need to have been to France to answer those questions. Susan responds that she didn't mean for it to be a naive (she pronounces it to rhyme with "knife") question, she just wondered if the French focused on products for their children, or are they more interested in electronics. Karren's all "then SAY THAT, you fucking idiot."

Over to Logic, and Sralan asks the team whether Tom was a good leader. Leon says that he felt Melody was more of a de facto team leader. Melody says that they didn't feel much of a PM presence from Tom. Tom says that he felt Melody was more interested in her own ideas than anything he had to say. The producers lean heavily on Sralan's shoulder, and he consults the rushes from a few days ago and asks whether anyone might have had a favourite product, Tom? Tom takes the cue and says that he liked the car seat, at which point Melody explains that her "market research" suggested that the Parisians used the Metro rather than cars. Sralan scoffs at this, and saying that every time he sees a picture of the "Trump's Elle-eye-sis" (no, really, this is how he says it) there's a bladdy traffic jam. Melody agrees that they discovered this was true later in the game, but FOUR WHOLE PEOPLE in their research said that the French didn't drive, and she couldn't possibly have ignored that. Sralan openly laughs at this. Sralan asks who took the pitch for La Redoute, and Tom says it was him and Natasha, before unwisely going on to add that they flipped a coin to decide who'd lead it. Sralan asks if they really flipped a coin. Tom: "Effectively." Oh dear.

Time for some numbers, then. Nick reveals that Logic sold strongly to small retailers, and brought in sales of €11,705. Karren reveals that Venture beat them on that front, bringing in €14,699. As for La Redoute, thanks to Helen's awesome pitch, Venture got an order of €214,000. And Logic? Got zilch. Melody is HORRIFIED by this, and her head is spinning Exorcist-style between Tom and Natasha as she tries to determine which one of them is the biggest fuck-up. Sralan declares this "an annihilation", and congratulates Venture on their record. Their reward will be flying lessons. They scamper outside and hug.

Reward time! I note that Jim is wearing an aviator-style leather jacket, just for the occasion. The instructor tells them to get used to the controls, because they'll be landing the plane. Judging from the amount of noise Susan makes, I think it's a testament to the human spirit of the person teaching her that he didn't just charge the plane straight into ground and put them both out of their misery. Helen grinterviews afterwards that she's worked out that, on the basis of the deal she made with La Redoute, she could've bought Sralan two of these planes. Heh. I love that Helen's suddenly getting a bit of an ego. It suits her.

Loser Café. I hope the tea is served in bone china cups, and that the teapot has a light in it. Tom says that they lost purely on the basis of not choosing the booster rucksack, and that he felt if he'd forced that product on the three of them, they would've deliberately not bothered to sell it to sabotage him. I think that's a bit of a reach, to be honest. I'm also not entirely convinced that he could've got the same size of order from La Redoute as Helen did, because he probably would've asked for a minimum order of three or something. Melody sniffs outside that of course Tom's saying they should've gone for the car seats now, but her job was to give him market research, and that's what she did. Sort of. After a fashion. Tom interviews that he's feeling vulnerable because he didn't sell anything, but is hoping that since Sralan isn't looking for a salesperson this time, he's still in with a chance.

Back in the boardroom. NotFrances sends them all through. Sralan asks who wants to open, and Tom takes the lead, saying that he feels they lost on the basis of one very big order. Karren points out that this isn't true, because they lost on independent sales as well. Tom tries another approach, saying that he was the only one to spot the potential of the carseat - however, this time the usual "the project manager didn't listen" approach is scuppered somewhat by the fact that the project manager who didn't listen was in fact Tom himself. Sralan tells Tom he should've gone with his gut instinct. Tom claims that he made this decision based on a lack of information on the major pitch they were doing, and he'd asked Melody and Leon to do some research, which they didn't do. Melody disputes the level of forcefulness with which Tom made this request (really, Melody? Claiming that you couldn't hear properly because of a lack of reception might have worked, but this feels like an automatic hiding to nowhere) and Nick chimes in saying that at 12.15 precisely, Tom called and asked them to look into La Redoute. Melody dances around the idea for a bit, at which point Sralan asks her simply to tell him if they looked into La Redoute. Here, Leon does everyone involved a favour and admits it didn't happen. Melody counters that she was asked to do market research - "chip in if you will, Leon" - and relayed all of this information back. Sralan finds the whole "chip in if you will, Leon" thing hilarious and points out that Leon really isn't doing much in this boardroom, and making it easy for Sralan to fire him.

Leon explains that Melody did all the talking back in Paris, because she was speaking French, "of which I cannot speak". Except you just did. Apparently French isn't the only language Leon has trouble with, if that's what his grasp of English is like. He says that his contribution was to do some drawings of the products. Leon lies that Melody was speaking in French "the entire team" and he, just in case we've forgotten, can't speak French. Sralan points out that a lot of the people they went to see spoke English.

Sralan turns back to Tom, with reference to the teapot light, and explains that La Redoute sells a wide range of products, including lighting. He wonders why Tom went in with ten as a minimum purchase. Melody expresses surprise at this point that Tom did the pitch at all, since she thinks she and Leon have a better sales record than Tom and Natasha. I wonder if Tom might have been slightly more willing to let Melody do the La Redoute pitch if she hadn't thrown him out of her sandbox that morning regarding the appointments she'd set up. Nick makes this point for me, saying that Melody was greedy and wanted to do all the pitches. Sralan asks how many appointments Melody gave away, and it turns out to have just been that one, where Natasha made over €1,000 worth of sales of cress. Karren wonders at this point if Melody hadn't realised it was a team effort, since on Venture Jim made appointments for everyone. I think the whole "team effort" thing is belied slightly by the fact that they were given individual order books. Melody explains that she totally got the team effort thing, since she let Leon sell at some of her appointments. Leon's all "yes, that is what happened."

Sralan asks Tom who he's bringing back, and Tom picks Leon, for not doing anything, and Melody, for asking the wrong questions in the market research. Melody: "You should've given me that direction on the day. I sold €8,000, Tom - how much did you sell?" Ooh, burn. Tom declares this "irrelevant", which Leon and Melody vocally disagree with. Sralan calls Natasha "very lucky" for escaping this, as Melody sniffs that Natasha made precisely one sale, but nonetheless, Natasha is free to go back to Entrepreneur Estates, yeah?

Tom, Melody and Leon are temporarily dismissed. Nick thinks that people like Tom, while Melody pushes people too far, though they can't pretend she's a failure because her sales figures were impressive. Karren, since she can't advocate for the firing of Susan, wonders what Leon did besides drawing a teapot. Nick thinks Leon was dazzled by Melody, and thinks that both he and Tom need to stand up for themselves and be more manly. Out in the waiting room, Leon is all "excuse me, I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND, thank you very much."

The phone rings. Tom stands up. NotFrances tells them they can go in, Tom looks a bit embarrassed at having jumped the gun. Heh. Sralan points out that the carseat was the winning product here, and that Melody had spoken out against it after her market research. Melody agrees that her questioning had not offered widespread support for the idea, at which point Nick points out that she'd never been a fan of it. Melody adds that "common sense" told her people wouldn't want to put a car seat into a bag. Sralan says that she was wrong on that score, because it was a popular product: "do you know anything about products, Melody?" he asks. Melody says that she's not in product development. Sralan digs out her REZ-HOO-MAY and asks about her awards: Volunteer of the Year; Woman of the Future; Outstanding Asian Woman Achievement (I'm not sure that last one scans very well). Sralan asks her what she does to get these awards, and Melody explains that she works in the youth sector to improve the lives of young people. Melody continues that last year she set up her own business with no capital and no brand (and there's a bit more about it here, if anyone's interested). Sralan asks her what her business is, and she says that it's a global consultancy business, to improve young people's skills and help them with their own projects. That all sounds...reassuringly vague. Sralan asks her if it's a business for profit, and well, of course it is. When was the last time you saw someone from the charity sector on this show? He says that he's looking to set up a business with someone, not "another government" (although frankly given the state of the current one, I'd be willing to consider any alternatives he or Melody might have to offer), and Melody assures him that her business project is very profitable.

Sralan turns to Leon, and points out that he's been hiding behind the language barrier for the whole task. He reminds him that when he started out in business, his suppliers were mainly in Asia and he didn't speak any of their languages, but he had to communicate with them to run his business. Leon admits this was an "oversight", but that he was still selling during the task, and assumed that they were being judged solely on figures, and if it came down to who sold the most...at which point Sralan interjects: "she did." He throws in another comment about Melody hogging the sales for herself, prompting Melody to grouse that no one else was trying very hard to set appointments up, and Tom and Natasha could've done their own. To my great relief (because despite everything that's happened this week, I still kind of love Melody) Sralan says he doesn't care if she was hogging the sales, because that shows fighting instinct and a desire to win. Leon chips in that he hasn't heard Tom sell anything. Tom says that his biggest frustration was the people he asked to do things not doing them. He thinks that Melody's biggest priority was "making sure her arse was completely covered", and I think that's a false lead: Melody's biggest priority was selling as much as she could. I don't think she particularly cared about covering her arse, because if she had, she wouldn't have done such a haphazard job of talking Tom out of picking the carseat.

Tom tells Sralan that this is the first time he's been in the boardroom, and it's not because he's won every task. (Sralan: "That's for sure." Hee.) Tom continues that on every task he's added value to his team, but Melody disagrees: she thinks that while he has strengths, he also has weaknesses, and the numbers on this task speak for themselves. Tom sold nothing all day. Tom makes a weak claim that he split the sales between him and Natasha, but Sralan reminds him that he had no sales, full stop, and wonders why that is. Leon: "Because you can't sell?" Tom then tries to lay the (big old plate of) blame for the failure of the La Redoute pitch with Natasha, even though he was the one who suggested a potential order of ten units, and Karren accuses him of not taking it seriously, because he suggested flipping a coin to decide who led the pitch. Tom: "We did an equivalent." Karren: "What did you do?" Tom: (realising how terrible this sounds) "We did...paper-scissors-stone." Karren: *look of utter disbelief* Melody: *look of unrestrained glee*

Sralan says that he wanted to give Tom a chance with his history of inventing, selling and distributing, because that appeals to him, but he's done fairly terribly here. Tom tries the patented Susan Ma "I run my own business" approach, and Sralan asks him for details of this alleged business. Tom says that he's created his own products, branded them, patented them, been to China to source the components, and sold 35,000 to his first distributor. He thinks he has the potential to be bigger than Dyson.

Time for a firing. Sralan likes Melody's hunger and her moxie, so she's safe for now. Besides, he points out that Tom and Leon are equally as responsible for her riding roughshod all over them as she is, since it's not like either of them tried very hard to tell her she couldn't. So it's between Tom and Leon. Leon did nothing, while Tom did everything wrong. The editors want us to think Tom's going, but he gets a last-minute reprieve, and instead it's Leon who's fired for being useless. Sralan tells Tom that he's being allowed to stay because of his potential, but he's rapidly running out of chances. He advises Tom to take a leaf out of Melody's book, because she's a tiger. I for one am very much in favour of a TOM AND MELODY SUPER TEAM OF AWESOME, though if Tom is to take a leaf out of anyone's book at this point, it should probably be Helen's. Or perhaps Susan's.

Leon hugs and kisses Melody. He does not do the same for Tom, because he has a girlfriend. Coatwatch: fairly standard, black and boring. Accessorised with a nifty scarf, but in a totally heterosexual way, obviously. Leon taxinterviews that he's disappointed to have been fired because he saw himself making the final and working with Sralan. He thought he was everything Sralan was looking for, but he just didn't see it. I've had post-breakup conversations like that myself.

Entrepreneur Estates. Zoe's wondering what the sales figures were like, and Natasha tells her that Melody sold €8,000 worth of product, which Jim thinks will have saved her. However, Natasha adds, Melody only created appointments for herself. Zoe sniffs that this is not really working in the team spirit. Seriously, Zoe says that. I'll leave a little pause here until you're finished recovering from your convulsive fit of laughter.

All done? Good.

Tom and Melody return to a fairly muted reception. Melody highlights the part of the boardroom where Sralan read out her list of awards and said how commendable that was, because that's exactly what Melody would do in this situation. Tom congratulates Helen for her unbroken winning streak, and Zoe thinks Helen's put herself on the radar with that sale [like Liz Locke? Poor Helen, so brilliant, so doomed - Rad].

Next week: biscuits! With popcorn. An emergency biscuit, perhaps. Tom and Melody attempting to be a super team of awesome. Should be good.

Mag Men (and women)

2011-06-18T15:43:00.000-07:00

Week 7 Transmission date: 15 June 2011

Last week’s episode was rubbish (ho ho). £6 separated the teams but thanks to the holy influence of Saint Helen, Logic earned their first win. Leon did nothing yet again, and avoided the boardroom yet again, whilst Zoe and Susan fought yet again and Edna was fired for no real reason other than Sralan didn’t really like her, she had an MBA and she hadn’t fulfilled her crazy potential so there wasn’t much point in keeping her on. At least she left in a pink pashmina.

This week! 5.45 am and a sleepy looking Melody (fully dressed and in eye make up though, so either she didn’t bother getting changed from the night before, or she’s a very quick dresser) answers the phone. They’re heading to Fleet Street and all the candidates think it’s to do with newspapers or media. I have to say, this is a somewhat logical location. Somewhat, anyway, given newspapers don’t really get made there now and I’m not sure many magazines ever did. They head to a building where Rupert Murdoch’s media empire once was before it crumbled and all that was left is a great glass elevator - or something, given we’re not told what the building actually is these days. Sralan tells the candidates that in this new age of newspaper decline the biggest thing to get into is free glossy ‘premium’ magazines, which “the industry” call freemiums. If this is true, then I snort at the industry. The candidates have to make one. Fun task but I think making a free newspaper would be even funnier (come on, it has to beat thelondonpaper. And the Grimsby Target). [I quite liked thelondonpaper. It was better than the Evening Standard, though I realise that's hardly a ringing endorsement. - Steve]

Jim is moved over to Venture and Leon to Logic. They haven’t lost good luck charm Helen, so let’s see if she can go for an unbroken run of wins only to become the Naomi/Miriam competent female pointless evictee come shopping channel week. The teams have to get advertising space. In the car to meet the ad agencies, Helen says they need to be prepared to sell their souls and make any old rubbish mag if it’ll appeal to the advertisers. Over at the ad agency, we meet the boss, and a bit of my soul dies a little when he is revealed to be Mike Soutar. Mike Soutar of Smash Hits! Ver Hits! Mike Soutar worked there along with Alex Kadis (bloke or ladybloke?), Sylvia Patterson, Sian Pattenden, Mark Frith before he became a tedious ‘celebrity’, and Kipper Williams on the cartoons in its glory days. Those journalists were my heroes dammit. OK, so he ruined it somewhat by editing a lads’ mag – but at least that was a magazine. Advertising wouldn’t be so bad if he created the adverts. But you don’t, do you Mike? If I’d ever won a Black Type tea-towel I’d be weeping into it now.

He tells them if they’re going to create a hit launch they need to understand their readers (except no-one’s actually going to read this, are they??) and meet their print deadlines.

Over at Team Cunt (aka Venture), Jim and Zoe meet – apparently it’s the first time they’ve worked together. Logic are led by Natasha. Tom wants to do a cute baby mag and that would have probably had the effect on me that the kittehs had on Steve, but Natasha wants to go for a lads’ mag, because they’re ‘for lads, yeah’.
Jim (Venture PM) is leaning towards over-60s. He says it’s a big market. We see him in a pre-recorded video interview saying he can take people’s hearts and minds and make them do what he wants them to do. A+ for the editors on that one. Zoe thinks the over-60s is challenging but seems to like something else. Glenn likes it. Susan has a face like a wet weekend as usual but goes along with it.

Logic flick through FHM. Tim thinks it’s a bit gross, Helen doesn’t think Mercedes Benz would advertise in it. Natasha says ‘porn sells’. Helen tries to say something about professional men but Natasha’s all BORING! TITS! ARSE! YAY! Surely there are enough paid-for mags doing this without the need for a free one?

Susan and Glenn are on the way to a bowling club to meet some old people. Susan wants to ask ‘what do you guys do?’ Glenn: ‘Bowl’. Heh. They have a focus group with some of them. One reads The Economist, one Viz. They all point out that normally over 60s wouldn’t touch magazines for their age group as it makes them feel old. One woman says she wants things that will suit their lifestyle – holidays, skiing etc. Susan: what about things to train your brain BECAUSE YOU ARE SO OLD, like crosswords? The woman: Absolutely not! And no knitting, either. Glenn suggests humour. They throw some names at them, including ‘Free 60’ ‘vita life’ (another lady: it’s like something I’d feed my cat’. Did she miss the bus to last week’s focus group?) ‘First Lady’ ‘Eternal’ – the older people think their ideas are stupid and Susan’s a patronising young upstart. I mean they were too polite to say it but that’s what they were thinking. The men laugh and say you want to face it head on so how about ‘Zimmer’. Susan fails to laugh along. She really has no rapport with any actual grown-ups, does she?

Logic have a focus group with lads. Helen and Tim lead it and the guys want a magazine with a higher tone. Helen phones back and says they were interested in the idea of business and making money, not tits. She tells Natasha they want tasteful and naked-free. Natasha’s all. Nah, tasteful isn’t a USP. We want to be like every other lads’ mag out there. That’ll be what makes us unique. She asks Helen to shoot names at them. They go for Covered. Melody likes it. Natasha’s like BOOORING.

Glenn and Susan ring back and say the focus group hated the names and they need to be satirical. Zoe: Coffin Dodgers? Glenn: Pension Mention. Because that’s HILARIOUS and not at all weird. Jim: I don’t think we should mention pensions. Heh. Glenn: Old Boot? The Old Soak? Susan: What’s a term that you call an old person? Jim: Golden Oldies? Susan then tries to be all poetic and looks to the sky dream-like going ‘young-hearted. Old looking but young hearted’ whilst Glenn’s all young at heart, young at heart at her. How is it that these two so misjudged the focus group, when Zoe got it straight away and she wasn’t even there? Zoe suggests being hip or ‘Hip replacement’. Jim jumps on this, despite it being a rubbish name. Glenn likes it and Susan sulks. She asks if it’s a bit too sensitive. Jim asks if they’re all on board. Susan says no but she’ll support it anyway. Zoe says it’s needs to be about 60 being the new 30 and getting fit and active, getting into fashion etc.

Leon is doing a front cover with a drawing of a stick man suggests they have innuendos like ‘how do you blow your load?’ Natasha loves it. She wants the cover to be a ‘dirty secretary’. Helen asks if it’ll appeal to their target market, thinking of the focus group. Natasha ‘well, what we’ve got to remember is our focus group was focussed’. Er? She basically ignores the focus group as have all apprenti in every series ever. The photo shoot is a woman in a bikini, business jacket, hard hat and straddling a surfboard. Not sure of the logic here. Karen looks all ‘this is a feminist fail’ and tells the camera that the advertisers won’t want to stand next to anyone in a bikini. Um?

Susan asks her models to ‘do something spontaneous, like ‘Woah’’. They look like they’re posing for catalogues. There is a potentially interesting shot of them boxing, but Glenn goes for a boring hugging shot. Zoe and Jim look at sample layouts. Zoe likes a kind of funky angled one. Jim goes for a static conservative cover. Zoe worries that they’re straying from the brief and taking the irony out of it. Jim says ‘I’m just playing with it’.

Natasha and Melody go into the street asking men how they blow their load. Most of them look rather frightened. Leon takes a photo of a man’s boxer shorts but HE’S NOT GAY REMEMBER?

Jim tells the designer to put articles on the cover about insurance and holidays. Zoe sulks. Melody decides she suddenly loves working on a lads’ mag. Natasha tells Tim and Helen they’re going with ‘how to blow your load’. Helen and Tim are all ‘no, that’s gross, are we not raising the tone?’ Natasha’s all ‘no, sorry, bye’. Natasha’s not exactly leading a team here, is she? It’s just her own ego trip.

Venture are talking about who will pitch. Glenn says he just pitches when he’s there and Susan says she’s never pitched before. Jim thinks the team should be more enthusiastic? Sour Susan, Sulky Zoe and Gormless Glenn, enthusiastic? Wrong team, Jim. They all volunteer him.

The magazine proofs arrive. They’re both quite well designed inside with rather dull covers, and both the complete opposite of the mags the focus groups asked for. They’re on the way to meet the media buyers who will be buying advertising space.

First buyers – Carat. Leon pitches and says it’s nice looking at naked women [OKAY LEON, YOU'RE HETEROSEXUAL, WE GET IT - Steve], but they want to focus on the money aspect. The media buyers say it’s a crowded market but Logic say they’ve got articles about making money so that’ll stand out. They all know their figures in terms of the advertising space – Natasha says the back cover ad will be free if the buyers purchase all the advertising, at a cost of £103,000.

Jim pitches to Carat. They hate the title Hip Replacement. Jim says the demographic don’t want to be patronised. Carat asks their prices. Jim says it’s on the rate card. Carat say we don’t use the rate card, we negotiate. Jim says they won’t negotiate. Oops. Susan remembers Nick wants her to be their Cassandra so says she’s worried they’re being too tight about the prices. Jim doesn’t seem to understand.

At Mediacom, Logic are bitching about who will pitch. Helen thinks Leon did well last time. Natasha says alright, but she is ‘uber, 110% (DRINK!) taking the last one’. Natasha then tries to pitch all over Leon and it’s incredibly messy and rude and horrible and reminds the ad agency that ‘we are a lads mag, yeah?’ The ad agency lady says their spend has massively gone down because people don’t understand lads as they are now. Natasha doesn’t really understand this but does offer to drop her prices to £1500 a page after the lady balks at them.

Jim’s pitch this time is much more assured and confident. The woman says she bought into it, but isn’t keen on the name and thinks their articles are a bit patronising. She asks if they’ll be willing to do £2000 a page and they say yes.
Melody suggests they do a softer pitch. Natasha says no, because they’ll get raped (well, she says they don’t want to drop their pants for them but it equates to the same thing). Ugh, Natasha is vile. She then pitches to the third agency, Maxus, with a ‘yeah’ as every third word. The advertisers asks how men will feel about ‘blow your load’. Natasha’s only response is ‘it’s a lads’ mag, yeah?’ They say it’s like they’ve gone back in time to the 90s and the magazine will offend about 80% of men. Middle advertising man looks like he’s about to burst – and it doesn’t change when Venture come in. The lady at this ad agency says they have someone in a CARDIGAN, although they like the travel feature. The agency identify a gap in the market and suggest they get a 50% discount. The agency say some people give away advertising for free. Jim says he preferred 50% and they end up going for that. Jim’s been really unconfident in all these pitches – so much for his Jedi mind tricks.

Boardroom time, and Natasha looks smugger than the tea shop and organza ladies from shopping week put together. She tells Sralan that it’s a Lads’ mag but with business. Sralan ‘like the FT with a swimwear section?’ He asks Helen and Tom about the focus group and they tell him what they wanted. ‘So then you made THIS?’ Natasha says advertisers could be people selling ‘alco-ho’ – I do not want to know what that is – and strip clubs. Tim and Helen cry that they tried to make it classy. Sralan likes that they did a feature on last week’s task.

Jim says that everyone on their team wanted over-60s except Susan who sat on the fence in case the idea was rubbish and she could use being against it as her defence in the boardroom. Sralan says the Hip Replacement joke doesn’t really work. Nick says they came up with some ropey names like Pension Mention and Coffin Dodger. I liked Coffin Dodger myself, it seemed to go with the focus group, but there we are. [I liked Coffin Dodger too. If you had the right editorial approach, you could in theory make it work. Not that I would trust this batch of lamebrains to get it right. - Steve]

Figures. Maxus didn’t like Covered but spent £9000 anyway. They took £12000 for Hip Replacement. MediaCom thought Covered was dated but took £7500 and £16850 on HR. Carat hated HR and bought nothing, but they liked Covered and bought every page for £60,000. Sralan says he doesn’t like Covered’s front cover, but they win, so they get to go fencing. I’m glad they got a shitty prize because Natasha was a dick (A BIG ONE. COS SHE’S A LAD INNIT. YEAH) this week. Melody kills everyone at the fencing. Sadly not literally. Natasha makes a terrible breast-related joke I won't lower myself to repeat.

Loser café. Susan pouts and swishes her hair. Glenn says they lost because of the first pitch and not lowering the prices. Jim says it was because they didn’t like the name. Susan says it was because of the market. Zoe says you can’t back out at this late stage. Susan whines that the team were opposed to her ideas. What ideas, other than ‘Old looking but young at heart’, princess? Jim tries to blame everything on the name – the name he was very keen on when Zoe suggested it. Susan whines that she didn’t like the name. Sralan tells Zoe that the concept of 60 is the new 30 isn’t in there. Zoe says they changed the font behind her back. Jim says she was there and they argue a bit. I’m not clear which of them is telling the truth although we did see Zoe arguing for a different masthead. Jim said all he wanted for the cover was ‘a young couple who are younger than their age’. Makes. No. Sense. Jim says the photo they went with was the only one they could use. Glenn and Zoe point out there were lots of other photos that Jim ignored. Sralan says the content is patronising.

Sralan moves onto the pitching. Jim says the failure is down to contribution and cowardliness, and then says a lot of percentages very quickly which make no sense. Susan says she ‘put her hand forward’ to pitch. Liar. Jim says they should stop defending against her because they’ll look like they’re shooting Bambi. Jim says OK she did say she’d do it but in a half-hearted way. Nick points out that Jim didn’t negotiate. Sralan asks why they didn’t negotiate with the first one but did with the others. Jim says they went into the others ‘more informed’ – Sralan says you realised you cocked up, more like. He then asks who was to blame. Jim says Susan, closely followed by Glenn, closely followed by Zoe. He then says ‘I was the project manager that they loved, and then led them to defeat’. Jim’s full-on lost it, hasn’t he?

Sralan, Nick and Karren talk about Jim always covering his arse, Susan being a mouse and Glenn being average. I am really hoping the winner of this series is in the current incarnation of Logic and that they are not Natasha. Or Leon.
Susan whines that she has her own business as her defence. Sralan says ‘oooh, the mouse roared’. Is Susan a mouse? I’m inclined to think of her more of a one stringed violin being played constantly. Or fingernails down a blackboard. Jim says she sometimes whispers and sometimes she doesn’t say anything at all, and she didn’t say anything on pricing. Nick points out that she did suggest they slash prices, and that she was ‘at it all the time’. In your (quite frankly disturbing) dreams, Nick. Jim says he pointed this out in the third pitch. Sralan smirks. Nick’s all ‘Susan smells of roses and kitteh’.

Sralan calls Glenn a Del Boy then says he’s an engineer. I don’t entirely see the logic here. [That's because this is Venture. Ho ho ho. - Steve] Glenn says he’s done things himself. Jim says he had to rescue his pitch. Glenn says Jim’s a control freak. Nick says he is a control freak.

Karren says he’s a passive aggressive. I don’t think he’s that passive about his aggression. Jim says he made mistakes and he feels the noose tightening on his lack of negotiation. He says Susan should be fired for being all style and no substance. Susan she says she did everything he asked. He says she didn’t pitch. Jim points out she brought no enthusiasm to the task. Susan plays the ‘I want this Sralan’ card. I am this close to stabbing my telly. I just hope she’s fired before my turn to recap comes round again. She then plays the ‘I am 21’ card. Glenn says ‘stop playing the age card’. She says when they were 21 they did nothing, unlike her. I do NOT get why people on YerFired were cheering her name later on. Alright, there are several horrible specimens of humanity on this year’s show (*Cough* Jim. *Cough* Natasha. *Cough* Zoe (although I actually secretly like Zoe)) but she is one of the vilest.

Sralan says Jim never takes responsibility, Glenn has no USP and Susan shouldn’t use her age as an excuse but he doesn’t like engineers so Glenn’s fired. Pfft. I hate Susan but even I think Jim should have gone that week. Sralan says he’s ‘saw a glimmer’ in Jim somewhere, so he’s saving him for interviews to be ripped apart, and he can’t get rid of Susan or Nick would cry.

Coatwatch: Black I think. We don’t get to see it much. Stripy scarf. Taxinterview – Glenn never failed at one thing. Except impressing Lord Sugar. At the house, they all think Jim or Susan will go. Zoe looks gutted, presumably because she was seeing Glenn at this point. Next week: the International trip! Back to Paris, so presumably the French have forgiven the apprenti for Makro cheese! Hooray!

Too ... many ... possible jokes about rubbish

2011-06-11T05:52:00.000-07:00

Week 6: 8th June 2011

Last week, the apprentices were tasked with creating pet food. Team Logic were so bad, so very bad, in the eyes of Sralan, that they lost to the ever-triumphant Galvanised, despite the fact that Galvanised's product was called 'CatSize. Cats' Eyes. Because cats have eyes. And are the size of cats. See their light. See, they're light! The light that they have because they are Cats' Eyes. And their size is smaller. So they're light! But they are still CatSize. Because they're still cats. That have eyes' and was sold via the medium of a gay cat talking Polari. Ellie went home because she never done nothing, Vincent Dinosaur went home because he did stuff but kind of sucked, and Jim's blatant manipulations came to the fore so much that even Sralan noticed.

Edna answers the phone. She looks really worried the entire time. NotFrances tells her that they're going to Smuggler's Way, to wear hi-vis gear, and that the cars will be there in twenty minutes. Susan and Melody both seem averse to steel toe shoes. Edna gets all hot and horny about the thought of going to a building site to the extent that she says she needs a cold shower. Builders, Edna? Really? To each their own. [All things considered, I'm surprised Ellie got out alive. - Steve]

In the car with Jim, Melody asks him to explain why Logic sucks so horribly, horribly badly, though she couches it in terms of the name. 'That's why I came up with the name Venture, cos it's a winning name, and now I'm not on the team!'. Whatever, Melody, it's no Galvanised.

They get to Smuggler's Way, a big dump in south London. Sralan spends about fifty minutes saying 'Where there's muck there's brass' and moves Helen to Logic because the teams are unbalanced. The teams have to collect waste, dispose of it, and make profit. Someone will be fired. And so on and so forth.

In the car, Natasha says she's worked in construction and property for years, so will be good at this. Helen looks on impassively.

They go off to anyjunk, which was started with a single truck and is now a super-duper big hayooge mega business, so think on, Apprentices. See what you can do etc. The boss man says useful things, including 'You make money by charging people to take away waste'. Remember that for later. He also says that people will know the ropes so don't rip them off, basically, and that it costs about £115 a tonne to dispose of rubbish.

I find this task really really odd. I once worked in facilities management. It was dreadful, but I do remember a fair bit and there are Waste Carrier Licences and Waste Transfer Notes and hazardous materials rules and the WEEE directive to consider, and I'm not remotely convinced that they're doing this properly and possibly are falling foul of many many rules that they're breaking.

Leon and Glenn both say, in short, that they want to do the heavy lifting because they're so masculine and manly and grrrr butch and totally have a girlfriend and hopefully being shown lifting things will counteract the terrible pall cast over Leon by spray tanning a dude once. Susan says that she's got no experience, but will be PM if nobody wants to. Not super-enthusiastic, but I didn't doubt that she was willing to do it. Zoe pulls the first of a million sour bitch faces and says 'Right, I'll do it, we're wasting time by talking about it'. Susan just said she'd do it. Shut up. Zoe is just straight up repellent this episode, you guys. She to-cameras that she turned a company around from loss to profit, and she doesn't like talking, she likes doing blah blah. Leon asks if they're not going to vote and Zoe says you can, if you like, but that's something that a gay would do, are you sure you want to Leon, why not be manly and just get up and do it and make Zoe PM because she's wicked? Glenn and Leon then vote for her, suitably chastened, and she's PM [Has Leon been PM yet? Has Leon done anything useful yet? - Rad].

Over at Logic, Melody says whoever can get a win needs to be PM. Superstar Helen says she'll do it and Logic are still kind of punchdrunk from losing so much so just roll over at the first sign of somebody showing competence and authority. Tom says that they should be looking for metals and high-value stuff to make the profits by selling it on; Helen agrees and there we go.

The teams get dressed in their rubbish-collecting outfits to go off and find random trade. Wait, that sounded wrong. Rubbish-collecting trade. Tom and Jim, and Glenn and Leon, are the ones roaming the streets. The rest are going off to see some of Sralan's patented pre-arranged meetings.

Tom and Jim drive around, with Jim on a loudhailer saying they're collecting junk. They park outside a house and Jim just yells at the house; nobody comes out. Tom then asks if they can just steal a barbecue from outside somebody's house. Jim tells him no. [Sometimes I wonder if Tom's aware he's being filmed. - Steve]

Natasha and Melody squabble. Helen tries to rein them in. First of Sralan's contacts is a refit of a bar; Voiceover Dude tells us that to get rid of their waste, the builders would 'expect to pay about £100'. There's a whole lot of stainless steel sinks; because of this, Helen decides to take it all away for free because they can make a profit on selling it on. Karrren queries the wisdom of this. Once they're outside, Melody also isn't sure about the quote, and takes Natasha to task for claiming expertise when she works in construction recruitment, not construction proper. Natasha claims that she didn't do any such thing. She totally did. They bicker on and on, mostly only notable for Natasha saying 'the horse, the train has left the station'. I'm Team Melody in this argument, but they're both being fairly objectionable. Natasha to-cameras that none of them would know what to do, but Melody handed her 'a big plate of blame and said, “There you go, fancy a bite?”'. Shut up, Natasha.

At the bar, Susan and Zoe argue round and around about how much the rubbish weighs. Susan just says 'Are you sure it doesn't go over a tonne?' and Zoe just goes OFF on one about how she's hasn't got scales in her head, she can't weigh stuff with her eyes, it's not a simple question because if it was simple Susan wouldn't be asking it. So unpleasant today. They end up offering to take it away for £150.

In the car, Susan says she would have done it for free. Zoe asks if she's trying to sabotage it. Susan looks bewildered.

Logic gets the contract, because they're doing it for free. Melody doubts it's a good idea.

Glenn and Leon get £110 to take away some builders' waste. Then we get a montage of Tom and Jim, basically running around, diving into skips, rooting through bins, knocking on doors saying 'Can we have your old metal taps bikes sinks doorknobs metal anything metal can we have it?' and failing utterly.

Sralan's next contact is clearing office furniture. Helen again offers to do it for free; Melody again voices her doubts. Then, Zoe and Edna and Susan discuss it. Zoe wants to offer £100 to clear it all; Edna agrees but Susan says it should be higher because it's not competitive enough. Zoe's all, what, you moron? Susan says that they're paying to take it away, right, so they can sell it? Zoe asks if Edna is 'on my hymnsheet'; Edna is. Nick pulls an epic sourface. Zoe says she doesn't know what's in Susan's head and just about stops short of calling her retarded and pushing her down the stairs. Susan says maybe she got the wrong end of the stick. Nick to-cameras (clearly from earlier on, at anyjunk) that he 'hopes they were listening to the briefing. That'll be the briefing where the man said to charge people. Oh, Apprentice misdirection! You so cunning. Zoe offer £100; the dude's like 'What?'; she goes down to £80. In the car, Susan says she feels like an idiot [she IS an idiot. An idiot among a gang of idiots, but still - Rad].

Furniture dude, unsurprisingly, goes for the team that isn't charging him. He calls Zoe and tells her that the resale value is high, so he thought he'd get something for the furniture. Susan says 'So he did want money for the furniture? So I'm not an idiot'. Zoe notably does not apologise to her. [This was all so stupid - Zoe and Susan were both right and both wrong all at the same time. The task, it makes no sense - Rad]

Back at the house, Zoe has a weepy breakdown and says they messed everything up. Well, somebody did. Glenn gives her a pep talk.

Next day. We're reminded that they can sell stuff and have to pay to dump the rest. Zoe gives a little 'Go team!' speech that's quite nice, and when she's smiling and not being an awful dour generally unpleasant bitch, I don't dislike her nearly so much. She sends Edna, Glenn and Susan off to make appointments; she and Leon will follow behind.

Logic's clearance contract is hard work; they're moving two tonnes of rubbish up two flights of stairs. Karren waffles on about chop chop!, basically.

Melody secures a contract with a man who's willing to actually pay to take away stuff.

Edna has got a contract to clear some plumbers' waste; there are copper cylinders (they look like boilers or something) and a load of general crap. The man's offering £100 and two cylinders as payment. Susan jumps in and says 'The thing is, two doesn't cover the cost. How about £100 cash' and Glenn jumps in and says 'and three cylinders' and Susan then repeats 'and three cylinders' and Edna says otherwise they're making no money. Susan then asks what he'd sell them the two big cylinders for; he says £40 each and they'll definitely make more than that. Susan says, then, give us £20 and all the cylinders. The man agrees, saying the yard has to be clear and clean. I recapped that a bit stream of consciousness, but it becomes relevant. Glenn's contribution was to say 'three cylinders', Edna just made general smalltalk about profit. Susan did the negotiation, and secured the cylinders. Leon and Zoe are on the way; Zoe says she didn't want to put Susan on physical tasks. Leon agrees that she's quite little, Zoe says 'she's very weak'.

Melody sends people off to do the clearance job she secured. The builder dude wants to give them £250, Jim wants £300. Jim goes 'meet in the middle'; the dude says '£260' and Jim's like 'that's not the middle' and gets a bit aggressive; Helen shuts him up and accepts £260. Clearing the rubbish means they have to push back the office furniture job.

Zoe reassigns Edna to rubbish clearance and takes Susan off it because she's so tiny and weak, and to-cameras that she's feeling more positive. [To be fair, you could just imagine Susan whining that it was so heavy and being a total fucking martyr about it - Rad]

Melody and Helen go to a reclamation yard, selling off the old flooring from the bar clearance. Melody asks for £200, the bloke say he won't go a penny over £120 because it's not worth it for him. Melody, impressively, doesn't bother wheedling, and just shakes on it. Karrren nods approvingly and says that their strategy of going for stuff with retail value has worked.

Tom, Jim and Natasha dump the first load of builder's waste, and pay £110 to do so. They worry about time and cost, and phone Helen to suggest not bothering finishing. To their credit, Helen and Melody both look appalled by this suggestion, and Helen says they're not going to leave a client with their job half-finished. Tom says okay, and then they'll go off to the furniture job ASAP.

At another yard, Glenn and Susan find Moar! Copper! Cylinders! and buy them. Edna turns up to help Zoe and Leon clear the original copper cylinders and the yard. They get it done; Edna asks if they can have more money because it was more than the thought. The dude says no, but it's all very good natured, and he praises Zoe and Leon for clearing the yard so thoroughly.

Back at the builders', the builder has added loads more bags of rubbish. He says that he hasn't, but the deal was to clear it all. He's blatantly fucking with them. Jim gets all up in his grill, like he's going to stab him in the throat. They clear it all anyway. Melody says they're messed up for time; they've still got to get the desks.

Karrren and Nick give boring interviews about the teams they're following.

Melody and Helen take the scrap metal – the sinks and stuff – to a dealer. The sinks aren't all steel and are part iron. He offers them £393. Melody talks him up to £400, and then £410. The rest of Logic gather the furniture from the office clearance.

Zoe's team sell off their copper and metal and make over £900; she praises them and is cheerful and not hateful for a bit.

Logic sell the furniture to a dealer for £300.

Melody has a weird little moment about how wonderful it was to be covered in dirt and dust and grime and how it made her feel like a bad girl who ought to be spanked. I'm exaggerating, but not by much.

Susan says to camera that 'Zoe made so many bad decisions on this task, I don't even know where to start. She was just sad, pessimistic, with a horrible attitude throughout the task. I never ever want to work with her again'. It would be bitchy if it weren't all demonstrably true [If I had Susan Ma on my team I'd be a grumpy sod too - Rad].

They go into the boardroom. Sralan goes on about muck and brass and you all done made a business today, I done make a business once.

Sralan goes to Logic, and talks to Helen. She explains that they didn't charge and that it was a high risk but that's on her head. Karrren calls in Melody; Melody says that she thinks their time is worth money, but it's all very respectful – just a 'this was the approach that I think was better'. Sralan talks to Tom and Jim about their scavenging day. Melody talks about her builder job that she secured and says it was great; Tom and Jim are like 'not so much, we got ripped off'.

Across to Zoe; she kicks off by lying that 'everyone was putting their hand in and out' to be PM and she can't be doing with faffing so she took charge and was PM. Not what happened. Leon and Glenn said they wanted to be butch little soldiers and carry stuff; Susan said 'I don't mind doing it' and then Zoe went 'I'M DOING IT STOP FAFFING I'M BOSS'. Susan says she put herself forward, Nick dives in and says Zoe was emphatic. That's one word for it.

They lost the pitches; Zoe admits that she got it wrong, and thought they should be charging for the services. Edna explains how she found the jobs with the boilers; Glenn tries to talk down Edna's role in getting the jobs. She is having none of it.

Money time: Galvanised made £706 profit after fees and so on; Logic made £712. Logic finally win! Helen is unbeaten! Tom is beyond delighted. It occurs to me that without Melody talking that guy up from £393, they would have lost. Well done, Melody. [I hadn't thought of that. Well done indeed Melody. - Steve]

Logic get a treat at a spa; lots of shots of sex jacuzzi fun times.

At loser cafe, Zoe looks morose. Susan thinks she shouldn't be fired because she's 'the brains of the operation'. Easy, girl. I like you [really? Wow, you have a much greater tolerance of whine than me. She actually made me feel violent this week - Rad] but come now. Glenn says he shouldn't be fired because he always gives 110%, Leon had no ideas and 'Edna – poor'. You mean Edna who got the jobs that meant you weren't totally whitewashed? Fuck off, Glenn.

Back at the boardroom, Sralan says he appreciates people who admit their mistakes and who put themselves forward, but you shouldn't necessarily ALWAYS do it. Zoe says yeah, but are we going to sit around having a chat and a vote and HR process or are we going to get on with 'the bloody task'. Which would be fine if Susan hadn't already put herself forward, albeit halfheartedly.

Zoe says her strategy was family businesses, going for metal for the high value. Susan's like, 'first I've heard' and Edna backs her up. Zoe apparently discussed this with Glenn.

At the copper cylinder meeting, Glenn claims that he got them up to three. No you didn't, Susan did and you dove in. This goes round and round and round and round. Zoe reckons Glenn did it because … she does? Sralan wants one name for who closed the deal for the cylinders. Glenn, to his credit, says it was Susan. Edna keeps trying to say it was collective. It was so Susan [yeah, but Edna made it happen, so it was a Susan/Edna tag-team. Glenn can fuck right off, mind - Rad].

Zoe without a moment's hesitation says that she's bringing back Edna and Susan. Leon and Glenn go home. They step out. Nick says Edna takes credit she isn't due, and that Susan was the one who got what was going on but doesn't stand up for herself. [I thought that Susan blundered into correctness rather than arriving there through intellect or acumen, so having Nick as Susan's personal cheerleader for the next few weeks is going to piss me right off. - Steve] [Me too. Also - for why no Leon in this boardroom? - Rad] Zoe was a mess on day one but pulled it back on day two. They go back in.

Susan asks why she's there. Zoe says if you can run a task without someone, they don't need to be there. Zoe says what did you do on day one; you kept on at me and were distracting. Sralan wants Susan to respond, so she asks Zoe to be quiet. She says that if Zoe had listened to her, they could have secured the pitches. Certainly the furniture one, they could have. And on day two, she 'secured the first appointment for the job' and she got the extra cylinders. Zoe says that Edna made the appointment, ACTUALLY! Susan's like, yes, of course she did, but I sealed the deal. And yes Susan probably slightly mis-spoke but her meaning was totally clear and Zoe jumping on it like that is just gross in so many ways. It was already established that Edna made the appointment. Shut up, Zoe.

Zoe bitches on about how Susan criticised her, but if she's so great why didn't she do it herself? You've got to take risks! You've got to go for things! I really can't express in words why I'm finding her behaviour so vile right now. You'll just have to trust me that my hand are curling into claws with Zoe's every word. [As are mine with Susan's. Fight? - Rad] Edna jumps in to say she didn't put herself forward because she didn't think she had the skills.

Sralan addresses Susan again, and tells Zoe to shut up for a minute. What did Zoe do wrong? Susan says she had no strategy and no ideas and gave them no direction and they didn't get the pitches because they didn't listen to Susan. Sralan says that Zoe has to admit they'd have got the furniture for even £50. Susan says that she said they should be buying it and Zoe made her feel like an absolute idiot, all 'I can't believe you'. Zoe says that no no no, she said 'Have I got this wrong?' God, what a lie. Either it's a lie or she just has no idea how she comes across. You didn't ask if you'd got it wrong, you asked if Edna was on your hymnsheet, the hymn being 'Yea Verily, Susan Is A Subliterate Retard Who Doth Walk With The Animals'.

Edna says that nothing that happened on the second day was to do with Zoe. Edna made the appointments, and made the right ones. Zoe was sucky and morose and fell apart and was bad for morale, both Edna and Susan say. Zoe says that at the start of the second she was motivational and positive, which is true. Shame about the rest of the time.

Sralan moves across to Edna and looks at her CV and starts taking it apart, about her 'proven abilities' and what not. He clearly doesn't have a moment's time for her or her CV. She says she trains executives to be better at their jobs – Nick asks if Sralan needs training; Sralan doesn't think so. Then Edna says that she's got an 'MBA in Innovation and Entreprenuership' and god, why not just get up and piss on the desk if you want him to fire you so badly? At this point Susan and Zoe could have just got up and left; there's no way Edna's coming out of this alive.

We move on. Nick tells Susan that she often speaks a lot of sense, put needs to stand up for herself. She agrees, and says that Zoe made her feel really small by shouting at her, and people don't listen because she's young. Sralan says he doesn't mind, he was young when he started his business at 17. Susan started her business at 17, too, JUST LIKE YOU SRALAN! And even if Edna hadn't already doomed herself, Susan definitely just saved herself with that.

Sralan says he likes that Zoe admits she was wrong, but that only goes so far. Edna is highly qualified but she takes credit for a lot of things. He tells Susan she's very young, she says 'yeah' and he's like SHADDAP I'M TALKIN'. He tells her she's done some great things and some bad things. But he's giving her another chance. Zoe lost control, but Edna – they're just not going to gel. He wishes her well, but she's fired. Well, that's that crushing inevitability dealt with, at least.

Sralan won't forgive Zoe again, he claims.

Cab Edna says she's got three degrees, and will be successful in whatever she does. In the cab back to the house, Susan and Zoe disagree some more. Susan tells Zoe to be professional and that she shouldn't yell and stick her finger in people's faces. Zoe says 'it's only because you're such an annoying twat'. Susan, quite rightly, says that Zoe wouldn't talk to anyone else in the process like that. Zoe says she would, but I'm so sure [I would totally talk to Susan like that as well, if I could refrain from wringing her neck - Rad].

At the house, they all seem to want Zoe back for some reason alien to me. Zoe and Susan come back. As back at the house moments go, it's pretty disappointing.

Next week, they're launching magazines. 'Pension mention, or something like that?' 'I don't think we should mention pensions'. That's all you need to know, really.

Pet peeves

2011-06-04T02:32:00.000-07:00

Week 5: 1st June 2011

Previously: Sralan was not looking for bladdy salespeople, but to inject a shot of £250k into someone's business idea. Sadly for Ed Hunter, Bread-Slicing Alex, Hot Bespectacled Gavin and Felicity The Actress Looking For Work, it won't be them. Last week, the contestants were charged with the task of succeeding where Tim Campbell couldn't and launching Amsbeauty in shopping centres. Specifically, shopping centres in Birmingham, where everyone sounds like a squeaking hinge (per Natasha) and is horrifyingly poor (per Susan). Zoe PMed for Venture and did a good job at stroking people's calves, while Susan's claim that she could totally sell eighty treatments a second turned out to be untrue, and it was TOTALLY UNFAIR of the others to point this disparity between her perceived ability and her actual ability out to her, at which point Susan ran upstairs, slammed the bedroom door, and wrote a lengthy capslocked post in her Livejournal about how no one understands her. Meanwhile, Logic performed all of their beauty treatments on invisible people while project manager Felicity concentrated her efforts on the highly lucrative endeavour of selling shitty strands of clip-in hair that match no one's actual hair colour for 25p a throw. As a result, Melody, Tom and Ellie stood around in the treatment room for three hours discussing which of them was going to have sex with Vinnie Disney first. To the surprise of no one, Zoe's team won the task and was rewarded by meeting a sadless hatless Katya from Strictly Come Dancing (and also Robin Windsor, but: meh) while Felicity took Ellie and Natasha into the boardroom, claiming that Ellie's complaining somehow contributed to their failure, but in the end, the fact that Felicity returned a BLADDY LOSS on Sralan's investment meant that she was, of course, fired.

Now, it's 6am, and the phone is ringing at Entrepreneur Estates. Glenn arrives to answer it with just a towel covering his lower regions, thereby ensuring that he will have a Big Gay Following for the rest of the series [The Big Gays are welcome to him. Blee - Rad]. The Disembodied Voice of NotFrances announces that Sralan wants to meet them at a creative agency in Fitzrovia, and that the cars will be outside in 30 minutes. Again, since the drive to central London from Richmond surely can't take much more than an hour at that time of day, I wonder what the hell kind of creative agency is already up and running at 7.30am. Glenn relays the message to the others, most of whom already seem to be up and about. Leon's early morning hair is adorably floppy, although it kind of makes him look like he's being portrayed by Chris Lilley. Tom does a little towel-dance for us, and reveals that he has very hairy legs. For reasons that I cannot quite fathom, he dries his legs after he has put on his tight neon underwear. Is that not a bit counterproductive? Tom wonders what to wear to a creative agency. I assume this will be an excuse for all the men to show how totally creative they can be by not wearing ties, or alternatively by just wearing a REALLY CRAZY TIE. Ellie will be working very hard to keep out of the boardroom again, she tells Edna.

Driving in darkness. Apprentaxi one carries Glenn, Edna and Susan, as Glenn remarks that creative stuff is right up his street. I love Edna for the fact that she can't quite hide the note of disbelief in her voice when she replies "really?" Of course, Glenn is a designer and creates stuff from a briefing on a day-to-day basis. Apprentaxi two carries Natasha, Vinnie Disney and Ellie, all of whom are thinking that they really, really need to win. Now in daylight, they arrive in central London to ad agency TBWA, which I shall be calling TWAT, because I'm childish and consider that funnier. In the lobby within, the ever-impassive Nick and Karren are waiting, but Sralan is not, for instead he is appearing via video. Sralan tells them they're in one of the country's most-awarded ad agencies, who look after some of the biggest pet food brands. It's a big industry, and a crowded market, where any newcomer needs to be an innovative product. Their task, then, is to make and brand their own unique pet food, and make a TV ad to sell it. Hooray! Advertising task! These are always fun. The team with the best campaign wins, the other team does not.

Nick announces that they have already been briefed by Sralan on the subject of team leaders, and Vinnie Disney will be leading Logic, while Glenn will be leading Venture. They've got three days for the whole task, and KITTEH! Sorry, all these montage shots of adorable pets are going to be a bit distracting for me. To begin with, the teams must pick their market. Vincent, hilariously, begins by asking "who's got a dog?" Ellie has, and Tom's parents have, while Melody totally dog-sat for Barack Obama a few times but doesn't like to talk about it. There is a bowl of what appears to be M&Ms or Skittles on the table, just to really ram home the fact that we are in a CREATIVE AGENCY and not a corporate environment, because these two could never be the same thing. Ellie suggests Gnashers, for something to do with canine hygiene, while Natasha suggests Petites Healthy Treats. I totally miswrote that as Healthy Threats the first time, which I think extraordinarily appropriate when discussing Natasha, so I'm going to leave it here for posterity. Vincent spurns the latter idea, since they need to be creating food, not occasional treats. Vincent bragterviews that his charisma can overpower certain people; they may be good, but he is better, with his current unbroken spell on the losing team and everything. He suggests a horrendous-sounding advert featuring "the old-school labrador that everybody loves" (except, y'know, cynophobes) and "the it-boy, the pug, you get them together, they don't like each other too much but at the end of the day, they become pals" and OH MY GOD STOP THIS AWFUL HIPSTER IDEA RIGHT NOW. The best part of all of this is that Vincent has created this theoretical campaign based around their new product, which will be called Pals. Tom and Ellie point out that this is, in fact, a well-known existing brand that would get them one fucker of a lawsuit from Pedigree Petfoods.

Jim tries a different approach, saying that owners love their pets' healthy coats, and therefore (and this pun really works best when said with Jim's native Norn Iron accent) Fur Play is his suggestion for a name. This will in no way cause problems when a nice, unassuming pet lover attempts to google this exciting new dog food and accidentally ends up here (NSFW). Tom asks who they're intending to appeal to, and Vincent says that their target market is all dog owners. Oh dear.

Over at Venture, Glenn is leading a brainstorming session about cat food. We are thankfully spared the part where Leon insists that he can't get involved with anything cat-related because he has a girlfriend. Their ideas seem uniformly awful, including Purrari (as a pun on Ferrari, but when written down looks more like a play on Polari to me) and Edna asking about cats with really long hair in a sentence that seems to go nowhere. Zoe suggests one about cats taking over the world, and Glenn suggests "spa day for a cat", before bragterviewing that he's better than everyone else on this show, and how he is a catalyst. I'm sure that's from an interview filmed right at the very beginning of this process, but still, props to the editors for the stealth pun. Helen chimes in with a suggestion of slimming cat food. Edna interviews, in yet another completely new accent, that Glenn's approach to leading the brainstorm is rather messy and unhelpful, and she's not really sure what they're achieving. Glenn attempts to rally the troops with the phrase "no guts, no glory", which is rather unfortunate when you consider they're about to make pet food.

At this point, the teams split - half go to Lincolnshire to make the food itself (which turns out to have absolutely no effect whatsoever on the outcome of the task, so I bet they're all feeling pretty thrilled about that), while the other halves remain in London to build the brand. In the Logic Apprentaxi, Vincent tells his subteamm, consisting of Jim and Natasha, that he doesn't want to go into the boardroom with too niche of a product - they're trying to "hit everything". Jim suggests "for every day, there's Every Dog", which Vincent likes.

At 11am, Vincent's team meet with a focus group of dogs, dog walkers, and a vet. One particular canine snarls at Vincent quite aggressively, so I guess his charms only work on the human race. The vet is not sold on the idea of a one-size-fits-all approach, because different sizes and breeds of dog have different nutritional requirements. Vincent explains that this is does not fit in with their plans. Focus group over!

Outside, he phones Melody, who's in a taxi somewhere in Lincolnshire with Tom and Ellie. They have been coming up with their own ideas, but Vincent sells them EveryDog, with possible future brand expansions of EveryCat, EveryFish, EveryPotBelliedPig, EveryTarantula and so on. Tom, again, express concern that they're targeting too broad a market and wonders if they shouldn't be trying to fill a particular niche (which is, indeed, what the brief was, although he doesn't specifically mention that part). Vincent decides to make an executive decision here and go for EveryDog, because "it's brilliant". He also feels very positive about Secret Signals. Tom is still unconvinced.

Leon, Zoe and Helen are sorting out branding for Venture, throwing around ideas like "give your cat a break" (I assume this is for KitKatFood). Leon suggests "Lucky Fish - the CATch of the day", which is utterly stupid, because everybody is going to assume that is fish food. Unfortunately, Leon thinks this is the best idea in the history of forever: "do you know what, guys? Shall I just become the apprentice?" No, really - he actually says that.

They go to Battersea Cats & Dogs Home (or, in BBC-speak, "south of the river, a pet rescue centre"), where a cat digs its claws into Leon. Seriously, these focus groups are making their feelings KNOWN. Helen pitches the Lucky Fish commercial, which focuses on the goldfish in a bowl that is left undisturbed by the cat because the food is so good. And that's actually quite a good idea, so I think the flaw here is that "lucky fish" is a slogan, not a brand name. The focus group humans disagree with me, however, and think it's a good name. Also: KITTEH!

On the way to Lincolnshire to mix snouts and entrails, Glenn (with Susan and Edna for company, lucky him) has a brainwave: there are cats' eyes in the road, and wonders if they can make something of this, "going off on the old 380-front" (I assume he means either 180 or 360 [maybe it's the circumference equivalent of 110%? - Rad], although either way it still sounds like creative corporate tosspot speak). He comes up with Cat-Size, as in the weight of cats, and believe me, this will be explained A LOT throughout the show. He describes an terrifying sounding world of competitive feline weight-loss, a world that I emphatically do not want to live in (seriously, if you want your cat to lose weight because your cat has been identified as overweight, that is one thing. If you want your cat to lose weight, as Glenn suggests, because NEXT DOOR'S CAT IS THINNER, that is so fucking wrong I can't even begin to tell you). And let me transcribe the next bit for you verbatim: "I've gone for the tagline 'see their light', as in 'they are a lighter cat', but 'see the light in their eyes' and whatnot. You know, like the light of a light, the light inside..." At this point, 6.29 million viewers turned to each other collectively and said "what the actual fuck?"

In London, Logic Subteam Vincent are casting for their commercial. The first dog brought in does not meet with their approval, presumably for not being sufficiently EveryDog in its look. Vincent mistakes a golden retriever for a labrador. Jim asks whether a pug can stand on its "back hind legs" (as opposed to its front hind legs?) or jump. Theatrical Dog Lady, witheringly: "No." So it's not for them. They find a terrier called Scramble that has done lots of adverts and also a Midsomer Murders. Natasha explains that they're trying to pitch a "healthy heart and joints" thing in their commercial, and asks if he can do anything amusing. He is good at jumping up and down. They decide to cast Scramble and the golden retriever.

Snouts And Entrails Central. Tom, Ellie and Melody make dog food. This is utterly irrelevant to absolutely everything, so I'm just going to skip right past it.

Over on Venture, Zoe calls Glenn from a supermarket and pitches Lucky Fish to him. Glenn is disgusted, and doesn't think it's right. In turn, he pitches CatSize to them, and asks if they like it. Helen, Zoe and Leon are quick to reply that they do not like it, and Zoe informs Glenn with great annoyance that they've just spent the whole morning building up this brand identity, only to have all their work entirely disregarded by the team who were meant to be cutting up pigs' intestines in Lincolnshire. Leon points out that it also went down well with the focus group. Glenn makes a decision and opts for...CatSize. He too passionately believes in Secret Signals. The branding team, after terminating the call, express their annoyance at having wasted a morning.

Glenn, Edna and Susan surround themselves in snouts and entrails FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER, and then move on to design. CatSize: See Their Light/See They Are Light/See The Lightness That Is Theirs/And Whatnot is go. Edna chews a wasp.

Over on Logic, Jim is photographing the pooches for EveryDog. After last week, when he got all weirdly pervy about the massages, is anyone surprised that Jim's also a photographer? No, me neither. He can totally make your modelling career happen! Vincent instructs the handlers to have the dog "on all fours". Once again absolutely astounded by the idiots she's forced to work with, the lady with the dogs clarifies if he actually, in fact, means "standing up". Jim grabs lots of shots of dogs smiling, because they love EveryDog. Outside, Nick notes that Vincent is leaning on Jim quite a lot, "and it's a sort of a Batman/Robin thing: okay with you, Batman?" Nick appears to be under the misapprehension that Robin was Batman's project manager, when everyone knows it was clearly Alfred.

Tom, Ellie and Melody work on the branding for their food. Tom wants them to stress the health properties of the product, while Melody frets that it doesn't look "premium" enough.

Leon, Zoe and Helen cast for a cat for their commercial. Leon rejects a sphinx cat due to hairlessness (BODY FASCIST!) and then proceeds to basically call the cat ugly, awful and an affront to humanity, much to the annoyance of the cat's owner/handler/whatever [Harsh but fair, though - Rad]. Glenn calls in with the still-awful "see their light" tagline, which prompts all three of them, Helen especially, to dissolve into uncontrollable giggles. Leon: "Do they have a torch with them?" Glenn continues to explain the pun, THEY ARE LIGHT BECAUSE THEY HAVE LOST WEIGHT, apparently not getting that if you have to explain the pun in this much detail to people actually involved in the creation of the product, it is obviously a really shitty idea. He asks if they get it. Helen: "Yeah. Well, we don't 'get it', but we have got it written down." I'm really enjoying Helen this week. They end the call, and Leon, Zoe and Helen have another giggle about how they thought it was awful when they first had it explained to them and now they've got all this detail they now realise it is officially the worst thing since Pantsman. Glenn sulkterviews that the other half aren't taking this seriously, and need to be put in their place, because he as PM "deserves respect". Oh, Glenn. You deserve exactly what you are getting: complete and utter derision.

With all the legwork complete, the teams head back to the house. In the car, Glenn logs a complaint call with the others about how he doesn't appreciate them laughing at him, because they should be professional and offering constructive feedback. You know, like when they pitched their idea to him and he said "I don't like it, we're going to use mine instead." Helpful, detailed feedback like that. Zoe, in the first thing she has done all series that I've actually approved of, curtly informs him that he treated them poorly when he dismissed the idea they'd spent the whole morning working on, and that he needs to earn their respect - and then hangs up on him without giving him a chance to respond. I know that last bit is a dick move, but then Zoe is a bit of a dick, and Glenn is a lot of a dick, so it's not like there are any innocent victims here.

8am the next day, the packaged and labelled pet foods arrive at Entrepreneur Estates. I think Melody ends up being a little bit more on-the-nose than she intends when she unveils their efforts by saying "are you ready for our masterpiece that is dog food?" The design of CatSize goes down well, even with the members of the team who laughed at the branding. Vincent instructs his team to focus on the four Ps - product, place, promotion and price. He picks Melody for the pitch, and Jim rather loftily informs her that she mustn't forget that they're selling something, so she'll need to be passionate. Melody's all "yes, thank you, I am in fact a functioning adult who is aware of such a thing as 'commerce'." Glenn tells his team that he wants them to win, and that will only happen if they're all on board and enjoying it (cue well-timed shot of Edna and Leon exchanging an uncertain look). Glenn nominates Leon to do the pitch, and Leon mealymouths that he's happy to do the pitch, but doesn't want to talk for 20 minutes. Glenn, essentially: "Tough shit."

Time to head off and film the TV ads. The set for the CatSize commercial is a kitchen in nearby Kew. We are introduced to Ruby the cat, who speaks for us all when, in the first shot of the commercial, she walks straight past the CatSize pouches with a total lack of interest. Ruby to project-manage next week! They get the shot.

Noon. Leon, Edna and Susan are writing the pitch for CatSize. Glenn calls in for an update, and Leon somewhat bristlingly asks if Glenn's aware that he's basically taken on all of the day's tasks for his team and left them with not a lot to do. Leon points out that this means he's basically got five hours to write a 20 minute pitch, and wonders, post-call, if this is a strategic move from Glenn to sandbag him. Susan points out that Glenn would be sinking the entire team if he did this, so it's also possible that this was a vote of confidence in Leon's abilities.

Logic commercial. They are recording heartbeat sound effects, using Tom's heart. He does some press-ups so they can have a sample of a heart beating faster, which I'm sure is in no way connected to a desire to show off doing press-ups. Vincent records the tagline "EveryDog: playing the part for joints and heart", which sounds like an off-cut from that episode of Friends where Chandler had decided he wanted to be in advertising and was pitching ideas like "bagels and donuts: round food for every mood".

In Ealing (REPRESENT!), they have found an EveryDog house, and Natasha is directing the commercial. They get the golden retriever to run across the garden, and then to devour EveryDog noisily in a kitchen. Natasha's direction, unsurprisingly, involves a lot of punctuating her sentences with "yeah?" at the end, talking about her "vision", and getting annoyed when Ellie points out what seem like entirely valid continuity problems, yeah? Ellie interviews that her voice is not being heard.

Glenn, Zoe and Helen, meanwhile, are recording the sound track for their advert, with the actor they've cast as the voice of Ruby. A male actor. Hmmm. Glenn asks him for a female voice, and the actor's like "...right?" He has a first go and sounds like a fey upper-class male cat, if you can imagine such a thing. Helen asks him to go higher, and they like this take, while someone mocks the apparently oblivious actor (who's in a soundproof booth) about having spent three years at drama school to do this shit. The tagline has now evolved to including the phrase "you watch your weight, watch theirs" (horrible horrible horrible) and Helen still hates "see their light" and asks if it can be whispered instead of spoken. Heh.

Vincent and his half of the team arrive in time to see the final cut of EveryDog: The Commercial, which Jim declares himself "100% happy with". Only 100%? On this show? How half-hearted. They watch the commercial, and Jim says that he thinks everything has come together.

The next day. Glenn, Leon and Susan are in one Apprentaxi on the way to the pitch. Leon is looking nervous and Glenn is offering some apparently unwanted words of support. In a Logic Apprentaxi, Melody tells Vincent that she hopes he gets his first win. I'd say she does so condescendingly, but: it's Melody. Like she has any other way of operating.

TWAT. A group of in-house experts arrive for the presentations, including UK president Robert Harwood-Matthews and creative director Mark Hunter (who has, since this episode was filmed, left the agency and gone to work in LA, just as a matter of interest). Also present are representatives from Mars Petcare, Mark Johnson and Susan Blount. Susan opens for Logic, and her opening speech includes "I give you EveryDog, ladies and gentlemen." Had I been there, I would've been a bit disappointed that she wasn't literally intending to give me every dog. She explains that it's a clear concept that pushes boundaries, and going for everyone was a bold decision that they thought long and hard about. D'okay, Melody, if you say so. Logic play their advert, which is fine apart from the over-amplified heartbeats on the audio track basically giving everyone who watches it severe palpitations. The TWAT creatives laugh at the advert, though at this stage it's hard to tell if that's a positive sign. After the presentation, Mark Hunter points out that most dog owners like to think of their pet as unique, and wonders if a broad approach would put them off, as it suggests a lack of individuality to the dog. Jim says that it's all-encompassing, and they've gone for a one-size fits all approach that makes it easier for the consumer to make a decision in a crowded marketplace, which totally doesn't answer the quesiton, but whatever. Outside, they congratulate themselves and bark. No, really.

Leon pitches for Venture, and begins by telling them that over half of the cat population is overweight. At this point I feel their presentation is sorely affected by the lack of Nargis from series two running through the room screaming "DID YOU KNOW THAT THERE ARE SIX MILLION CAT OWNERS IN THE UK AND A THIRD OF THEM ARE IN LONDON?", throwing calendars everywhere, before being removed by security. He stumbles over his words a bit and seems slightly unprepared, though I don't think anything like as much as the editors probably want us to think. He's not as articulate as Melody was, but in the sphere of great car-crash presentations on this show, it doesn't even rate. Their advert is also fine - amateurish-looking as the ads on this programme inevitably are, but the narration on it is quite sharp, and it doesn't feature Sian Lloyd anywhere, which is usually a sign that they've got things at least half-right. Although frankly I think they missed a trick by not casting George Galloway as Ruby. Robert Harwood-Matthews asks about the name, and whether it's as clear as it ought to be. Glenn: "CAT SIZE! THE SIZE OF THE CAT! LIKE CATS' EYES! SEE THEIR LIGHT! SEE THEY ARE LITE! CLIPS! ECLIPSE! ECLIPSE CLIPS!" Or something like that. Seriously, the only way they are ever going to market this product is if you get a free Glenn with every purchase to explain to you what the fuck it's actually all about. And that, to be honest, is a pretty big disincentive towards buying something in the first place as far as I'm concerned. Outside, Leon describes the pitch as "gruelling", but Glenn reassures him that he did well.

The experts feed back to Sralan, saying that one pitch engaged them while the other was slightly patronising (and they can be as vague as they want here, there is no way in hell he's not talking about Melody right there). On the petcare professional side, Susan Blount thinks one advert didn't make the most of the imagery that it had, while Mark Johnson doesn't think the proposition is all that engaging. Mark Hunter says that both teams made the same mistakes of playing into the usual conventions.

Boardroom. NotFrances sends them all through. There are shots of print campaigns that we've not seen prior to this point - Logic have a Usual Suspects-style line-up of dogs to ram home their brand message, while Venture have a "slimeline your feline" poster on the side of a bus. Both PMs squint appraisingly at the work of their opposing number. Sralan turns to Logic first, and asks about Vincent as a team leader. His subordinates are effusive in their support. Vincent explains that they wanted to create something that wasn't niche, that appealed to everyone, etc. Sralan gets in a good "with your track record, Winalot wasn't an option" crack at Vincent's expense. Vincent explains their plan to expand the brand for other varieties of pet, which is in itself not a bad idea, and Sralan likens it to the easyJet/Hotel/Internet/Trousers brand, only less orange. Although obviously Vincent's in charge, so probably still a bit orange. They screen Logic's commercial in its entirety, and Sralan declares it "quite funny". Vincent points out that the dogs enjoyed the food, even though that part of the task was and still is utterly irrelevant to the end result. Sralan asks who came up with the EveryDog brand, and Jim puts his hand up. Not wanting to give away too much credit, Vincent points out that he led them down this road on the subject of "every", while Jim was the one who came up with the actual name.

Sralan turns to Venture, and asks Glenn how CatSize came about. Glenn says that he was looking for a USP they could run with, and settled on the fat cats. At this point I'm disappointed that the Logic didn't have the same idea for their dog food, because "for fat bitches" would have been an amazing slogan. Sralan asks Glenn to explain the actual name, and DEAR GOD SRALAN DON'T WE'LL BE HERE ALL DAY. Glenn walks us through it another twelve times until the point where everyone is bleeding directly from the cerebral cortex, and then they screen the advert and my boyfriend and I have a heated debate about whether Ruby is gay or not, in which I take the position that he's not gay, just posh. Y'know, like Leon. After viewing it, Sralan claims that he's got the general idea of the brand, but thinks the ad is more like a radio spot than a TV one, because it's all in the script and there's not a lot to actually look at.

To sum up, Sralan thinks Venture's idea has a good, strong USP, even if their advert sucked. Also, their packaging was pretty much ready to go out. Logic, on the other hand, had a funny advert, but their marketing idea was fundamentally flawed, because the idea of a one-size-fits-all dog food is basically a nonsense, and could be seen as insulting by pet food shoppers. The final decision is down to Sralan, of course, and he thinks that because they had a consistent through-message, Venture get the win. Despite having a complete arse of a marketing campaign that makes literally no sense whatsover. I mean, I'm not arguing that Logic deserved to win either because their product was shit, but if ever there were a case for a "no one wins" scenario, like Donald Trump pulled on The Apprentice USA in response to the equally meritless Shower With Your Clothes On/Cucumber Porn And Gay Chefs commercials that his candidates came up with in season three, then this would be it [surely every advertising task ever would be it? - Rad]. Anyway, Venture's treat is tennis with Pat Cash and they'll be knocking a few balls around. Except Leon, who can't, because he's got a girlfriend. As they leave, Vincent and Tom can be seen with their heads in their hands, realising that five consecutive losses really do not look good. Sralan reminds Logic that their brand was very, very wrong, and that they need to go away and identify a scapegoat.

Queen's Club. Apprentices in tennis whites. It looks like the outfits were show-supplied, as Leon and Glenn are wearing the same shorts. Serving. Volleying. Tennis ball hitting Zoe in the vagina. Edna yelping. Susan and Zoe being quite good, it seems. Pat Cash signs all their racquets. Leon swipes away at a ball in a very girly fashion. The end.

Loser Café. General silence. Tom interviews that although he was right about the flaws in their idea, he's not feeling that great about it right now. He points out the others that they committed commercial suicide by basically establishing their rivals as 'everyone'. Vincent Disneur agree with this (have to sneak that pun in while I still have a chance) and seems to think that Sralan's only objection was the actual name of the product. He interviews that he was a good PM, and all the team agreed that. Natasha thinks the finger of blame is pointing at Jim, and wonders whether Vincent will place his personal friendship ahead of the clear business decision.

Back at the boardroom, Logic sit on the Leather Sofas Of Loss tapping their fingers against the sides. NotFrances sends them back in. Sralan opens by saying that he had a dream recently that he walked into the boardroom and "you lot" weren't there. At least, not at first. Because shortly afterwards, Vincent entered wearing just a robe that slowly began to fall from his body, BAMCHICKAWOWOW. Or maybe not. He reminds Vincent and Tom that they have lost every week and are basically fucked at this point. Vincent begins by pointing out that everyone thought he did a good job as PM, and Sralan points out that they didn't know they'd lost at that point, and that people on this show tend to be somewhat fickle. Heh. Vincent explains that they all agreed on the theme of a mass product that could hit all the market. Sralan points out that the focus group told them at the very beginning that this was a bad idea. Tom's all, "well, this is brand new information, thanks guys." Nick chips in that the vet told them it was fundamentally against pretty much everything that animal healthcare experts currently believe in, and that it was the clearest steer they could've got. Tom points out that the rest of the team was not told this, and that as far as they knew, the focus group was wholly in favour of EveryDog. Ellie adds that they were in fact told by Vincent that the vet had been in favour of EveryDog. Now, we only saw brief snippets of this conversation, so I don't know if that's actually true, or whether it was a case of just lying by omission: that Vincent didn't tell them that the focus group hadn't really gone for it, and therefore everyone in the other subteam assumed that meant they'd liked it. Either way, it's pretty poor management on Vincent's part. Vincent brings up that they wanted to expand the brand into EveryCat, EveryFish etc, at which point Karren makes an excellent point: "But that's the point, isn't it? Pets are special to their owners. You might as well have called it Any Old Dog." I think Karren's doing a really good job this series. I almost don't even miss Margaret any more.

Tom says that they made a good ad, billboard and product, but their marketing strategy was bad from the outset. Sralan notes that he was indeed told Tom had objected to this strategy at an early point, and asks if he'd done so in a manner that made his feelings very clear. Tom says that yes, he did, and "put [his] neck on the line". Sralan turns to Natasha to ask about the commercial, and Natasha immediately adopts a CYA strategy by saying that she tried to divert attention away from EveryDog because it was too broad and she had nothing to work with. Oh yeah, that's really smart, Natasha - trying to make an advert that ignores the product. That always goes down so well on this show. She says that she tried to focus on their USP, yeah? That was hearts and joints, you get me? She got no inspiration from EveryDog, check? Jim chimes in that this is horseshit, because Natasha put her hand up for EveryDog when they were deciding on a theme. Sralan, in turn, points out that Jim practically leapt out of his chair to take credit for the EveryDog idea earlier on. Jim retorts that that's an exaggeration. (It isn't.) Jim thinks he came up with the name around the branding that had been decided on, and Sralan points out that the brand and the name are pretty much inextricable at this point. Jim falls back to everyone having agreed on this brand, as if that counts for anything. Karren asks, all circumlocution aside, whether it was him that came up with the name. Jim: "Well, listen to this..." Karren: "Is it your name? Yes or no, Jim." Jim snots that perhaps Karren would like him to sit mute and not "contribute any creativity" in future tasks. I think, Jim, that Karren will be chiefly responsible for you remaining mute for the rest of your life if you sass her like that again. It's hard to talk with your vocal chords tied around your testicles, after all. Sralan says that sitting mute isn't required, but once you've opened your mouth, you need to stick by what you said. He's not happy that people are trying to talk their way out of accountability for the failure. Jim grouses that he's not being held responsible for the overall marketing direction, because that was signed off by the PM and the rest of the team. Ah, the old "if you fire me, you'll have to fire EVERYONE" strategy. Sralan thinks that Jim might have something in common with dog food, in that he can't tell if he's made of brains or bollocks. At this point, Vincent speaks up that they all agreed on EveryDog. Jim, with a look of utter disgust that anyone could have even considered he might not be the best at everything: "Exactly. It's a moot point." Sralan thinks that Vincent seems to agree with Jim an awful lot. Jim huffs and twitches and rolls his eyes that it's not a personality contest, and really, someone is trying very hard to Paloma himself right here. Sralan essentially tells Jim to shush and let Vincent talk his own way into a firing, and Vincent blathers on that he does think Jim's better than a lot of the other contestants, although obviously he's not as good as Vincent because Vincent is the best, but Jim is maybe the second best, definitely better than Edna and Glenn and that sulky girl, what's her name, Chloe?

In one of the most ham-headed moves of the entire episode, Vincent wonders - ALOUD, mind you - whether he should try to do "something tactical" and bring in people he doesn't think deserve to be fired, or should he bring the right people in. Oh, Vincent. It's really not a tactical move if you openly admit that you're doing it, you goon. Sralan says that he wants Vincent to focus on this task and not try to do his job for him. He turns to Jim and says that Jim seems to be placing the blame squarely on the PM's shoulders. Jim says that he didn't "categorically" say that, and once again returns to the well of "we all agreed on this". Tom - and interestingly, Melody - says that they agreed on it once they'd basically been outvoted, because they know how this show works and to not do so is essentially suicide, because if you lose you'll end up in the boardroom for having been an unsupportive influence. Sralan says that he sees a lot of people suck up to the PM to cover themselves, and he's more interested in the task than your arse. Well, I would hope so too. Jim breaks out the obligatory "I'm not here to win friends", which means any chance he had of winning is officially GONE.

Time for Vincent to decide who's coming back, and he picks Ellie and Natasha. Sralan sounds disappointed with his choices, but sends everyone else back to the house. Jim, in a final attempt at Palomafication, asks for one final thing: that Sralan makes him PM on the next task. Sralan tells Jim that he's heard a lot of things about him from Nick and Karren and he's "got your card marked". He tells Jim that he'll be PM when it's time, and not before.

While Vincent, Ellie and Natasha wait outside and simmer (I've got really into Top Chef recently, and I love that they refer to their equivalent of this as "The Stew Room", because that's just absolutely perfect), Sralan, Nick and Karren discuss the strange power that Jim seems to have over everyone. Nick thinks Vincent was scared of him, and that if he brought Jim back, that he would never have survived the carnage. Sralan points out that both Nick and Karren have said they've not seen much of Ellie. Also, Natasha's advert got good feedback from the ad agency, so Karren is questioning Vincent's decision-making here.

NotFrances sends the three of them back in, and I love how they all get up even before she starts speaking to them. They've heard the Amsphone ring, they know how this works. Sralan asks Vincent why Natasha and Ellie are here. Vincent says that as a dog owner, he expected insightful information from Ellie, and didn't get any. Ellie counters that she said a lot of things, but was generally ignored. Ellie adds that she came up with ideas for the advert and had a few good ideas, and that she surprised herself with how much she came up with. Sralan says that they're five weeks in, and he really doesn't have a lot to go on as far as she's concerned. Ellie responds that perhaps her voice isn't being heard as much as some of the others, and she needs to work on that. Natasha is unsure why she's here, because her advert was well-received, and Vincent says that she had no questions to ask and no opinions to offer. Sralan asks if Jim offered a lot of opinions, and points out how eager Jim was to take credit for the idea before they knew the outcome of the task. "And yet he's sitting back at the house now!" Sralan continues to fume. "And he don't give a damn about you, I can promise you, I've seen that type before." Is it just me, or did this conversation just take a slightly unsettling turn? I feel like this isn't so much The Apprentice right now as it is Sally Jessy Raphael or something, and Sralan is pointing out to Vincent that he needs to ditch that no-good man who doesn't mean it when he tells him he loves him. Even Vincent looks slightly distressed at the idea that his beloved Jim might actually not really give a shit about him after all.

Natasha chips in at this point: "Tom's voice wasn't heard, Vincent, because you were so far up Jim's behind, you couldn't see the wood for the trees." And thanks to that mixed metaphor, I'm going to be haunted by the concept of Jim's arse-forest for years to come. Vincent's all "I think the Headmaster is a marvellous Jim, and this is the best Jim I've ever been to." [Best joke of the recap, Steve. Bravo - Rad] He insists that Natasha and Ellie didn't contribute any ideas, they counter that any ideas they had were summarily dismissed because Vincent was too busy listening to Jim.

Sralan points out that of the two adverts, Natasha's was better, so effectively she did her job well. Vincent says that he's not disputing that, but that Natasha only pipes up when it suits her. Sralan wonders why Natasha is in this room. I offer the fact that she is a relentlessly awful human being, and deserves to be fired purely for being Natasha. Having said that, on the basis of this task, she probably doesn't deserve to be here. Still: FIRE NATASHA ANYWAY! IT'LL FEEL SO GOOD! Sralan thinks Ellie pipes up at the wrong time, because she's forceful in the boardroom when the chips are down, but he sees no evidence of this fire in her during the actual tasks. Vincent made a total mess of things, and if he'd listened to other people, he might have avoided that. Sralan says that Ellie and Natasha are blaming him for the failure, and he's finding it hard to disagree.

On thinking of who he has to start a business with, Sralan notes that he hasn't seen much of Ellie, and doesn't think he can go into business with her, so she's fired. Ellie: "Okay. *huge sigh*". Heh. Ellie departs. Sralan tells Vincent that he's too in awe of other people (read: Jim) and is playing a risky game in terms of strategy by bringing the wrong people in, and in order to send a message that he will not put up with such fuckery, he's firing Vincent as well. At this point, the idea that Natasha will be the only person to survive this boardroom starts to bring me out into a cold sweat, and I begin making ill-advised comments on Twitter to this effect. Natasha is clearly looking jittery as well, but she's told that she got on and did her job, albeit on a false errand, so she's safe and can return to the house. DAMMIT. I like double firings in principle, but this one felt a bit lame. I thought Ellie was fired for the sake of making it a double firing, rather than any particular reason why she should've gone. And since Donald Trump once fired four people in one go, I was kind of hoping that if Ellie had to go, Natasha would at least be going too, yeah?

Natasha exits, and she and Vincent politely offer each other the best of luck for the future. Sralan says that he's sick of Vincent, and that he brought the wrong people into the boardroom for the wrong reasons, while Ellie has been here five weeks and shown him nothing. You know what this means: DOUBLE COATWATCH! Ellie's is red, double-breasted and belted, and rather nice, if a little bit Don't Look Now. In her taxinterview, Ellie says that she's not a forceful, in-yer-face person, so if that's what Sralan's looking for, then she's not it. Vincent (sort of a biscuit colour, accessorised with grey scarf, collar popped) is very surprised to have been fired, and thinks we haven't seen what he's been capable of. He thinks perhaps he wouldn't have been fired if he'd brought Jim in. Hate to break this to you, Vinnie, but you were toast no matter who you brought in. The only person whose stint on the show you might have saved by bringing Jim back to the boardroom is Ellie.

Entrepreneur Estates. Jim is still boring on about how difficult it is to assign blame. Natasha returns, and tells them that she's on her own. Glenn finds it almost impossible that this has happened, and is all: "You're on your own? Two have gone? Vince and Ellie have gone? See their light? See that they are light?" Natasha says that Sralan openly said that Vincent sacrificed himself for Jim, and that that was the wrong decision. She tells Jim that she has no idea what sort of hypnotic voodoo Jim did to convince Vincent not to bring him back. Jim thinks that in terms of contribution to the task, "yours and I's" (OUCH MY GRAMMAR HURTS) was equal, so she was no better than him in that task. Literally no one is convinced by this.

Ten candidates remain. Next week: rubbish! Actual rubbish. See you then!

Bullring of fired

2011-05-28T05:21:00.000-07:00

Week 4

Transmitted 25 May 2011

Previously on The Apprentice: we got the buying task out of the way, everyone was rubbish, and Gavin didn’t make any constructive decisions, so off he went.
You will have to bear with us folks, your tellybitching team are plagued with illnesses and deadlines, so please forgive me if, fuelled purely by Day Nurse and cups of tea, this starts to become a bit of a spaced-out recap.

The team are due to meet Sralan at the British Museum. Susan asks ‘what’s at the British Museum, like dinosaurs and stuff?’ Oh dear. The worst part, someone on that there internet pointed out, was that she went to university five minutes away from the place. Sralan stands in front of a statue of Aphrodite (alriiiight), goddess of beauty, because this week’s task is all about flogging beauty products and treatments… in Birmingham. That choice of venue for the briefing was a tenuous link even by Sralan’s standards. He makes Zoe move to Venture to become PM, then shifts Jim and Felicity over to Logic and makes Felicity PM.

He reminds them he wants a '50/50 partner' and lies that ‘a big contender’ left last week.

In the cabs, Susan blabs about this being her field, because never have any apprenti come unstuck doing their own job. Ellie tells us she’s not a ‘polished woman’ whilst Vincent tells us he’s the ‘most girlie boy of the lot’. Melody give the team her expert knowledge of Birmingham: ‘the main shopping centre is in the city centre’. Tom points out they have one treatment room if they go for the Bullring, whilst Zoe’s team go for an out of town shopping centre with three treatment rooms.

The music from The Sims plays as they have treatments demonstrated to them. Leon has a ‘molten’ chocolate facial. Sounds painful. A blonde person I don’t recognise, so presumably is a model, is wrapped in cloth like a mummy. Susan loves this treatment, because she loves every treatment because OHMIGODYOUGUISE BEAUTY IS MY LIFE. [Bored of her already but suspect karmic pay off is not far away - Fiona] Two men demonstrate ‘a clip in winge’ – a clip in fringe in colours that match no-one’s natural hair colour, and some curling tongs, which they call ‘wavy gravy’ – because THAT’S what you want to call a hair product.

A make-up lady says their male make-up products are packaged in a very masculine way as she demonstrates them on Leon. Leon snips that he didn’t like it as it was ‘unnatural’. Hate to break it to you Leon, but that’s y’know, the whole point of make-up. He says he can’t sell the products because he has A GIRLFRIEND. I thought gay panic was the domain of a certain other reality show? [His whinging gave me a possibly disproportional rage, and so did no one else seemingly calling him on it - Fiona]

Some women give a shell massage to Tom, through his clothes, which I’m sure has some people weeping and wailing at a missed opportunity, but I expect Tom has a pigeon chest and thus we've been spared. They appear to put some fluid in a shell to do it, which is all a bit too surreal for my fugged-up brain to handle. They say you can charge £1 a minute for it. Tom loves it, and he says the treatment profit has a 96% margin. Felicity is keen on it. [O sweepie... - Fiona]

Glenn receives a ‘cold stone’ pedicure – where stones are slotted between the feet and lotion is applied. Glenn is all excited and ‘ooh my feet are super-cooled down!’ and Susan loves it, of course. For the next pitch, a spray tan treatment, she blabs to the people selling it even before they demo it that she works in beauty and OMG she loves it. Susan reminds me of a performing seal this episode, all big eyes and clapping and practically offering to fellate all the beauty salespeople… I’m kind of starting to hate her. I’m just not a ‘peppy’ person. I’ve only stuck with Glee for so long because of Lauren Zizes, Santana and the vain hope that Mr Schue will one day receive his comeuppance like Tony off Skins did. [If only. - Steve]

The fake tan people then pitch to Logic and Tom works out this will be the best profit-per-minute treatment. The spray tan people felt that Venture were the most passionate. Felicity doesn’t understand how the other team could have been more passionate and Ellie points out that Susan is ‘excitable’ and might have been all ‘wooooh, you know’. Heh. We then get a neat edit to Susan going ‘wooooh’ at the phone call confirming they got the tanning treatment. Nice editing there.

The apprenti then get to practice their treatments. Melody tries to dry Natasha’s hair and fails, while Ellie and Tom massage Zoe and Jim who love the treatment. Susan fails at trying to spray tan a male model, and then it’s Leon’s turn. He doesn’t want to. Susan points out that ‘it doesn’t make you gay’, but Leon clearly can’t look at the muscular man standing in his pants in front of him. Eventually, though, he loosens up and eases himself in there. (Eyethangyew)

Susan calls Zoe and says she’s being “modest” with the figures and can sell three tanning lotions per hour, which equals 72 products. Zoe says that’s too ambitious and Susan’s all ‘that’s what I sell in my day job’ and she’s ‘more than confident’ they’ll sell out. They agree to buy 35 but Susan whines that they can sell more. I’m beginning to suspect that Susan’s ‘skincare and beauty’ business is actually a posh name for selling face-painting at kids’ parties.

Over in the Bullring, Natasha tries, and fails, to flog a ‘winge’ by calling it ‘a bit like a pet hamster’. To be fair, maybe that’s the market they should have gone down – remarkable pet hamsters that don’t need feeding or cleaning. I’m sure some parents would have gone for them to shut their kids up. Ellie, Tom and Natasha set up their single room. Team Venture are in the large out-of-town Westfield centre. Zoe reminds Susan she wanted to buy double the products so they should sell out.

In the Bullring, Logic are selling products from one of those weird ‘Soap and Co’ places you get in shopping centres that everyone tries to run away from. Every time I run past the one in Meadowhall I wonder if the people there trying to flog unspecified beauty stuff are secretly Apprentice candidates, so it made me chuckle that sometimes they actually are. [You mean the ones that tried to sell me shampoo just after I had all my hair shaved off? Maybe they are filming the next series already.... - Fiona] [The Soap & Co in Westfield White City actually did coerce Chris and I into buying two extortionately-priced pots of salt. They were actually pretty amazing in terms of softening hard skin, but I was still fleeced whichever way you look at it. - Steve]

Felicity tells some people a winge looks a bit weird, but when it’s on, it looks great because the hair is ‘such good quality’. Nick reminds us that the treatments make a load more money than the products but Logic are just selling products, not treatments. Felicity phones Ellie and Ellie says they’re fed up because they have no customers. Felicity says they’re going to send Tom down but ‘on a positive note, the products are selling really well’. Ellie and Melody beg Tom to send people up.

Over at Venture, Helen gets a tanning customer but can’t work the spray machine. She then realises she hasn’t switched it on. [Can I facepalm? Thanks - Fiona] Zoe gives a woman a cold stone pedicure. In the centre, a still silent Edna (sans gloves, and therefore sans power), Glenn, Susan and Leon are flogging tanning lotion and nail polish. Susan is struggling to sell anything. Karren reminds us that ‘if you set yourself up for something you’re not’ (burn!) you’re due a fall. Vincent sells a woman a massage for £30 which is less than they cost ‘in London’ where people will spend a fortune on a dribble of sweaty orange juice.

Tom is back down with Logic selling products and Nick tells the camera that Tom had all the figures and knew where the profit was, yet he’s selling bows because it’s easier. Melody and Ellie come down to look for something to do. Felicity sends Ellie back up and says she doesn’t understand why no treatments have been sold – erm, because you haven’t been flogging them? Rocket science it isn’t.

Leon gets over his gay panic by flirting with female customers to sell products and does what Karren describes as a ‘weird finger trick thing’ involving him linking pinkies with girls… I don’t even know what that’s about. [Because there's nothing even remotely gay-looking about walking around with your little finger in the air. - Steve]

Edna tells Zoe that Susan’s only sold three products. Zoe reminds Susan of the phone call where she wanted to buy loads. Susan puts a little girl voice on and whines ‘this is really unfair’. I hate Susan you guys, sorry. [Nope am right there with you - Fiona] Zoe says it’s not unfair, Susan made her bed. Susan says ‘I gave you advice’ and Helen says ‘that advice was wrong’. Susan whines about it being ‘so unfair’ and ‘I DO sell skincare for a living, I do, honestly, really’.

Ellie gives a massage to a woman who says she’s never had a massage from a woman before. Ellie asks if she’s had one from a bloke. The woman: ‘yeah, it normally leads to something else, dunnit?’ Ellie: ‘well it won’t do this time’. More gay panic! Although it’s kind of hilarious for Ellie’s face, as she clearly doesn’t know how to respond to girlie banter.

Logic eventually start to do more treatments, with Melody, Tom and Ellie all up there talking to clients, which can’t be very relaxing for the massage victims. Venture have £80 of leftover stock.

Sralan welcomes them back and makes a terrible ‘beauty and the beast’ joke which I won’t repeat and says that this is right up his street because if he wasn’t in the electronics business he’d be in the beauty business. Didn’t he make poor old Tim try and launch some weird electrical beauty device when he worked at NotAmstrad? Leon, resplendent in pink, doesn’t accuse Sralan of being gay for making this admission.

Venture say Zoe was a good PM, but Leon says she didn’t give him enough morale ‘but it didn’t matter because I was an acey-pacey salesman’. Zoe said she heard he’d done well though she hasn’t seen the sales figures. Sralan points out that they had Susan and Zoe says she regrets taking Susan’s advice. Helen says Susan was too ambitious and doesn’t seem to know her own business. Susan whines but doesn’t really have a comeback. Felicity’s team say they wanted the tan and massage but lost the tan. Sralan says ‘looks like Vincent already had one’. Ellie says the other team had ‘more girlie girls, no offence’ but it’s not clear if the ‘no offence’ is aimed at the girlie saps over on Venture or the butch dykes in Logic.

Figures time! Venture spent £734 and made £937 for a profit of £203.01. Sralan is distinctly underwhelmed. Log spent £924 and sold £677 for a £246.28 loss. Those figures don’t add up, Nick and Karren. Sralan calls out Susan for the rubbish profit margin and if they’d bought all the products she wanted, they’d have lost. HA-HA. Their prize is dancing with Katya and Robin from Strictly. Michel Roux Jr, Strictly dancers… the prizes are getting better (last week’s abomination aside).

Sralan welcomes Vincent to ‘team Titanic’ despite the fact that, possessing a penis, he’s been part of Logic twice before, so it really should be ‘welcome back’. It does amuse me that Logic have lost 4/4 tasks though. Sralan keeps calling Tom and Vincent his stalkers for always being part of the losing team and Vincent and Tom acknowledge it was a shambles.

We see the dancing, but Katya is sadly sans hat. Susan whines that there are ‘no friends in this place’. Gah. I just want to punch her. Repeatedly. [I'll help. - Steve]

Loser café. Vincent says he needs to be PM so he can win. Ellie reminds the women that they’re not ‘girlie girls’ and Tom reminds Felicity that she said she’d ‘got it covered’ on the treatments. Felicity deludes herself that they’re all equally responsible because in the boardroom the others said she was a good PM.

Sralan reminds them that they didn’t sell any treatments until 3.30 in the afternoon. Felicity says ‘exactly’, apparently adopting the suicide PM strategy. Sralan and Nick call Tom out on not selling treatments. He asks if Ellie and Melody were just sat waiting so they wouldn’t get the blame. Tom tries to blame the location. Melody snaps ‘don’t blame the location’. Sralan says they should all have asked what was going on. Natasha says there was no strategy. Felicity says there was a strategy, which was to sell a product and then sell a treatment on the back of it. Sralan asks why they didn’t grab people by the arm and walk them to the treatment room. Erm, because that’s kidnapping? Sralan asks what Jim did, Jim said he sold two massages for £7 each, and you know why it was only £7? Nick interrupts ‘because you didn’t sell it for more’. Nick and Karren have sharpened their claws today, haven’t they?

Felicity seems stunned when asked to bring two people back and she chooses Ellie but is ‘worried about my second one’. She says she doesn’t think Ellie is a team player and then flaps about a bit and eventually brings in Natasha for not selling enough. Natasha says ‘I sold more than Jim’. Yeah, but Jim’s the solid favourite, and we need three female firings in a row to make up for the clam bake the show’s becoming.

Karren tells Sralan Natasha is all talk and no action. Sralan asks Ellie what she’s doing here. ‘I want to be your business partner’ <3 Ellie. She says she doesn’t understand why Tom’s not in the boardroom because he wasn’t selling the treatments. Sralan asks why Ellie was brought back. Felicity says it was because Ellie wasn’t enthusiastic enough in the pitches. Ellie says Natasha didn’t let her get a word in edgeways and Natasha says Ellie was sidelined on the task. Ellie asks Felicity why they spent so much on hair products that wouldn’t sell. Felicity said she thought they could sell three items an hour per person. Ellie asks Sralan if he wants to go into business with someone who can’t do figures. Mind you, Tom could do figures and look where that got them.

Natasha and Ellie then go in for the kill, as Natasha points out some people were given free treatments. Felicity says this was a SRS BSNS strategy as they got a few minutes for free and then they could pay for more. I know nothing about business except for what I’ve learned from this show and whatever remnants of my Business Studies GCSE are lurking in the darkest recesses of my subconscious along with 3D trigonometry and an understanding of arable farming, and I can safely say that is the worst. strategy. ever.

Ellie says they were students who were just there for a freebie. Sralan asks why Natasha didn’t protest. Natasha says she did and Felicity denies it and goes for ‘everyone said I was a good PM’ as her defence. Ellie says ‘I only said that to be nice’. Sralan says it’s not a game (er, I believe it is) and they should be honest. Felicity says Ellie just moans. Natasha bitchfaces for her life.

Sralan says that ‘there ain’t no team’ with the person he’s partnering with, they’re on their own. SO much for 50/50 partners, Sralan. He says Ellie shouldn’t have stayed in the room and he doesn’t think Natasha understood what was going wrong until she got into the boardroom but there weren’t any decisions made so Felicity is fired. She gives a thank you for the opportunity. The others don’t even shake her hand, say goodbye or anything. Ouch. [Bye then sweepie. Thought the lack of farewell from the others was just mean - Fiona]

Coatwatch – grey with an overabundance of sporty scarf. Her cabterview consists of saying the others stabbed her in the back by saying she was a good PM then saying she wasn’t. Fail. Back at the house they said that they didn’t say goodbye to her. Vincent looks shocked. Natasha unconvincingly spiels that ‘this ain’t a popularity contest, this is about business’.

Next week: They make their own pet food. Bleeeeeeeee. Join Steve then!

Top hat and fails

2011-05-20T11:42:00.000-07:00

Episode 3

Transmission date: 18 May 2011

So you guys, I hear Sralan’s on the lookout for a new business partner, but apparently The Partner would give off the wrong kind of connotations, and different prize aside, it’s been business (ho ho) as usual.

Previously on The Apprentice, hand-squeezed orange juice, fleecing Londoners, terrible mobile apps and Edna’s gloves.

6am at the new Apprentice mansion and a fully PJ-ed Melody answers the phone to hear that they have half an hour before meeting Sralan. There are a few gratuitous shots of Natasha in a towel and Glenn with his top off. His body isn’t half bad, but every time I look at his face and ears I think of this:

Too cruel?
[No - Fiona]

In the car, the girls think their winning streak can’t carry on and Natasha thinks there are some weak girls who will be going. Given I can’t name at least three of them yet, she might be on to something. [I agree. I would, however, count Natasha amongst those weak girls. - Steve]

They meet Sralan, Nick and Karren at the Savoy hotel. We discover it’s been closed for three years for refurbishments, and having blown £200 million, they’re now in need of the apprenti to finish the job by buying them a few bits and bobs for not too much money. Essentially, it’s the Big Society in action.

Savoy porn! We’re told it’s been empty for three years, but opening again soon. It has a pretty fountain that appears to be working despite said lack of custom. So much for efficiency savings, eh? This not-quite product placement is almost as shameless as the US Apprentice in the years it became one long commercial rather than a reality show. [The Savoy was also shamelessly plugged on The Hotel Inspector a few weeks ago; it's doing rather well on that front right now. - Steve]

It’s the annual shopping for obscurities task, and time for our first shuffle around of the teams. Melody, Ellie, Natasha and Zoe move to Logic whilst Glenn, Leon and Jim move to Venture. The buyer from the Savoy points out that they need the best quality at the best prices and we’re told they have nine hours to do the task. Susan is PM for Venture and she tells us she started a business at 18 and paid off her mum’s mortgage whilst doing her A-levels and a degree. Not sure doing A-levels and a degree at the same time is that possible, but hey, Melody walked on the moon with the Dalai Lama or something so Susan could have done GCSEs, A-Levels, a degree, a PhD, her bronze lifesaving swimming badge and invented the iPad3 for homework and her efforts would still have paled in comparison.

Gavin volunteers for Logic, although Vincent offers as well. Looking at the list of items, Gavin thinks getting ice will be easy (can we smell schadenfreude in the air?) but a “clock, closhay” (cloche) will be hard.

The Yellow Pages and the phones come out – but these phones look like smart phones, which presumably have the internet, and thus make a mockery of the whole ‘no internets ALOUD’ nonsense. They have to get a chandelier. I’d love to see both Apprentice-sourced chandeliers in the Savoy.

Venture ring around suppliers and work out their day’s strategy. Nick, shadowing Venture, seems impressed that Susan is controlling the big personalities in her team (including Edna, reduced to a silent part today, sadly). Venture get a whole bunch of leads and head out, whilst Logic get the loser music for their slowness in getting the same. Natasha phones a rival hotel looking for their suppliers list, and speaks as if she was giving a presentation. Karren says that it’s a daft idea to think another hotel will give her their suppliers and Gavin, embarrassed, asks her to end the call. [I was already shaking my head sadly by this point - Fiona]

In car Venture, Susan says whatever price they (the suppliers) say for the top hat, they should shoot really low and say, like, a fiver. In the shop, a ‘hatmakers to the aristocracy’, the top hat is £365 and Felicity says it’s too much and asks if there is any chance they could go lower. Instead of making an offer, she asks for ‘as cheap as cheap as cheap’ as they can give it. Susan is there, note, and does not ask for it at £5. Nick PTCs that the last time he came in to this shop, the King of Tonga was there and he does not negotiate. [He obviously didn't notice that the King of Tonga was, at the time, teaching Melody some valuable business skills. - Steve] Susan asks if he can give them “just a few pounds” off and he says no. Marvel at her amazing negotiation SKILLZ, bitches. Yasmina, Saira and Ruth Badger wouldn’t stand for this nonsense. Hell, even ELLIE wouldn’t stand for this nonsense. Felicity whines in the car that he wouldn’t take a penny off ‘I mean how greedy does one have to be?’ [Oh sweepy hello - and goodbye fairly soon I'd wager - Fiona]

Susan asks the other sub-team to go halves on their produce with suppliers. Like you did? At a butcher’s, after some haggling, Edna and Jim get fillet steak down to £180 from £210. Is that what meat costs? Colour my northern, vegetarian heart shocked. [Not in Morrisons duck - Fiona] Jim then schmoozes the finance guy down to £170, which is rather cheeky but fairly well done.

Gavin’s team haven’t set off yet and are still getting the loser music. Here is where I became convinced team Susan would go, in a rerun of the ice-cream task from series 4 (Princess Lindi, neva4get).

Vincent moans that they’re not doing anything and Gavin tells him to chill out. Vincent asks Zoe to keep a record for him, act as his PA, and her face actually gets screen-time for the first time all series. Melody has found a light bulb 20-40 minutes away. A light bulb??? The men faff about with a map. What happened to “the knowledge”, cabbie? [The supplier in question was in Teddington, which is well outside the boundaries of The Knowledge. - Steve]

In Vincent’s car he says the aim is to get the best price. No shit. He has a touch of the Peter Owen Jones about his delivery to camera, which might mean very little to those of you who haven’t spent the last five years of your life having to watch documentaries and suchlike about religion. SIGH.

Natasha fails to get a discount on a sign. She offers £ 40 or £50 and Vincent cuts her out and gets the price to £80 including VAT.

Susan’s team fail yet again to get a top hat discount, but after an intense round of negotiations, Susan’s hardline approach, basically consisting of this:

gets a whole penny off. Nick does some smell the fart acting.

Tom from Logic is trying to find out what a cloche is, and he thinks it might be a bell. Glenn’s Venture sub-team source one – it’s a cooking hood. Tom’s team then think it’s a mini greenhouse. Glenn’s team got 44p off her cloche. Susan rings her other sub-team and tells them of her bargain top hat.

Vincent’s team get 25% off steak but it’s still £240, i.e. £70 more than the other team’s.

Gavin’s team go to a dry cleaner’s called ‘Top Hat Cleaners’ and Gavin asks if they know where to get a top hat from. The guy laughs that they won’t find one ‘round here’. London bitchers, I’m sure there’s a funny point to make about the area they were in but… I’m from oop North. [I think they were in the Shepherd's Bush/Acton sort of area, so their best bet if they wanted a top hat would've been to head towards White City and hope to steal one from a hipster working at the BBC. - Steve] Gavin then asks ‘I’m guessing you dry clean these kind of items?’ The nation collectively facepalms.

Karren reminds us it’s not only Sralan they have to face but the hotel, which sadly gets my hopes up that they might give the apprenti feedback (whoops, spoiler).
Melody and Gavin bicker about what Melody has or hasn’t said to him about the mythical garden cloche. Gavin calls Vincent and stutters like he’s about to break down.

Susan goes into a fabric shop for organza and the woman says it costs £119.50 She says ‘please, please, pretty please give me money off it’s for an important client’. Fabric lady asks what difference that makes to her. [Favourite one liner in this series, can't see it getting beaten anytime soon - Fiona] Fabric lady for interviews! Susan says PLEEEEEEEEASE, we’ll give you cash and ‘be really really quick’ and yet again fails to negotiate, but the fabric lady rolls her eyes and gives her it for £100.

Gavin gets £76 as his price for the fabric in another shop, and Zoe gets some eye-rolling face time but no lines as yet.

Ellie is looking for 3 ply loo roll, which is pretty standard, isn’t it? You’d think the Savoy would want stuff made from gold leaf, moisturised with the tears of Unicorns, not Triple Velvet. Ellie is trying to find out how much the suppliers have and Vincent keeps interrupting her on the phone. He then snatches the phone off her to complete the call himself, which is incredibly rude. Ellie tells the camera that in her ‘industry’ he’d be called a ‘wide boy’. Really? I thought a wide boy was a more a Del Boy type, but hey-ho. [Where I work he'd just be called a wanker - Fiona]

Susan’s team got the sign for £40, whilst Melody calmly negotiates a top hat down from £365 to £360.

Gavin gets a discount on light bulbs, Melody seems not to find physalis anywhere – is it that uncommon? Surely you can just get it from Morrison’s or somewhere? They can’t find ice either, allegedly. What, is there no Makro in the vicinity?

Ellie finally gets some loo roll from a man in a portakabin (High end!) called Harry, who really does strike me as a ‘wide boy’.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, drumroll, please…

Zoe SPEAKS!

She’s meant to be negotiating for ice in SE London but they’re in NW. Won’t it MELT if they have to travel a way to get it? Vincent rings Gavin and says the game plan should be to kick arse (helping much?) to find ice or tea, one or t’other. Susan’s team also need two items including the flowering chamomile tea. Gavin gets 30% off the tea, which originally cost £2.50 for 75 grams (I think? The whole tea pricing thing confused me a bit). Susan reckons it’ll be £10 per kilo and she’ll get it for £30, because as has been established, Susan knows the cost of nothing whatsoever in this world.

Nick says Susan’s team aren’t thinking and they keep going to the most expensive places in town. Worked for some people in the past, though, right?

Susan has a panic attack as they try and negotiate for tea with some posh woman who loves letting them stew with an evil grin in her eye, and calmly explains that her tea is the best ever in the world EVER and costs £990 for the ten kilos they require. Felicity almost drops dead from shock. We see Logic spending just over £200 on their tea. Evil tea lady offers to give them the tea for £700. In the end, they spend £187 more than the other team. Ouch, you’d just take the penalty, surely?
Gavin’s team don’t have physalis, lightbulbs, a cloche or dum, dum dum… ice. OUCH.
Susan ponders ‘what if we could have had it for like £30’ (the tea). You could, probably, if you’d bough a job lot of Tesco Value tea bags, which I presume is what Ellie would have got for you. Leon, bless his befuddled heart, says ‘we can’t have made a mistake’.

Boardroom time. Sralan says the reason he set this task today was because you’ll need to negotiate in business. Not because you set it every year then, Sralan?
Venture – Sralan asks if Susan was a good PM, and they say yes, and Jim was a good sub PM. Oooh, BURN. Sralan calls them out on going to the highest end shops. Just because a client wants quality ‘it don’t mean I have to go to these top class poser shops’. He points out that they went to the posy tea shop and his grammar has not yet improved, as he asks ‘where is your brains’? Susan points out that it was the best quality tea in all of London. Sralan says, yeah, if they sold it to you for £410 from £990 then there’s something wrong there.

Sralan asks if Gavin was a good PM, and he gets lukewarm support. They acknowledge they didn’t research well and left at 11. Sralan – I left at 8, so you were hanging around for three hours? Gavin looks stressed throughout. Sralan points out that they went to Top Hat cleaners. G admits he took it literally. They said they couldn’t get a cloche, the others leave Tom to flounder around saying steel was maybe catering. Karren asks if that was the case, why go to a garden centre?
Venture got 9 items, didn’t get an item worth £202.75 – what was it? Spent £1381.69. Logic’s total £1389.20. Susan won – by £8. I so thought she was being fired. Still, her prize for being a sucky PM (a victory’s a victory, right?) is going to a circus cabaret in one of Covent Garden’s trendiest bars, which sounds to me like it’d be all seven circles of hell at once, so it’s probably just punishment. [The only part of that which sounds pleasant to me is "Covent Garden", and that's really only because there are shops there that sell nice cheese. - Steve]

Sralan says it’s a disgrace that Logic only got 6/10 so deserve to lose on that basis.

The circus thing looks APPALLING and Glenn pulls a face. Susan toasts to team Venture who are 3 for 3 on the wins at the moment, although which team is which will presumably become less and less meaningful until the whole thing collapses somewhere between weeks five and six as usually happens.

Loser café. The plinky plonky piano of sad French films plays. Vincent tells the camera that Gavin knows he’s very strong, and I don’t really want my brain to be going there [too late - Steve] so… oh, and he can’t wait to have a one to one with Lord Sugar.

Gavin whines that people are willing to let you sink and drown rather than help you out as a team. So butthurt…. Whoops, sorry, my mind went there AGAIN.

In the boardroom, and Sralan says they had over three hours of pontificating. Gavin says it was because their leads weren’t good enough. People wanted to go out and he was all ‘please, just carry on with what you’re doing’. This is his DEFENCE, folks. Sralan says he got feedback from Karren that everyone ignored Gavin and Gavin whines that they did. Zoe gets another line and says no one took him seriously.

Sralan asks why they ran out of time – Ellie says logistics. Vincent says 60% of their time was spent in the hotel. Gavin says he was told the sub team had got leads and they didn’t all work out. Vincent says that Gavin’s sub team only had one item until the last minute. Gavin stutters about, asking if he can respond. Oh, the tension. Sralan asks if Vincent put himself forward and Vincent replies that he regrets not taking it, even though we saw the team vote for Gavin. Sralan says Vincent did end up taking over anyway and points out him taking Ellie’s phone off her. Vincent cries ‘I just wanted to win, I’ve been in here twice’, but Sralan hates a posh bloke more than a bladdy woman, so I’m not sure the phone snatching nonsense will have done him any favours.

Natasha is called out for being rubbish and he asks why Zoe’s the only one who didn’t negotiate (er, because she doesn’t have lines, she’s just a bit part?). She then babbles about the NE/SW directions. Tom says that towards the end there was a sense of giving up. Sralan jumps on this like a rottweiller. GIVING UP? Tom says Gavin was like a beaten man at the end. He’s bringing back Vincent and Zoe, Zoe shakes her head.

Nick says Gavin lacked an authority that young 21 year old Susan had – so much for Ed being the youngest, then. I’d like a line-up to verify whether he was ACTUALLY the shortest as well. Karren says his team was stroppier to handle, despite at the start us being told Susan’s team with Edna and co was the stroppiest team so whatevs, show. They say that they don’t know what Zoe’s capable of. No shit.

Sralan – asks why Zoe’s in the boardroom. Gavin says she didn’t get leads/negotiate deals and Vincent’s feedback was she acted as his PA (which he specifically asked her to do, lest we forget) and she said she did get some leads. Karren says part of the tasks is to think on your own feet, she thinks Zoe has a voice (really?) but finds it hard to get across. Zoe says she did what she was told and didn’t have a time to shine. Sralan says that could be her own fault and she can’t go into business with him and pass him little messages (DEAR STELLA. HOW’S THE BROOM CUPBOARD AT NOTAMSTRAD? SUCKS TO BE YOU. LOLZ. ZOE XX). Zoe stutters and fails.

Apparently Gavin says on his CV that he’s a good manager of people and Vincent then blabbers about his team’s leads. Sralan gets out his pre-prepared joke of the day: ‘I know you’re Belgian and that’s where the waffles come from’. Vincent says he did EVERYTHING, even get the ice - which they didn’t get, so whatever, Vincent. Vincent says he would be remembered and could go back and negotiate again in the same shops. Sralan you like to make a good impression, let’s see if I remember you. Like you remember Nicholas de Lacy Brown?

His summing up - Zoe: your fault you haven’t made an impression; Gavin: You haven’t kept people under control; Vincent: I don’t like people who undermine others, but because the task was out of hand, Gavin is fired.

Zoe gets the first ‘show me something’ of the series. She simply nods ‘agreed’, which seems a bit reasonable for an Apprentice candidate. She won’t last. At least she didn’t ask to be made PM.

Nick says it was a foolish loss. Karren they know now there is no hiding place.
Coatwatch, long, dark brown with a black scarf. Not sure the colour combination works. Gavin cabterviews unconvincingly that firing him was a mistake as Sralan is looking for a business partner not an employee and if he’s looking for someone like Vincent good luck to him. I don’t think he’s looking for someone like Vincent any more than he’s looking for someone like Edna, Gavin. I guess you don’t know how this show works.

Ellie at the house talks about Vincent being a wanker [that's my line - Fiona] and seems unhappy when he comes back. Zoe says Gavin didn’t have an argument against them, but doesn’t mention that Sralan wasn’t that impressed with any of them.

Next week: the apprenti massage some poor unsuspecting folk – by the looks of things, at the British Museum. Such fun!

A little APPrehensive

2011-05-14T07:45:00.000-07:00

Week 2: 11 May 2011

Previously on the Apprentice, the rules were changed and now Sralan is looking for a business partner, not a lackey. It kind of makes a lot more sense that way, with all the wheely dealy business havey people not having to give up their own businesses to earn 100k selling bannisters from a business park in Kettering, or whatever Sralan normally lines up.

Also, the Apprentices had to 'add value' to fruit. Edward's attitude can be summed up as 'SMASH IT'; this extends to juicers. The boys (that is, Logic) lost, and Edward got himself fired by bringing in totally the wrong people. Inventor Tom, slightly doughy Orlando Bloom Leon, and 'charmer' Vincent Dinosaur stood out in my mind. The girls (as far as I'm concerned, Galvanised) won and got a reward that I have already forgotten. Cassandra-like Susan Ma (totally right, totally ignored), lost member of Eternal and stone-cold bitch Edna, and hater of poncey stuff like pasta, vegetables, spelling and That London Ellie grabbed my attention of the girls.

Fifteen remain. God. We're gonna be here a while, kids. Oh my god! At five in the morning, Tom answers the door already in his suit [has he never watched this show before? That's NOT how it works - Rad]. They get a laptop couriered to them rather than a phone call. A LAPTOP. Sralan is there on the screen. It's like a really really bad Mission Impossible sequel. Sralan says that it's appropriate that he's on a computer, because this task involves something technological doowizzery. It's a market that's exploded – 'mobile phone applications, better known as apps'. Thanks for that clarification, Sralan. They've got to make an app (Edna, in a hairnet, looks horrified) that will go on sale for one day. The team with the most downloads after one day will win. The other team will have someone fired. The cars are arriving in ten minutes.

In the cars, Glenn wants to put them on the map and prove why they're there. Melody wants to win twice in a row. Leon says there's 'APProximately twelve hours', Jim asks if they're APProaching where they need to be, Leon says it's APPsolutely important to get it right and then Vincent Dinosaur asks if they had an APPle and everyone is utterly silent. Leon looks out the window. I think I might love Leon. [In fairness to Vincent, that "silence" couldn't have been more obviously inserted in the edit room if there'd been a clock in the background jumping backwards and forwards in time. - Steve]

The teams get to GrAPPle the app makers. The chairman gives them apps for dummies, but our readers are all hip and hAPPening and internet-savvy, so I don't need to tell you that, right?

Leon puts himself forward as PM. He was thinking of an App for his (fast food marketing) business and also wants to impress Sralan. Gavin doesn't really care about that. Vincent Dinosaur puts himself up to. Glenn is a software writer. Jim says he'll do it. Eventually, weirdly Jim then leads the vote for Leon and he wins. If you can call it winning.

Edna puts herself up for the girls. This is gonna be gooooood. She to-cameras, basically 'I'm an utter bitch. That's my management style'. Melody's like 'nobody else wants to, so YAY EDNA?'

Edna sends Felicity and some others to do surveys on the street to ask what people like, how many apps they get and so on.

The boys think of 'toilet paper word of the day' and a bubble wrap app that you can press to make popping noises, I guess? Bubble wrAPP. If they'd done that, they would have won by a bloody landslide. Touch-screen phone, run your finger over it to make bubble-wrap popping noises. Everybody would download that. Tom suggests an app that tells you the temperature in London a year ago today, and a traffic light. Leon says, 'just a traffic light?' bemused but trying to encourage him. Leon reminds them that this is going global. They then utterly disregard this, by going for Glenn's regional insult app, with people with accents saying funny things.

For the girls, it's actually worth verbatiming Susan. You also have to imagine this punctuated with shots of Melody giving deathglare and Edna shaking her head and mouthing the word 'no'.

Susan: 'I've just thought of this, um, I think it's a brilliant idea. Okay, so imagine if you've got two people sat next to each other and um, okay, hang on a second, so you're you and I'm me and I say, “Okay, um”. So, if I ask you a question like “Where do you think we are?” and I say “Okay, I'm going to ask my phone where we are right now”'

Edna: 'Sounds a bit complicated Susan...'

Susan: 'Nononono. Can I just finish my idea cos I don't think I'm explaining this very well. You type the answer but when it, what it actually shows up is um here is my question. So you type … Does that make sense?'

No, Susan. No it really, really does not. Edna interrupts again

Susan: 'So the text that comes up … Can you please just let me finish?'

Edna: 'Susie, no.' Susie! Such a bitch.

Susan: 'Because I've seen it before and it's a great idea …'

So not only does it make NO sense, it also already exists. Edna finally shuts her down, and Susan is a bit frustrated. Edna to-cameras that Susan likes to talk and talk and will sulk, and that if you don't like her way of doing things, you can get off her team. They have no time left, so Susan isn't allowed to explain. I'm kind of annoyed because I really want to know what she was talking about. Truly, Susan Ma's App may have displaced Hannah Cherry's Invention as the greatest Apprentice mystery of all time. Melody pinches the bridge of her nose like she's trying to head off a tension headache.

The boys come up with the name 'Slangatang'. Leon again points out that it needs to be global (I didn't notice that he said that the first time) and despite worries that it could be offensive, they're all like 'YAY SLANGATANG!'

Felicity comes back up from surveying, saying people like time-wasters. She thinks of an annoying noise app – like popcorn in the cinema. An app to annoy people. The app man says it's totally feasible. Trying to come up with a name, they somehow they agree on Ampi App, as suggested by … um … a brunette chick I totally don't recognise. Ampi App is a bad name, but they also thought of 'Useful Noises', so you know. Small victory... [Someone on Twitter suggested An-NOISE - Rad]

Susan bitches in the car about the 'massive age gap' between her and Edna and points out that Edna had no ideas herself. Melody says shut it, I don't care, leave me out of it. Melody's kind of wicked.

The boys look for photos to be the 'face' of their app. By just photographing people in the street with their mouths open. Tom has a ruler that's a piece of paper that says 'ruler' on it, presumably to get the right distance between camera and face. They go back to the designer – it's going to be the same face each time, with different cartoon hats to show the accents. Gavin isn't sure about the app, but thinks time will tell.

The boys cast themselves as the voices. They don't seem to be insults so much as stereotypes. Alex goes Pakistani for Welsh, as is the wont of people who can't do accents. The things are like a Welsh person saying 'I absolutely love rugby'. It's not … an insult. [Or slang, for that matter. - Steve] Nick doesn't get it, but thinks he might be too old. No, Nick. It's just that bad.

Cut to some of the girls arguing really loudly, with Karrren looking on appalled. But, zounds! They're making an annoying arguing noise to record for the app! Oh, Editors! You fooled me thoroughly. [Not going to lie, I totally fell for this. - Steve] Melody makes kitty noises, very seriously, shushing people so she can, like, Be In Her Cat Moment. Susan says to camera that she's not convinced by the app and thinks they're heading for disaster. Then she records herself mooing.

The teams come up with blurbs for their apps. The joke 'apportunity' is made by Jim in his blurb, along with phrase 'hilarious local vocal'. The boys love it... I'm not entirely sure why.

They need to go to technology review websites. It's going to be Leon, Jim and Vincent Dinosaur going to the sites

There's a gaming expo. Edna decides that Melody, who has been giving talks to groups of teenagers for thirteen years, won't be as good at pitching to them as she, HR professional and soul-devourer, is. Um. Melody explains that she's used to presenting to groups of three thousand young people. Edna says she's looked at strengths and limitations and that's it, basically. 'I want to do the pitch because shut up' is her logic.

The slangatang looks really cheap, and it isn't insults any more, just things people say. Ampi Apps doesn't really look much better. There are now annoying, animal, and celebration noises. Ellie says she's worried about the randomness. Melody to-cameras that she doesn't really like it, and that there are better ones out there, but she's still going to give it everything. Good girl. Also she is bizarrely formal and says applications every time, not 'apps', which is awesome.

In the car, the boys already have 50 downloads. The girls seem to have none but are hopeful.

Sralan has made appointments with 3 tech sites. The Apprentices are trying to impress them and failing singularly. Melody screws up, saying Pocketlint has 37,000 unique hits a month, which is extremely impressive. They're like 'We have over a million.' Melody's like 'Oh.' A man asks 'Is that a picture of an elephant and the sound of a dog?' Team Galvanised are like 'Quirky!!' 'Do you have the sound of an elephant?' 'No.' 'Oh.' [I was teaching postmodernism to my A-level group earlier that day and this was still too postmodern for my brain to take - Rad]

Vincent Dinosaur also totally mucks up with Pocketlint. He starts with 'Hi chaps'. And he says they're going to introduce them to slangatang. No no no. No more introducing of things instead of people. He's just stuttering and pausing. And saying meaningless little soundbites without actually telling them anything. And also making no sense. And finally asking for help. Jim steps in and helps out, quite confidently explaining the marketing and stuff. Nick loves Jim long time.

They go to a tech fair at Earl's Court. The boys are dressed up in various uniforms to match the slangatang accents. Some dumb people seem to LOVE slangatang. Edna is pushy and abrasive. I, for one, am shocked.

The girls are at techcrunch Europe. The boys are at the 'global online technology magazine' (ie Wired.) The man from Wired says 'there's a basic issue of taste here, surely?' and says they're racial stereotypes. The guys say they aren't, Jim claims it's done sensitively. The man asks 'how do you avoid racial stereotypes if you've got an Aussie guy in a cork hat?'. He is my new favourite, and should get the job. Jim in the car thinks they didn't have any reservations about the app. Um. Were we in the same room?

In the car, Melody wants two of the three sites to feature them, but says 'What can you do? The pitch is only as good as the product.'

Slangatang is app of the day at Pocketlint. (Melody says 'Boo to slangatang!' I love her so much.) Slangatang is up at tech crunch too. The 'major online magazine' (that is Wired) has Ampi Apps. The girls don't really seem to understand that that's good because Wired is massive and global. They're like 'We got one!' and try to cheer themselves up.

Apparently there is such a thing as 'twittering technologists' and there 500 of them at a conference. Edna is pitching for Team Galvanised. She marches up and down like a scary dictator, wearing black leather gloves, marching about, speaking softly. 'Ampi Apps is big, Ampi Apps is bold, and Ampi Apps is noisy'. She seriously looks like she's going to kill them all one by one. She's going to share a secret with you and you and you [she's the worst secret keeper ever - Steve] – download Ampi Apps. It's just bizarre and creepy, the whole thing.

The boys pitch MUCH better. They tell the audience to text 'SLANG', point out that's its free, and make them get their phones out right there to download it. They give free doughnuts to the first 50 downloads. People don't often do stuff on this show that's actually genuinely impressive, but they ran it absolutely perfectly.

Afterwards, Melody says 'I think we're all thinking we might have just got thrashed'. Edna stares like a Gorgon, this full-on rictus grin not leaving her face for like ten seconds. It's amazing. Karrren makes the very valid point that Edna didn't talk about how to download the app or anything actually useful, and didn't use her time well.

Felicity thinks Edna's pitch was bad and she knows it. Leon is confident of winning.

Boardroom. Sralan self-aggrandises for about an hour about starting a business. He chats to Leon and asks if he was 'Steve Jobs or out of a job?' Leon explains how they've made the plan to make money from their app by micropayments – making extra characters available, I guess. Which is awesome, but this is The Apprentice and everything here is about the short term one-off task. Sralan talks about how the boys didn't get Wired, the biggest one. Vincent doesn't understand why they didn't get wired, and Logic are shocked that the Wired guys thought it was offensive. Jim, terribly affronted, makes a bullshit thing about Ampi Apps being 'offensive to the ear' and Sralan is all 'Yes, but yours is ACTUALLY OFFENSIVE'.

Sralan asks whose idea Ampi Apps was. Felicity says it was hers. He asks if they all liked it; Melody says no, and five out of eight say they didn't. Edna says they seemed to like it at the time, and Felicity is all 'first I've heard!'. Sralan asks why Edna went to the fair instead of the websites, which were much more valuable. She waffles and says they were the right people for it. (She blatantly wanted to play dress-up and go to the fair.) Ellie says she doesn't normally pitch, but she thinks they did OK. Sralan's like 'Well, you got one.' Ellie says, 'the big one, though', and grins. If this show was only decided on the criterion of 'having a clue', we could just cut to a Melody Ellie final right now.

After six hours, the boys got just under 3,000 and the girls got just under 1,000. After a day 3,951 downloads for the boys. Karrren says 'the world woke up' – it's 10,667 for the girls. TEAM GALVANISED! Sralan says 'Oh' and it's wonderfully expressive. They get to go a Michel Roux Jr restaurant [I wish this was a show with Michel and Monica Galetti. They should actually be on every reality show. Can you IMAGINE how much Monica would rip these losers to shreds? - Rad]. He gives Edna a kiss. They all freak out like a sitcom studio audience. Susan absolutely pisses herself laughing. Melody sips her wine and says, 'Is that victory I taste?'. She's so awful. I love her.

They sit in the Loser Cafe and talk about how it wasn't offensive. On and on. Glenn's like 'we had 500 people laughing on that stage'. They can't get their heads around the fact that it was a global thing and their app was very UK focused, even allowing for the Australian. So mostly, your app is going to offend lots of people, and the only people it won't offend are the ones who won't even give a shit about it. It's not the best, really. Funny how Leon did mention several times the globalness and then just didn't do anything about it.

Sralan yells at them. Tom says that they lost because Galvanised got Wired. Sralan, a bit disingenuously I think, says that he doesn't care if they got on the website, because people just didn't want their product. To an extent, maybe, but you really can't discount the importance of that publicity the way Sralan is trying to. He says they didn't get that it was a global product, and Leon cops to that.

He tells off Jim for his shitty production description. The girls' first line is 'screeching chalk and animal snorts are all part of the Ampi App'. It says exactly what you get. Slangatang goes, as we discussed, 'apportunity for hilarious local vocal'. Sralan says 'I'm bored'. He signposts MASSIVELY that he wants Jim in the final boardroom: 'Do we all agree, here, that these words was one of the reasons this task failed?' He really hated the product description, you guys.

Jim goes on about how he takes part and Alex sits back, and Sralan's all 'Mmmhmm!' and Z-snaps. Alex, kind of bitchily and awesomely, says that Jim saved a pitch but not the big one.

At first I'm very excited about Leon's ability to read the room, because he brings in Jim and Alex. However, Jim – and credit to him I guess – says that Vincent Dinosaur fluffed and Glenn made the shitty app in the first place. Leon then hums and haws, and says 'Do you want me to change?' and changes his fucking mind about who he's bringing back. Fire him right now. I totally love Leon but you don't let yourself get steamrollered like that. He brings in Alex and Glenn. Glenn tries to do a Jim, and fails utterly. Brilliantly, Jim says 'The PM's made his decision'. [Jim is my sweepstake candidate, therefore GO TEAM JIM! - Rad] They all go out. Sralan chats to Nick and Karrren. Karrren says Alex fights in the boardroom but is invisible otherwise.

The boys come back in. Sralan says that the person who wrote the description is gone. He really hated that description, guys. He asks why Glenn is there. Glenn does try to defend himself. Basically it boils down to the app was bad, that was Glenn's idea, but Leon was PM and backed the idea so it's his fault. You know, the same argument that happens in every single episode of the Apprentice. 'Your idea was shit.' 'You should have stopped my idea being shit.'

Leon says that he's come to Sralan having started a business with nothing, no investment. Clever boy. Alex says some more about how he's not hiding away, slicing bread and if he got the job he wouldn't be hiding way. Sralan's like, 'Damn straight, bitch.' He says that Leon's got his own business but still failed. Leon then, awesomely, says 'We're looking at this as a twelve-week process and I can guarantee that you won't make the finals'. Alex looks a little shocked and doesn't even try to defend himself. Sralan asks who should be fired, and Leon says Alex without hesitation.

Alex says that Leon should be fired because he makes bad decisions. Leon just says 'no'. Sralan says that Alex is a good talker, but he's 'not starting a business writing speeches'. Wow, he's still so burned from Stubaggs. He's not sure that Glenn is the rare person that can combine tech savvy and business sense.

Leon's been in the bottom three twice in two weeks, but has been saved by the fact that he's got a business and has achieved something. Alex has got the reputation for not doing anything. It's not just a job, it's a business partnership, and if Alex thinks he can hide he's wrong. BECAUSE HE'S FIRED! Oh, snap! I feel a bit bad for Alex. Not hugely because his face kind of scares me and he's a bit unpleasant, but the whole 'You need to spend less time doing shit and more time yelling about amazing you are' shtick of The Apprentice is always a bit off-putting.

If Leon is back again, Sralan will be very angry and there won't be a third chance. So Leon basically has to win the entire thing, then. No pressure.

In the car, Alex says Leon should go for not even making a decision about who to bring back but he's going to learn from it blah di blah.

Back at the house it turns from banter to Glenn saying 'You bottled it, you're a chicken' all very seriously and it's a bit uncomfortable.

Next week: Joy of joys, we have the buy ten things task! We may have already been spoiled for the best moment of the entire episode, with Susan telling a shopkeeper 'it's for a very important client' and the shopkeeper saying, 'How would that make a difference to me?'.

Oranges are not the only fruit

2011-05-11T02:22:00.001-07:00

Week 1: 10th May 2011

I don't know about you, but I feel sorry for Stella English - she gets what, six months to enjoy her status as the current reigning Apprentice? Seven at a push. Yasmina Siadatan got sixteen. It seems so unfair - I mean, six months into the job Lee McQueen had only just learned how to switch his computer on, and poor Stella only gets that amount of time in which to make her mark before being a replaced by a shiny new model. Still, at least she knows how an iPhone must feel.

Anyway, we must forget about Stella and Chris Bates and StuBaggs and Melissa Cohen who was definitely not a firework that goes crazy, because that is all behind us now: there are sixteen new candidates all vying for a--well, not a job with Sralan, but I'm getting ahead of myself already, so we'll wait for the show to explain it. We begin with the obligatory London porn, intercut with shots of contestants on escalators, in underground stations, in National Rail stations, walking down the street pulling rolly-cases, looking impatiently at their watches, and other business clichés.

A Cheryl Cole lookalike tells us that last year she started her own global business, "literally with nothing". Brilliant: 20 seconds into the episode and already someone's managed to misuse the word "literally". She goes on to inform us that she's worked with Nobel Peace Prize winners all over the world, and just to add a ridiculous business mantra for good measure, finishes with "don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon". A Pale But Handsome Irishman tells us that he's a deer -- whoops, "a doer" -- and believes that he can be "the champion thoroughbred that this process requires." I can only assume that he is in fact part of Stuart Baggs' field of business ponies waiting to be harnessed by a tetchy millionaire from Hackney. George Lamb continues the strange pattern of animal metaphors by telling us that he is "a best of breed within my industry. I've got plenty of charisma, and yeah, I'm not bad looking." He does have classically handsome features, it's true, but I watched the show in HD and this particular statement was less convincing when I was staring at the general sagginess of his skin [why would you torture yourself with this show in HD? I imagine the boardroom blue would burn your retinas out in high definition - Rad].

More candidates arrive without being allowed to speak until we get to Fey Orlando Bloom, who insists that he's already proven himself in business because he turned over a million pounds from nothing (again, I'm guessing probably not from actual nothing), while Morena Baccarin insists that her social life and her personal life mean nothing to her - "I live to work, that's all I do." I assume this is meant to be impressive, but it just comes across as a bit pathetic, because I refuse to believe any job in the world could ever be that good. I mean, even if I landed the admittely implausible position of personal fluffer to Jake Gyllenhaal, I think I'd probably still want the occasional day off to go down the pub with my friends or catch up on The Good Wife. Hot Dishevelled Nerd tells us has been running a business already for five years and knows how difficult it is, before staging some kind of Superman moment by removing his specs and telling us that "underneath these glasses is a core of steel." This may have been slightly more effective had he not been clearly trying to hold back his laughter, and had the whole thing not been undercut with a shot of him gaily riding a Boris Bike through London. Bland Generically Attractive Guy With Thick Eyebrows tells us that he "takes cutthroat and ruthless to a new level", adding that he is cold and hard and unstoppable. You know what else is cold and hard and unstoppable? A wheel of cheese. I'm just putting that out there. The mood established, the next batch of people get slightly less time to embarrass themselves: Shaven-Headed Guy thinks this will change his life, Handsome Scouser is driven by the fear of failure every day, Youthful Asian Woman is confident that her business idea will make millions for Lord Sugar. Obligatory "marching purposefully across a bridge over the Thames" shot.

From there we go to a boardroom montage where Sralan informs us that he is not looking for bladdy salespeople, but for someone who's got a brain. The narration explains that having gone from "market stall to market leader" (guffaw), he's on the hunt for a new business partner. For no apparent reason, this is illustrated with a shot of Sralan on the roof of a building staring out to the horizon. There follows a selection of snippets from tasks yet to come, which of course will prove very handy for those looking for spoilers to indicate who'll be getting the chop early. Present in the montage [I am not even reading this next bit Steve, I didn't let the show spoiler me, and dammit, neither will you. And if you tell me even one note of whatever spoilers the internet has about who River Song is, so help me.... - Rad] are: Hot Dishevelled Nerd in some kind of running around London task accompanied by Anonymous Brunette Woman; Sheila Ferguson carrying what looks like a pillow, Cheryl Cole and George Lamb playing with tins of some sort and discussing pricing structures with Hot Dishevelled Nerd; Youthful Asian Woman and Sheila Ferguson having an argument while Cheryl Cole tries to ignore them; far too many people to check off walking through a museum; Youthful Asian Woman giving a male model a spray tan; Fey Orlando Bloom on a building site; Morena Baccarin, Cheryl Cole and Karren Brady (note: actual Karren Brady, not someone who looks like her) on another building site; Stony-Faced Blonde Woman grimacing in the boardroom, George Lamb grimacing in the boardroom, Shaven-Headed Guy grimacing in the boardroom; Morena Baccarin, Sheila Ferguson and Pale But Handsome Irishman in a taxi on what's clearly a "buy these items at the cheapest price" task; George Lamb, Handsome Scouser and Fey Orlando Bloom celebrating while dressed as utter twats; Blonde Woman With Pearl Necklace (tee hee) also in the "buy these items" task; more boardroom shots; unseen people getting fired.

It's 4pm, and the contestants are waiting outside the boardroom, looking rather tense. Everyone is sizing each other up but trying not to look like that's what they're doing. NotFrances sends them through, and they assemble at the boardroom table. Interestingly, most of the seats are occupied by the men, while a lot of the women are left standing. I guess very few of the guys are bothered about looking chivalrous. Sralan tells them all that one of the most frequently asked questions of him is "why is your spelling and grammar so bad on Twitter?" Sorry, my mistake - it is in fact "is it possible in this day and age to start a business like you did back in 1967 with a small amount of money and some humble background?" Yeah, I'm sure he gets asked that ALL THE TIME. Although it's a good point - there are few humble background stockists where I live, so there's obviously a niche in the market waiting to be filled. Anyway, apparently the answer is yes, and Sralan is sick of this moaning culture of people saying you can't do this, and you can't do that, because you can. All you need is an idea for a product or a service, a lot of hard work and determination, an appearance on a primetime reality show and a millionaire benefactor. As a result, the prize this time is not a job with Viglen and a six figure salary, but the opportunity to start a business partnership with Sralan, who'll be injecting "£250,000 worth of cash and value" (that's a very interesting way of phrasing it). They'll be running it themselves, with Sralan nagging them every five minutes as to why they're not making more money, an arrangement that Sralan terms "an uncivil partnership". No one laughs. No one dares.

He wants them to treat the first task as if it's their own business, only this time instead of a £250,000 investment, they're getting £250 to buy produce, add value to it and sell it on to the public. The team that brings back the biggest return on his investment will win, while one member of the losing team will be bladdy fired. It's boys vs girls as usual, with Nick and Karren in the usual voyeuristic role. Sralan reminds the teams that he is definitely looking for a return on his money. They disperse and head into a fleet of Apprenticars to take them to the luxury home they'll be staying in for the duration of the competition. They all use the drive to get to know each other, by which we mean psych each other out. George Lamb asks what was going through everyone's mind in the waiting room, and sadly no one replies "the chorus of 'Bad Romance'"; instead Fey Orlando Bloom says that he was "quietly confident, baby". Shaven-Headed Guy was thinking "I'll have you all." Bam-chicka-wow-wow. Cheryl Cole tells everyone that she runs a global consultancy business (translation: well-travelled busybody), while Handsome Scouser runs his own business selling glasses online. Stony-Faced Blonde Woman Who Is Northern, It Seems runs her own recruitment business, while Youthful Asian Woman has an organic skincare. God, fuck what they do for a living, can we just get to the part where they have NAMES, please? [I'm so glad you're doing the opener this series, it's been my pet hate in recent years - Rad]

Oh, thank God - here we get our first confessional with accompanying name chevron, where we learn that Youthful Asian Woman is Susan Ma, Natural Skincare Entrepreneur [So she's an Avon lady? - Rad]. Susan thinks people will underestimate her at first because she's short, sweet and smiley, but when she does business, she means business. George Lamb is a "sales manager-cum-sales director" (it seems unsurprising that cum is involved somewhere) and stands out from everyone else's monochrome outfits in his blue pinstriped suit, magenta socks and tan shoes. Hot Dishevelled Nerd invented the world's first curved nail file, a feat that Handsome Scouser is struggling to get his head around, judging from the look on his face.

Hot Dishevelled Nerd is called Thomas Pellereau (a good name, but not the best one we'll be seeing tonight) and talks with endearing enthusiasm about being an inventor and finding gaps in the market. His eyebrows have a life of their own, and I love him a little bit. He's clearly fodder with a capital F, but I suspect he will also be my woobie. Apparently he invented this curved nail file in his kitchen, but it's now on sale in major retailers in the UK and America. Sheila Ferguson [TreyC Cohen was where I was heading -Rad] (aka Edna Agbarha, Business Psychologist) is very into people, and loves challenging herself. "I seek out pain rather than pleasure. Weak people in business are a waste of space, and a limp handshake is unforgivable." This woman is crumbling into a sobbing heap by week five or my name isn't Charles Worthington Arbuthnot III. Stoned Guy With Neckbeard is "a humble accountant" and is reassured by Shaven-Headed Guy that "we all need you, in a way" and George Lamb suggests that he could start his own accountancy practice. If that's the level of out-of-the-box brainstorming we're in for this series, I'm scared for us all. Stoned Guy With Neckbeard would, it seems, rather not do that anyway.

The Apprenthouse is in Richmond-upon-Thames, and is ridiculously lavish, of course. Everyone bustles around excitedly admiring all the space and features, and Thomas finds himself in a bedroom with a bunch of girls and gets nerd-panicky about it. Nick and Karren are seen ambling up the gravel driveway outside, and the contestants separate into their teams and get on with the important business of choosing names. On Team Woman, Morena Baccarin suggests "Galvanised, for obvious reasons" (oh yes, obviously), and "Platinum". Edna looks distinctly unimpressed. Cheryl Cole, who actually doesn't look all that much like Cheryl Cole if I'm honest, but she's close enough to be a verbal shorthand until her real name is revealed, suggests "Venture", because it suggests they're daring, bold and taking risks. Edna likes Venture, as does Susan. The motion passes, and everyone claps.

Over in the lounge, the men are tossing ideas into the ring. George Lamb suggests "Ability", while Bland Generically Attractive Guy With Thick Eyebrows (who will be BGAGWTE for convenience's sake until his actual name is revealed) looks unconvinced. Stoned Guy With Neckbeard doesn't like Ability either. Fey Orlando Bloom, whose name is obviously Leon, suggests "Leontrepreneur", which is shot down amid giggles. Shaven-Headed Guy suggests "Logic", which is possibly the worst team name since First Forte, but earns the approval of Stoned Guy With Neckbeard. Pale But Handsome Irishman is not in love with it, but sees the logic behind it. BGAGWTE suggests they put it to a vote. George Lamb gaily asks "who likes Ability?" and waves his own hand in the air, while everyone else votes for Logic.

Next, time to select a leader: for Venture, Cheryl Cole (who speaks in the same voice as the actress who played Smell in This Is England and Bonnie in Shameless, to the point where it's quite uncanny) wants to be PM because that's what she's good at, as does Morena Baccarin. The narration helpfully fills in that Cheryl Cole is "business consultant Melody", while Morena Baccarin is "executive assistant Helen". We're getting there, gradually. Melody says "global" 56 more times, while Helen says that she's experienced at managing "large teams". Nice try Helen, but unless they are GLOBALLY large, Melody is so winning this. Edna does a head-bob of approval as Melody talks. Venture opts for Melody as their project manager, and her first job is to tell everyone that they're all teammates and ask them to send a handshake around the table. It's dorky and ridiculously the sort of thing you do on an awayday just before you go out and play paintball or try to assemble a jigsaw with half your team blindfolded and the other half chained to a wall, but it actually works quite well as an icebreaker after all that debating, so I'm willing to let it slide. This time. Melody (whose surname is Hossaini, we now learn) tells us in a confessional that she's been personally trained by Al Gore, Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama, and that she works with an understanding that there is a person greater than herself. That puts her ahead of about 90% of contestants ever to appear on this show, so it's an encouraging start. Melody asserts that their plan is that they're "definitely going to win it". I hope the plan is slightly more detailed than that.

There is only one volunteer on Logic, and it's Stoned Guy With Neckbeard (Edward). Hoo boy. This isn't looking good already. He offers to bring "rationale" and common sense to the role of PM, and says that they're going to "roll with the punches". Is that not a slightly defeatist attitude? Why not hope for there not to be punches in the first place? Handsome Scouser suggests that they get a handle on Edward's credentials for the role rather than realise later that they were too quick to elect him, which Edward interprets as a leadership challenge. George Lamb takes it to another vote, revealing in the process that Handsome Scouser's name is Gavin. Thomas and Shaven-Headed Guy vote for Gavin, while everyone else votes for Edward. Aww, at least George Lamb was on the winning team this time. Maybe he won't be crying into his designer pillow tonight after all.

Edward (whose surname is Hunter - Ed Hunter, how brilliant) says that he's "a wheeler-dealer who accidentally became a finance professional". Bollocks - I know enough accountants to know that it's not something that happens because you had too many Sea Breezes one night and woke up the next day with a diploma in your pocket. Edward wants out because he knows he's so much more than an accountant, and has given up a big job with an important company for the chance to go into business with Sralan. What he has apparently not given up: the wacky baccy. Blonde Woman Who Is Not At This Point Wearing A Pearl Necklace thinks they should use as little of the money as possible, and there is some murmured agreement. On Logic, Thomas suggests "segments of fruits covered in toffee or chocolate" as a potential product, which strikes me as something far, far beyond the capabilities of any of this lot. Susan says that they need a breakfast product and a lunch product, as she thinks that will strengthen their sales pitch. Their discussion appears to bring them over to fruit salad for breakfast and vegetable pasta for lunch. Om nom nom. Edward tells Logic that they need to focus on things that they can make efficiently, quickly and well, and he thinks soup fits the bill, "because you can't get it wrong". Oh Edward. You really, really can. He points out that perhaps people might not buy it from you again, but they won't actually be sick. This is the Yasmina Siadatan Memorial Approach To Catering Tasks, by the way. Edward expands the pitch to soup and "some kind of juice", while Shaven-Headed Guy poses the $64,000 question: does anyone know how to make soup?

*crickets chirp*

No. Nobody does. The "at least people won't be sick" reasoning is looking less convincing by the second.

At 3.20am, the candidates leave The Apprenthouse to purchase their produce. In a car with Pale But Handsome Irishman and Shaven-Headed Guy, Edward decries the very idea of working out margins, and doesn't want to do that sort of stuff just to prove he can do it. The possibility that doing it because it is a good idea and a key part of capitalism does not seem to trouble him. Instead his plan is:

1. Spend £250 on produce

2. Mash it up

3. ????????????

4. PROFIT!

The others look unconvinced.

The cars arrive at New Covent Garden Market, where Melody's team looks for grapes and pineapple, while Edward is in search of oranges. It prompts the following exchange:

GEORGE LAMB (holding a large, round, orange fruit): Is that an orange?
EDWARD: I don't know.

Over on Venture, Melody reminds the team that they want to be spending as little as possible, and puts Edna in charge of costings, handing her the money. Susan chimes in that they need to get going if they want to catch the breakfast market.

Logic are hunting for tomatoes, for soup, and oranges, for juice. They consult a seller about oranges, who tells them that his lowest price is £9.50 a box. Edward offers him £150 for 17 boxes (which is £8.82 a box, if anyone's wondering), at which point the seller points out that, no, they are £9.50 a box. George Lamb suggests meeting halfway at £9.25 a box, asking what different 25p makes. The seller, getting a tad annoyed with them at this point, replies that it's clear they're not in the business and don't have a clue how this works. He repeats once more for clarity: £9.50 a box is the bottom line. Edward buys 16 boxes at £9.50 each. The seller all but rolls his eyes as he walks off. So they've now got 1400 oranges, and Edward explains that he's not concerned with sales right now, he just wants to produce and sell as much as he can. He says "rolling with the punches" again.

So, £9.50 a box for 16 boxes costs £152. Pale But Handsome Irishman asks how much they have to spend on the soup, and Edward tells him £40. Gavin asks what they're spending on oranges, and is told £150, so Gavin wants to know if they're not spending all the money. Gavin explains that they're "maxing on oranges". PBH Irishman points out that soup is harder to make. Edward doesn't want to "hear negative". Someone points out that it's not negative, it's just a fact, leading Edward to channel David Brent: "Yeah? Here's a fact. You've got ten minutes to get this sorted, so come on, move." Gavin (Winstanley) complainterviews that if he'd been PM, he would've had a proper structure in place by this point and everyone would've known what they were doing. PBH Irishman, whose name we now learn is Jim, goes on the search for soup ingredients. He asks a trader what sort of tomatoes he'd need to make soup, and she tells him that he'd need really ripe ones. He asks if he would be able to make something happen if he wanted to buy some boxes of overripe tomatoes at £3 a box, and she replies that if she had them, he'd be very welcome to them. Jim, not getting the hint at all: "Do you have them?" No she does not. Jim looks like a wounded puppy.

Melody, Susan, Edna and Anonymous Brunette Woman are shopping for fruit salad ingredients, and speak to the same seller whose non-haggling manner was so alien to Team Logic in the hope that he can provide them with pineapples and grapes. Susan wants to buy 50 each of courgettes and peppers for the pasta, and Edna reminds her that they can't spend money without clearing it with her first. They try to buy some courgettes from another vendor, who is selling them at £4.20 a box. Susan asks if they can get two boxes for £8, and the vendor agrees all too readily, with the subtext that he just wants Susan to go away quickly. Edna is unimpressed, because Susan is making financial decisions without her say-so, and drags Melody into it. Susan whines that she was just trying to quicken up the deal, and Melody approves it and grabs the boxes. The vendor, in an uncomfortable attempt at small talk with Edna while she hands over the money, says that she must be the boss. Edna laughs hollowly and says that she is not, but she has been given a Very Important Task. In a confessional, Edna headbobs that she's accountable "for the pursestrings", but other people are making the deals and not involving her, which makes it impossible for her to keep track. The women buy some strawberries, and we see Edna telling them they have £84 left. They decide to leave and get started with their food prep.

At 6.15am, Logic are still hunting for cheap tomatoes. Jim offers one seller £30 for a job lot of overripe tomatoes. The canny seller asks what's in it for him, since at that price he's doing them a favour. Jim negotiates that he will throw in another tenner, but only if he gets a box of red peppers and six onions. It's almost how I imagine they would haggle in the olden days. Maybe Jim will ask for three comely wenches of virtue true next. The deal is done. Jim declares that they will make soup like they've never made soup before; Gavin points out that this will be easy, because they have never made soup before.

On the way back, George Lamb is looking sleepy, while Shaven-Headed Guy is establishing the production line mechanics of the orange-juice making: cut, squeeze, sieve, into a bottle. Edward is not interested in hearing any of this because he doesn't know what equipment they've got, although he does help me out by informing me that Shaven-Headed Guy is called Glenn. Glenn tries to argue that they could at least consider the possibilities, but Edward shuts him down. Leon finds the whole thing hilarious.

Dawn. Commuter porn. The women are in a hurry to catch the breakfast trade. People are slicing fruit, and Melody urges them to "cut it like you've never cut in your life before!" What do we think the odds are of this lot also never having cut fruit in their lives before? I'm going with 'fairly high'. I'm wondering if that particular turn of phrase is going to crop up in every task [Oh, the Big Society - Rad]. "Let's record advertising jingles like you've never recorded advertising jingles before!" "Let's be interviewed by Claude Littner like you've never been interviewed by Claude Littner before!" And so on. Fruit-preparation montage, which is nowhere near as innuendo-laden as last year's sausage-making montage, disappointingly. Helen clarifies that the salads contain five pieces each of pineapple, grape and strawberry, and they will be sold at £2 a pot. Edna asks how many pots there will be. Melody responds that she's aiming for 500 pots, but isn't sure if they have enough stock for what they have planned. As they're running out of pineapple, Melody suggests they space it out more and take "a couple out of each". Nick thinks they have not invested their money wisely, since they only spent just over half of it on "quite a mean product", and he wonders if their lack of adventure could be their undoing.

At this point, Susan plays Monday morning quarterback (apologies for the blatant Americanism, I couldn't think of an appropriately English equivalent) by pointing out that they had money left over and could have bought more fruit. Edna (correctly) points out that at this point it doesn't matter, what matters is what price they can charge for the product they're selling and thus how much profit they can churn out. Melody tries to get everyone to get labelling so they can disperse, but Susan's not letting go that easily and wants Melody to make a call on whether they should go out and get more fruit. This is the same Susan, by the way, who was rushing everyone around earlier so they could catch the breakfast trade. Perhaps if she hadn't been in quite such a hurry to close the deal in the market, they might not have had this problem. Melody deflects the question, since Edna was in charge of costings (Edna's face: "O RLY?") and she has said that profit is more important right now. They start labelling up the pots, and Helen informs Melody that she's taking 170 pots with her. But where?

8.20am. Logic are unloading their fruit and veg. Edward tells them that he wants to be out of there in 90 minutes, and that they're just going to "roll with the punches" (AAAAARGH! WHAT PUNCHES? WHO IS PUNCHING YOU? THERE ARE NO PUNCHES TO ROLL WITH!). Unsurprisingly, Jim is in charge of soup production, with his cannily-obtained overripe tomatoes and bonus peppers and onions. On his team are BGAGWTE (now formally identified as "Alex", phew) and Thomas (who is more of a "Tom", it seems, in the same way that Liz Locke was clearly a "Liz" last year and yet was inexplicably identified as "Elizabeth" in the captions). Jim advises the team not to let the tomatoes stick, because if they stick, they burn, and that's not good. Leon, meanwhile, is appointed Executive In Charge Of Sticking Oranges In The Juicer And Holding The Lid Down. At least, I assume they're oranges. I don't know if Edward and George Lamb ever actually got official confirmation on that front. There is a shot of a pathetic dribble of orange juice emerging from the juicers; it's vaguely reminiscent of dribbling urine but still not a patch on all the sausage-as-penis visual references last year. Leon (Doyle, Fast Food Marketing Entrepreneur) says that his job is not a massive responsibility, but he doesn't mind because his moment will come with the sales later. Edward comes over to micromanage the juicing and informs Leon that he's holding them down for far too long. He informs Leon that they should be "buzzed" for "no more than five seconds". Leon attempts this, and then points out that this means half the orange doesn't get juice. Edward's advice is to "push it harder". Then the juicer breaks. *golf clap*

George Lamb, who has been standing in the background looking fretful for the most part, asks Edward what they should do now that one of the juicers is broken, and the answer is obvious: they must do what mankind did back in the days of yore before such luxuries existed and SQUEEZE THE ORANGES BY HAND. Karren opinterviews that there are six boys in there squeezing 1400 oranges, and that they need to pick up the pace, because they've missed the breakfast rush and are in danger of missing the lunch and dinner rushes as well. Edward complains that his arms are aching already, and the size of the To Be Squeezed pile doesn't fill him with confidence. The clock shows 8.45am, and Edward panics that they need to be selling now.

Speaking of selling, members of Team Venture have already hit the shopping centre at Canary Wharf, where they know they will be surrounded by people with no grasp of the value of everyday money (at least if my city boy ex-boyfriend is anything to go by) and will just assume that £65 is indeed a bargainous price for three strawberries and a piece of Edna's belly-button lint. Melody genially approaches a shopper, while Susan zones in mercilessly on a group of men, offering a discount if they all buy a pot. The sales are going well, as is the attribution of names, since at this point we discover that Blonde Woman Who Will Wear A Pearl Necklace At Some Point In The Future is Felicity, and Anonymous Brunette Woman is Natasha. Natasha's sales patter seems to be less effective than that of her cohorts, since she makes the mistake of asking people how they are, giving them the opportunity to shrill "fine, thanks!" and run right past. Rookie error. The pots are being sold for £2, it seems, and since they cost 33p each to make, the profit margins are indeed healthy. This approach is Yasmina Siadatan approved, I can tell. (Seriously, Yasmina is the benchmark for cost-to-profit ratios in food tasks, and probably always will be.) Felicity and Susan sell more fruit. Even Natasha sells some. Things seem to be going well. Susan notes the sheer amount of footfall in the area and things they could make more money if they were selling the pasta too.

Unfortunately, the pasta is still being worked on by Edna and Stony-Faced Blonde Woman Who Is Northern, It Seems (who will also exist in acronym form from now on until we learn her real name). SFBWWINIS thinks it tastes like "uncooked Ragu" and that they won't do as well with that as they will with the fruit. But, she adds, "I'm not from these parts and apparently you can sell them for £2.50." Brilliant. She's totally Nick from Twenty Twelve - "I don't know about you, but I'm from Yorkshire." She even cracks a smile at this point, but it's too late, I'm not renaming her now. Helen hopes they've not left it too late to get the pasta out.

Speaking of leaving things too late, the Ironic Segue Fairy shunts us over to Edward, counting bottles of orange juice, squeezed by the hands of Logic. In the kitchen, Glenn is stewing over Edward's absence and the subsequent lack of leadership. Glenn (Ward, Senior Design Engineer) interviews that this shows a lack of focus from the PM, and that someone needs to "man up" and sort it out - Glenn himself, apparently. He does this by clapping his hands and telling everyone that they need to get out and get selling because they don't want to miss the lunchtime trade. This is all good, but then he spoils it rather by publicly making a show of Edward, saying that he's doing his job for him and asking why he's bothering to wash things up. Edward retorts that Glenn needs to speak to him more respect. Jim intervenes with these immortal words: "I'll defuse the situation." I think Jim might have started narrating this episode out loud - perhaps he's after Mark Halliley's job. Either that, or it's some kind of verbal tic he can't shake, in which case I suspect he'd make a terrible confidence trickster: "I am going to cause a distraction while Sticky Fingers McGee runs off with your watch." Anyway, Jim pulls Glenn away to calm down, and Edward, growing increasingly squeaky, tells the others that they have to be away within five minutes because they can't lose any more sales time. Soupy juicy montage. Jim declares it "good, hearty soup". Their pricing structure is £2 for soup and £2 for orange juice, at which point all the northerners on my Twitter feed shrieked "HOW MUCH?!?!" [Heh. As one of said Northerners. I still wear shoes, for heaven's sake - Rad] Logic departs, in more ways than one.

Lunchtime. Edna, SFBWWINIS and Woman Who Has Not Yet Spoken A Single Word are in a taxi, with Edna on the phone to Melody, telling her that they will be sending 100 vegetable pastas and 100 fruit pots to her location in Canary Wharf. This exchange is surprisingly drama-free.

Logic, meanwhile, are setting up outside Liverpool Street station, another prime spot if you want to accost people with far too much cash to burn. Tom turns all town crier, bellowing out that they're selling "the freshest tomato soup that you will find in the area" and juggling with oranges while he does this. Who knew he was such a multihyphenate? I may love him quite a lot. Jim (Eastwood, Sales And Marketing Manager) says that it's going well and they're selling a lot of orange juice. Sales seem to be brisk, and Gavin takes advantage of being incredibly handsome to sell some orange juice to some young women. Elsewhere, Leon, Glenn, Edward and George Lamb are the peripatetic sub-team, targeting offices in the West End. Edward, bizarrely, explains to an office worker how they managed to release this magic orange juice from its spherical fruity prison. She looks at him like she can't decide if he's high, insane or both. To be honest, neither can I. The ringleader here is George Lamb (real name: Vincent), who valiantly tries to sell on the USP that he's brought along some handsome men when in reality he's actually brought Glenn, Edward and Leon, and all the properly fit male contestants are in Liverpool Street. Karren interviews with barely contained disgust that Vincent has gone straight for the women with the smarm offensive and it seems to have worked. Vincent harasses a few more office workers and then his team returns to the Apprentaxi. He calls Jim for a progress report, and Jim informs him that they've made £160. Edward replies that (definitely not using his LAME accountancy skills or anything) between the two sub-teams they've made £230, so they're £20 away from breaking even.

The second Venture subteam (Helen, Edna, SFBWWINIS and WWHNYSASW) are setting up outside Euston station. Not content with having already been likened to one sitcom character, SFBWWINIS aligns herself with Twinkle from dinnerladies when she struggles to write the menu on the board because she can't spell "vegetable". SFBWWINIS embarks on the world's most terrifying sales pitch ("G'wan, be my first sale. £2.50." - all spoken in a highly sinister monotone and with the sort of body language that suggests she'll shiv you if you even think about declining this offer) while Helen's over-effusive manner isn't doing the business either. SFBWWINIS (now identified as Ellie Reed, Managing Director, Construction Recruitment) interviews that the vegetable pasta is not selling well at all, because they missed the lunchtime traffic and now they have to rebrand it as something to take home to eat as a fairly depressing tea.

Back at Canary Wharf, Felicity is being superlatively obnoxious ("Have you had any fresh fruit yet today? No? Then thank God I'm here!") Susan has sold out at this point, and they need more stock which hasn't arrived, so Melody phones Edna. It appears that Ellie is still in the process of portioning it all out, and Melody is not happy that it isn't there with them in time for when they need it. Edna bitches that she just wants to get back to selling, and once the call is over, Melody relays the conversation to her teammates (Felicity in particular really overdoing the slack-jawed shock) and they decide to pick up their stuff and move on.

Suddenly there is only one hour left to sell. Melody demonstrates superhuman abilities when she manages to get a mobile signal whilst driving through an underground tunnel, and uses these witch powers to call Edna and tell her that the other sub-team are coming to Euston. Edna: "Why?" Helen upsells one man to the "meal deal" which is the fruit pot and the vegetable pasta together for £5, saving a princely £1 on their individual retail prices. Also, crucially: it gives you something to wash down the taste of half-baked Bolognese afterwards. I'm relieved to see at this point that someone has at least corrected Ellie's misspelling of "vegetable" on the board - knowing that someone on this team cares about spelling makes it easier to support their inevitable victory.

Liverpool Street. Trade appears to be brisk. A man points out to Tom that his soup is cold, and Tom asks if he would prefer a hot one. I think the cunning business tactic here would have been to simply rebrand the product as gazpacho. Alex (Britez Cabral, Estate Agent) is ladling out soup in the van and fondly remembering when he used to work in an ice-cream stall, while identifying his role in the team as being largely backroom support. Tom points out that Alex has remained in the van throughout the task. "He's a salesman, that's what he does, he works in property. I thought he'd be...better." It's the baffled shrug that he delivers alongside that last word that really makes it sting.

Melody's quartet arrives at Euston and the price of the pasta is dropped to £1. Unsurprisingly, trade picks up. Melody instructs Ellie and Edna to keep boxing up the pasta so they can sell it, and Edna complies with barely-suppressed murderous rage. Pasta is now apparently 50p. You just know that Ellie's thinking "that's still a rip-off. Where I come from, you can buy a three-bedroomed house for that." Edna bristles to the camera about Melody suddenly telling her how to do her job "when we've been doing this quite efficiently all day long". Except, y'know, the part where they failed to dispatch the stock that they'd promised over to Canary Wharf, which is basically the entire reason Melody came here in the first place. I'm not feeling massively sympathetic towards Edna here.

Team Logic. Tom looks for a buyer for his last pot of soup, while Vincent and Edward charge around offices to shift their last two bottles of OJ. Over at Team Venture, they too are trying to shift the last of their stock. Finally, at 4pm, the task is over. Edward gives his team a congratulatory debriefing, which once again involves the phrase "roll with the punches". You know how earlier I asked where these punches would be coming from? I think they'll be coming from approximately 7.8 million viewers of BBC1. Hilariously, Leon totally takes the piss out of him for constantly saying that, and Edward doesn't even realise.

The teams take a fleet of Apprentaxis back to the boardroom, while Edward marvels at how the orange juice just sold, and how it was totally a viable business. In another car, Melody smirks that people will indeed pay £2.50 for fruit salad.

Boardroom. NotFrances sends them through. Nick and Karren are there waiting, obviously, while Sralan is late again. His timekeeping is getting offensively poor. Upon his eventual arrival, he reminds the team of the basic tenets of the task and turns first to Edward and Team Logic. Sralan asks if anyone else volunteered to be PM, and Gavin says that he expressed an interest, but that Edward was selected because he was so passionate. That's not entirely how I remember that scene playing out, but okay. Sralan asks the team for feedback, and Tom - adorably - raises his hand. I think he's going to need to jettison some of that politeness if he's ever going to get a word in edgeways, because Glenn doesn't bother and just starts talking, saying that he questioned the random decision-making. Tom agrees that he likes to be organised - for example, to know what they're trying to buy before they go shopping - while Ed openly admitted that he was going to work it out in the cab on the way there. Sralan enquires about the product, and Edward explains that they went for soups and juices because they were simple and straightforward and provided a good margin. Remember? That margin he wasn't going to think about? Sralan asks how much they spent, and Edward says they spent all of it, mostly on oranges and leaving about £40 for tomatoes. Karren interjects here and says how lucky Edward was that Jim was around to get the ingredients they needed. Edward bluffs that he "handpicked" Jim because he knew he was the best man to lead the soup team. Sralan cracks what I think is a "Souperman" joke, but I could be wrong.

Sralan asks at what point they decided what to charge for it, and Edward blasts out a load of non-sequiturs about how his business strategy was "bottom up, not top down" and he didn't know how many he was going to sell. "When I was producing, that was production, and selling was going to take care of itself." God, even Melissa Cohen made more sense than this. Sralan asks him for a yes-or-no as to whether they gave any thought to the selling price prior to actually selling, and Edward blathers about how the selling price is something that they could change, presumably depending on the market. Thankfully, Vincent jumps in here, realising that this approach is making them look dreadful, and that they worked out they needed to sell 250 juices to get the investment back. Hang on, wasn't the orange juice £2? So they only needed to sell 125 to get the investment back, surely? Sralan scoffs at this and turns back to Edward, asking him if it's true that he was part of one of the top accountancy firms in the country. Edward, either high as a kite or just plain unable to read a room: "I don't fit the mould." Sralan points out that this answer is not relevant to the question that was asked, or indeed to his interests. Sralan proceeds gently, trying to establish if this means that Edward has audited companies and knows how they work. Edward: "It's all there. All my experience is all there." I'm glad something's all there, because I'm fairly sure Edward is emphatically not. Sralan asks him to stop being such a weirdo and answer the bladdy question properly, and opines that the team name Logic is not very appropriate.

We turn to Venture, and Melody identifies herself as team leader, saying she's always been a person for taking big risks. She also takes credit for the team name, taking great delight in informing Sralan that it was "voted the most popular" while Helen sits there wishing she'd taken the time to invest in a hobby she could be thinking fondly of right now. Sralan: "We've heard the Melody, now let's hear from the chorus!" Groan. Felicity speaks up for Melody's good qualities as a team leader, and Melody explains that she has a style of leadership that takes other people's opinions on board. Ellie explains that their products were fruit pots and "healthy pasta". Sralan asks them the same question as the guys about whether they planned their pricing structure ahead of time, and Melody says that they had a structure in place, pointing out that Edna was in charge of finance. Sralan asks if Edna is a finance professional, and she asserts that she is not. Melody, condescendingly: "She volunteered for that role, didn't you?" Edna, with acid shooting out of her jaw: "Well, I was volunteered, but I didn't shirk away from it."

Sralan points out that they only spent £170 of the £250 he gave them, and Melody says that they thought they could increase profit by keeping costs down. Sralan counters, however, that he gave them £250 and expected them to use it all - he made an investment and he wanted a big return, which ought to have required using as much of the seed money as possible.

Time for some results. We begin with Team Logic, and Karren announces that they took £339.20 on the juice, and £92.93 on the soup, for a total of £432.13. Nick declares that Venture only made £37.28 on their vegetable pasta, but their fruit salads brought in £555.05, giving them a total of £592.33, making them the clear winners. Sralan points out that that's a threefold margin on £150 worth of purchasing (which isn't what they spent, but whatever), so it's a shame they didn't deliver that size of a margin on £250. Their prize is a champagne reception back at the house, while the men's prize is to come back tomorrow and have someone fired.

Reward montage. Champagne. Back at the house. Canapes. Melody congratulates everyone on working so hard. Felicity offers Melody a thank you in return for being a great PM. In a private confessional, Susan opines that Melody's skills as a PM have been exaggerated and she didn't think she was that brilliant. She might well have a point, but Susan's kind of insufferable, so the message does tend to get drowned under my unwillingness to listen to anything she has to say. They have a toast to Team Venture.

Loser Café. Gavin states unreservedly that the women beat them out the water. Vincent thinks the problem is that they didn't produce enough orange juice in the first place. Tom doesn't know why that is, but perhaps the malfunctioning juicer played a part. Outside, Gavin interviews that people didn't pay attention to the details, so things got a bit chaotic. "It was all a bit of a punt," he finishes. Well, only one letter out. Edward interviews obliviously that he'll make an excellent business partner to Sralan, and seems to think that the act of being PM in the first-week is enough by itself to prove his worth as a contestant. Tell that to Ben Stanberry. Or Andy Jackson. Or Dan Harris. Tea is drunk, mournfully.

Logic return to the boardroom with their rolly-cases, and NotFrances sends them through. Leon desperately needs the hair tidied up at the back of his neck. Sralan's opening gambit is to remind Edward of his application form, where he wrote that if his team lost, he would blame the PM. Yeah, oops. Edward points out that he did qualify this statement with "if I am the project manager, the gloves are coming off." I'm not sure that really salvages the situation all that effectively. Sralan attempts to summarise Edward's approach to the task, and if I may paraphrase his own paraphrasing, it appears to be "buy a crapload of cheap shit and worry about the details later". Edward talks himself in a lot of circles here, but his defence seems to be that he wanted to showcase his management skills first and foremost, and that he knew he could make a profit on orange juice. Sralan asks the rest of the team if anyone else was aware that this was the plan. Glenn says that there was "a rough plan", but there were few details and it was never developed as the task progressed. Karren points out that she didn't see anything written down the entire time, so she thinks Edward was keeping his ideas to himself. Gavin, whose eyes become hypnotically dark in the boardroom, chimes in that it was disappointing as a team to be kept in the dark. Jim describes the whole process as operating on a "need-to-know basis", which doesn't really work because arguably the team did need to know and Edward still wasn't telling them. Jim does, however, recover quite admirably with this assessment of Edward's leadership: "It was 'leave it with me, I know what we're doing with the oranges, what I need you to do because I think you're [pause to gather the appropriate level of bile for the next three words] the soup man is to look after the soup team, I'm going to give you very little money, I need you to buy a lot, I need you to convert soup and go out and make sure you can shift it.'" Jim summarises that he was capable of all of this, but he would've liked more information about what they were actually heading towards. Tom adds that the lack of planning cost them badly, and that the irony here was Edward trying to prove that he wasn't just an accountant to the detriment of all of the financial aspects of the task. Sralan smirks that this is the most sensible assessment of the situation he's heard all day.

Edward attempts to save himself once again by citing his biggest flaw as overambition, saying that he intended to bring back £1000, and totally would've done had they been able to squeeze all those oranges in time. Sralan's all "coulda woulda shoulda gouda, my friend." Edward accepts that he underestimated the manpower needed to squeeze the juice, and the team are in agreement that they could easily have sold more orange juice if they had it. Sralan offers them the results of some number crunching - they bought 1400 oranges, and could've made 470 bottles from that. They actually made 156 bottles, so there were clear inefficiencies, it seems. Karren leaps into action here and points out that Leon was in charge of the juicers. Leon says that the motors might have burnt out at the crucial time, and Karren informs him that the kitchen staff were very clear that the juicer breakdown was the result of "mishandling". This would be an excellent time for Leon to bring up Edward's interference in the juicing process, but he does not.

Since Leon's now been activated, Sralan remembers that Leon is a "Fast Food Marketing Entrepreneur", and therefore this should've been right in his wheelhouse - so what was he doing all day? Juicing, bottling and labeling, it seems. Alex is asked what he did next, and he explains that he was in charge of the "fixed unit" at Liverpool Street, where he tidied things up and poured out soup and occasionally sold things. Sralan clarifies that Alex sold nine units, in fact. Alex is unperturbed by this, as he says that he was part of a lot of other sales, and adds that customers want to buy from a clean, tidy unit, which doesn't just happen by itself. Karren goes in for the kill, saying that she just saw him cleaning and cutting bread - everyone else sold, and Alex didn't. I think that's the basic flaw in his strategy here - I agree 100% (or 110%, since this is The Apprentice) that doing backroom support and keeping the place clean is an important part of this, but there's no reason why anyone had to be on that duty all day. Since you're being judged on numbers, you probably want to spend at least an hour or two proving you've got sales skills. Alex insists that if there had been no back office, there would've been no front line sales. "Good place to hide," Nick chips in. Shut up, Nick, you were following the other team. The winning team, remember? Karren follows the losers and you follow the winners, this is how the show works.

Sralan asks Edward who's coming back, and he decides that the people primarily responsible for the loss are Gavin and Leon, so the others are dismissed. Tom apologises towards Sralan on his way out, and I think you can take this polite schoolboy approach a bit too far. In the foyer, Vincent and Tom both touch their hair in exactly the same way at exactly the same time, and since I once read a bullshit pop-psychology book that said you mirror the body language of people you find attractive, I have decided that I am a Vincent/Tom shipper. They are my official OTP for the series, so don't be surprised if subsequent recaps just end up as slash fiction.

Gavin, Edward and Leon are temporarily sent out while Sralan, Karren and Nick converse. Sralan, in what I think is actually a genuinely funny, off-the-cuff zinger, says that Edward reminds him of "a very slow internet line". Ha! He's a good candidate on paper, though. Nick thinks Edward hasn't "accounted" for himself very well, ho ho ho. Karren (correctly, I think) thinks Gavin has been brought back because he challenged Edward's leadership right from the outset, and that Leon was brought back because the broken juicers made him an easy target. She reminds "Alan" that the bottom line is he has to go into business with one of these people. NotFrances is invoked to send them all back in [What's with them giving us yet ANOTHER NotFrances this series, by the way? - Rad].

Sralan opens by asking Edward why he brought Gavin back in. Edward, looking like he's only just realised where he is, says that Gavin claimed he put himself forward for PM, which Edward doesn't think was actually the case. Gavin clarifies that he said he was willing to be PM -- "very spinelessly," Edward interjects -- and that he buys and sells products for his business, and that a vote was taken to decide the PM. I think that scene was pretty murky - I always got the impression that Gavin was more trying to establish Edward's suitability for the role rather than stake his own bid for PM, but when things took that turn he didn't step away from it, so I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. Edward disagrees, however, and thinks that Gavin didn't get voted as PM because he was so sheepish in his approach. Sralan asks Leon whether Gavin put himself forward or not, and Leon dithers for a bit before conceding that he thinks "his hand went up, yeah". Leon does, however, make the interesting point that Edward didn't ask what anyone else did in the business world before putting himself forward as PM.

Sralan asks Edward if it's fair to say he took an immediate dislike to Gavin. Edward counters that he had a feeling Edward was "not a doer", though Karren refutes this, saying that Gavin's sales tally was the second highest. Edward falters that he didn't have that feedback from Jim. Karren: "You should've." Ooh, BURN. Gavin thinks Edward was more interested in being PM than in actually doing the job properly, which I think is a pretty accurate assessment, and adds that any feedback that was offered was summarily dismissed. Edward tries the "I had the guts to take on the job" approach, and Gavin agrees that this was gutsy of him, but that he didn't deliver in the role. Edward, grasping at straws faster than a cleaner in McDonald's, says that not only is he the youngest (Gavin, sarcastically: "Well done!"), he's also the shortest of the team members. This is what we in the recapping trade refer to as a Double Wotherspoon. Leon is openly laughing at Edward at this point, as is Sralan. Edward claims that he had a "motley crew" of men and turned them into a team who had no negative feedback, though Sralan points out that he's getting quite a lot of it now.

Now Sralan wonders why Leon is here, and Edward says that it's because he feels Leon cost them time in the kitchen, and while he doesn't have specific numbers to quote, he feels Leon was a weak salesman. Leon says that he didn't feel that individual sales totals were the point of this task, and that he knows he can sell because he does that in his own business. Sralan asks Leon to "inspire" him because he doesn't have a lot to go on so far. Leon blathers on a bit about his good business instincts, and when Sralan asks him to state who was responsible for the failure of this task, he picks Edward without hesitation, because he lacks entrepreneurial flair and is an accountant. Sralan points out that lots of big cheeses started out as accountants, at which point Leon backpedals that he didn't know that. It's not a massive leap of logic to make, surely? After ensuring that no one in the room is guilty of accountantphobia (apart from Edward, who has a pretty nasty case of internalised accountantphobia), it's time to decide who goes.

Sralan doesn't know why Gavin is here, because he sold well and he's far too handsome to fire this early on, so Gavin is safe. Leon hasn't been that impressive so far: he hasn't shown any spark and already has his own business, and he screwed up with production. Edward showed enthusiasm in taking on the PM role, but had no expertise. As it happens, Sralan watched Glee this week and learned that you shouldn't be ashamed of the things that define you (at which point he strips off his shirt and jacket to reveal a fitted white t-shirt with "IRASCIBLE BLADDY TYCOON" printed on it). [Bum chin? BUM CHIN? Fuck off Mr Schue. Fuck the FUCK right off - Rad]. Edward squeaks that he's not ashamed of being an accountant (he totally is), but he wanted to show that he was more than that, which is why he put emphasis on leadership. Which he fucked up. Excellent strategy, Ed. Sralan says that as an expert in electronics, he can walk into a factory and "BANG! See things that other people can't see." I'm not sure if that's being an electronics expert or simply having ESP. Here, simple mathematics were needed, and Edward refused to use those skills. Sralan cites Edward's REZ-HOO-MAY (yay, first REZ-HOO-MAY of the series) as saying he was Sralan's dream, when really he turned out to be a nightmare. Edward? You're fired.

Edward gets up to leave, and Sralan reminds him that there's no shame in being an accountant - he just needs to put his paws up, 'cos he was born that way baby. Leon and Gavin are sent back to the house. There is no post-firing hugging, merely some perfunctory handshakes. Coatwatch: Edward's is large, thick and dark, and accessorised with a grey and maroon scarf. In his taxinterview, Edward thinks Sralan just didn't see what he wanted from him, and he can accept that. He's only 25, the world is his oyster, and -- wait for it -- "roll with the punches".

Back at the house, the contestants are of course speculating who will be getting fired. Vincent thinks Leon might be in danger because of the whole juicing thing. Gavin bursts through the door in a very elaborate entrance, and everyone cheers to see him returning with Leon. Gavin tells them all that Edward got very passionate about the situation, but ultimately wasn't quite up to defending himself properly. Vincent suggests a toast to Edward as the first to fall, and the others agree.

One down, fourteen to go [fifteen? - Rad] [I was working on the assumption that the person who actually wins doesn't get included in the count - Steve]. Next time - the show is dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century with a "design a smartphone app" task. Edna tells Susan to shut the fuck up, clearly not before time, and a team that shouldn't lose loses. Joel will have all the gory details for you.

A few points of housekeeping before I sign off - since the episode itself never revealed a few of the naming details, I shall fill them in. Vincent's surname is Disneur, making him officially this year's best-named candidate, and hopefully giving me ample opportunity to make a "Vincent Disneur want to do this" joke at some point in the future. Felicity's last name is Jacksons, Helen's is Milligan, Natasha's is Scribbins and Woman Who Has Not Yet Spoken A Single Word (and apparently made it the entire way through the episode without doing so) was Zoe Beresford, though I understand if you didn't even notice she was there. Until next time!

How Stella got her groove back

2010-12-21T10:23:00.000-08:00

The final

Broadcast 19 December 2010

We’ve had eleven episodes of backstabbing, bitching and Baggs the Brand, and tonight, either Stella or Chris will be the lucky recipient of a soulless job with NotAmstrad. Welcome to the Apprentice final!

Dara O’Briain welcomes us, which is a little jarring, as if we’re about to have one of those US Apprentice-style reveals in the studio. We’re not, we’re just having You’re Fired tacked onto the main show to make it look as though they are one and the same. They’re not, and all that happens in YF is the runner-up hogs the airtime with everyone fawning over them, the winner gets to say about two words, the Junior Apprenti are wheeled out and Arjun’s voice has broken, Amanda Platell gets threatened with a pointy weapon (oh, if only) and we learn that Nick, Karren and Sralan’s best bits all smooshed together don’t add up to one tenth of a Margaret. So we won’t be bothering with that. Onto the srs bsnss of, well, bsnss, then.

Credits. Still no joy for Steady Eddies and Cautious Carols. Steady Stellas and Cautious Chrises though, are A-OK.

Previously on The Apprentice, we had the interviews. Stubaggs and Jamie were ripped to shreds by the rotties, Joanna blubbed and got a stringed-up version of the theme tune, whilst Stella and Chris remained rather unflappable and went through to the final.

Stella and Chris taxinterview about how happy they are; Chris in his usual monotone. I think this may be why I don’t get the Chris Bates lust everyone else has – that drone. Oh, and his slightly angular features.

The phone rings at apprentitowers, and Chris answers, in a dressing gown. Gone are the days of Simon Ambrose and his green pants. He lies about how excited he is, whilst Stella lies about how much it would break her if she didn’t win. They are finally given a cab each to the Langham hotel (And in these TOUGH! ECONOMIC! TIMES! Scandalous!) where they meet Sralan, Nick and Karren in the empty bar.

The returning candidates this time are: Christopher, Paloma, Shibby, Melissa, Liz, Joanna and Jamie. No Sandeesh, weirdly, no Stubaggs, possibly because Sralan still had the hump with him, no Joy because no-one even noticed her first time around, and no Dan, because presumably he’d suck the life out of everything so hard. Chris is first to pick and goes for Jamie. Stella then picks Joanna, Chris Liz, and Stella Christopher. Then Chris picks Alex and Stella Melissa, which has really got to smart for Paloma – Alex and Melissa over her? She really must have made herself unpopular in that house. To add insult to, well, insult, Chris then picks Shibby over her. Shibby! Stella is landed with Paloma, which does mean she has a team that looks more awesome on paper than Chris’s but also has several times as many control freaks on it.

Their task is to make an alcoholic drink, design the bottle, design an ad campaign and pitch it, so it’s exactly the same as the last few finals. The final tasks are always a bit sucky, no? The product must retail at £20, and they have the luxury of three days to do it all in.

The voiceover tells us that alcohol is worth £40 billion, and they have to create a new spirit brand for the ‘over 25s’. I assume this is because 18-24 year olds aren’t allowed to be in drinks ads or have stuff directly marketed to them. Living in a university city I can vouch for how much of a joke that is, but anyway. [Ditto! I really did not know this which shows how well that stratergy has worked - Fiona]

Both Stella and Chris tell their teams they’re happy to have them back. Joanna suggests something with heritage, Stella asks if she means whiskey and Melissa talks about bourbon cocktails at bars she’s been to lately. Stella wants to appeal to everyone and worries women won’t like it. Oh, Stella. You disappoint me. Melissa says you can mix it with other things and it’s lovely.

Over on Chris’s team, Alex takes the lead in discussions, ruling out vodka because it’s reached its peak. Yes, ladies and gents, Alex and Melissa are the ones leading the discussion right now. Be afraid. They go for the idea of rum. Liz asks what gooseberry is like, as she’s only had it in a pie. Alex says pomegranate is the ‘hot fruit’ in the UK right now. [I can't hate Alex, that would be mean, but neither do I think he really knows anything about anything - Fiona] I can imagine pomegranate with vodka, but rum? Stella’s team are getting into the bourbon idea.

Stella’s team go to ‘a top end supermarket’ (which is Waitrose). They start looking at Disaronno when they’re talking about mixing old and new bottles. Really? I mean I love Disaronno, but the bottle hardly sells it.

Alex and Liz are tossing around British names eg crown, crown jewels. Liz wonders about colour, Chris doesn’t want to muck abaht with colour. They don’t say anything specific here. Chris opines that it’s not a good idea to ask someone to put their lips around the crown jewels. Heh. [*silence*- Fiona]

Stella likes the idea of something blue. A blue bourbon? I can’t see that flying. Gin, yes, vodka yes. Bourbon? Hell to the no. Paloma loves it, but Joanna says you’re happy when you’re blue. A whole genre of music feels misunderstood, right there. She then states that blue is gay. It is? I thought it was more the colour of terrible alcopops. But I guess a few gay people drink terrible alcopops. I dunno, boys help me out here? They then go to their marketing men (I think?) and start talking about honey and cinnamon, flavours entirely associated with the colour blue. The men hate the colour blue for the drink. Despite all the ‘let’s appeal to women’ spiel, there are no women here.

Chris looks up posh bottles of booze (that cost more than £20) and mentions that he wants a clear drink – but only to Jamie and Alex. He goes into a posh offy and floats the idea of ‘cube’ for a flavoured rum, or calling it cube3 – and having three flavours. The off-licence man doesn’t rate the idea at all. Also: three flavours? Hard work much?

In the taxi to meet the bottle designer, Stella’s team have no name. Stella looks lost as Paloma babbles about honey and spice sounding cheesy for a name, and puts on her thinking face. Paloma asks how she feels if a guy buys her a ‘honey and spice’. Stella: ‘drunk hopefully’. Hee.

Chris wants trilogy or trio. Get off the idea of three drinks, guys.

Stella is apparently team ‘Synergy’ as she has a folder with a sticky label with it written on. In the car they toss around ideas about young urban professionals and come up with the name Urbon (although Stella spells it Urboun in the car).

Melissa and Christopher are tasting honeyed bourbons and want something with a kick. The lab lady says they can add more honey notes or more vanilla notes. Christopher likes honey and cinnamon. Helpful.

Liz and Shibby are tasting their drink, of white rum, pomegranate and bitters. Liz pulls a face. Shibby tries to get himself more airtime by saying ‘so you spit rather than swallow’ as she spits it out. Crass. They both pull faces but declare it alright without much enthusiasm.

Chris also lacks a name. He’s fixated on the idea of three because it’s got three (main) ingredients. He asks for a pyramid, which is like a prism. Hmmm. A pyramid’s not that much like a prism, and neither is like a three sided shape, but anyway. Jamie agrees that the name Prism sounds cool, which is fair enough, I guess, albeit a little 80s. He starts babbling about his clear drink with its three elements, and we cut to the lab, where Liz is insisting the drink be pink. For all that is made of this pink vs clear thing later, we haven’t actually seen Chris tell Liz and Shibby to make the drink clear. He may have done, off-camera, but who’s to say? The lab lady asks if it’s a bit feminine. Shibby does a limp-wristed motion and says he’d drink a pink drink as pink’s the new blue. As we already know, blue = gay, so presumably they’re wanting the pink pound (so to speak). Chris calles them and asks if the colour is clear, Liz says no, it’s a watered down reddy pink. Chris says it sounds effeminate, Liz says it’s not pinky, it’s not girly. It so is. Shibby says it tastes great with Coke. [One bottle of fail for 'Apollo' - Fiona]

Pomegranate and Coke?? Karren looks fed up. Come on, Brady, pull off an eye roll at the very least!

Chris’s package seems to be a big pink triangle. Oh my…

Stella’s name is now ‘urbon’ and their designer uses a much nicer font than the designer of Chris’s bottle has used, with a plainish bottle.

The teams meet with some advertising standards people about the content of the ads. Stella’s team are told they’re not allowed to do bingey drinking so should looking for long drinks not shots.

Chris’s team talk about buying a girl a drink on a date. The ad lady says you’re not allowed to link drink to sexual success. Jamie says it’s not about that at all, it’s all about her eyes, lips, mouth and hearing her swallow. The woman is like ‘lips are sensual you doofus’. [Mrs Jamie is a lucky woman eh? - Fiona] Chris wants to know if they can have a raised eyebrow. The woman headdesks. Oh, she should just wait until she sees the finished product. Chris asks what they should wear. The man says they have to be clearly over 25 so should wear things ‘the older generation’ should wear. I’m used to being classed as the ‘older generation’ by my students, but now an ad man’s doing it, that’s just taking the piss, frankly. Chris asks if it should be cardigans and pipes and the ad people are all yeah, but without the pipe.
Chris is back in the house being flummoxed, as if you can’t use sex in an ad then what the hell can you do? To be fair, he has a point. Drink is there to a) get you laid, b) make you forget about a rubbish day, c) make you do silly things and often d) all of the above – yet you can’t do any of those things in an ad.
The bottles arrive. Stella’s team have thankfully gone for bourbon-coloured bourbon, no blue in sight. The main body of the bottle looks quite nice, with a raised font, but the neck and cap look a little, as my friend Phil put it, ‘like HP Sauce’. Chris’s bottle is a long pointy red thing with a silver top, which looks like a health and safety hazard [but an excellent addition to any bar fight - Fiona]. It also looks like it might be difficult to package and cost a lot to make -will this do for them like the extravagant perfume bottle did for Helene and Alex in series four? Also: Prism still sounds more vodka than rum – prism’s all glacial and cool and crisp like vodka, whilst rum tends to be all Carribean islands, sailors and pirates. Chris VTs that he’s the kind of person who thinks outside the box. Really?

At the ad shoot, and Chris’s team have a barman trying to make a cocktail, he sucks and is twitchy and doesn’t get the pomegranate seeds into the glass. Karren says they might not get it made in time. The concept for their ad, by the way? Three different friends (two women and a man) having a good time to represent the three aspects of their drink.

Stellas team also have a sucky bar person. Where did they hire these people? She says the women in the ad will order it to get over this (non-)issue about not women drinking bourbon, in a way that makes it sound like a SERIOUS SOCIAL PROBLEM. Then one of the men in the ad orders the drinks for everyone. Le sigh. Nick says that Stella’s team aren’t fighting. Do we need to add a ‘yet’?

Chris tried to motivate his models by saying ‘yeah’ and trying to be hip as he gets them to ‘imagine’ they are in a club. An empty club. In daylight. Oh dear.
We see photos of what I take to be Stella’s kids in the house. The house looks a lot tidier now the others have left. As they head off in the cabs, we see a delivery van with ‘prism’ written on. Nice coincidence there.

Stella needs to write her speech and she and Paloma disagree about whether to say young or youthful professionals.

Over at the other team, Jamie says Chris is too monotone. No shit Sherlock. Jamie tries to get him to intonate. Fails. Jamie’s all ‘we want 25-35 year olds who drink at home’ (check!) and ‘in high end drinking establishments’ (erm, do you count Wetherspoons and the local indie-rock dive where most of the clientele make us feel young as high-end?)

Chris’s room has bacofoil masks on the wall, which seem to evoke the 1980s’ obsession with Pierrots and othersuch gaudy theatrical décor. OK, hands up, I did like Pierrots at the time as well. But Chris Bates (I keep wanting to type BATES here) WASN’T EVEN BORN.

Stella is trying to run through her speech. Joanna says Stella needs to do market research (at this stage of the game?) then snips at Stella for daring to look at Paloma. Paloma, Melissa and Joanna start bitching incoherently and Chris whines that he wants to hear Stella’s speech. His ears are freakishly big.

At the Prism launch, people are handling the bottle, which is looking cumbersome. It can’t be easy to pour. ‘Life in a Northern Town’ plays (or is it the Dario G ‘Sunchyme’ song that samples it?) with three terrible townie dancers.

Chris’s speech tells us there’s a huge demand for rum based cocktails, as we cut to a man drinking it and pulling a face. Their print ad looks like it’s straight out of 1983. I can’t work out if this is because their ad designer sucked, or if it’s a deliberate retro nod to those of us in their ’25-35’ age bracket who are a bit nostalgic for those times, even if we were busy playing with My Little Ponies rather than drinking Campari. The barman throws seeds all over the place, and despite the advertising standards people asking them not to link the drink with sex, the concept of ‘three friends’ turns out to be essentially a threesome in the toilets of an empty bar. Classy. Still, the slogan that 'Prism reflects every side of you' is a good one.

Chris is asked a question – the bottle would look good in a backlit bar but what about in a retail environment with the points? Chris says it’s designed to be taller than its competitors. That’s all well and good, but it’s not going to fit on shop shelves, is it? Never mind it potentially being a pain to package and transport, and it will certainly never fit into an optic. I may be overthinking a mde-up product here, I grant you. The tram go backstage, where their dancers are all huddled around in thick winter coats. Oh, the party brand image, so hollow and lacking in substance.

The Urbon launch has some male dancers some kind of sub-JLS type dance. I do wish this show would stop with the dancers in the finales. Their ad features cheesy metrosexuals who can’t act, with Hammond organ music in the background. It’s not a triumph, but at least it’s not using pomegranates spilling their load as a metaphor for grubby toilet sex or whatever it was Chris’s ad was doing.

Some woman in the crowd is incredulous that the bottle is both masculine and feminine, and Stella’s all, yeah you sexist, everyone can drink it. She’s then asked about whether it just appeals to city folk (/smug cunts) and responds, rather awesomely that she’s planning to move to the country if this takes off and will be sipping Urbon there.

Some people in the crowd say Stella presented better but the other drink tasted nicer, as Urbon was overspiced. Someone else says Prism would work well in a backlit bar.

Boardroom time!

Stella talks about doing a classic with a new spin for both genders but they didn’t know what the name would be when they went to bottle design. Neither did Chris’s team, but this isn’t mentioned. Sralan said that would have helped. Stella talks about how they essentially winged it. Sralan says it’s a good name but the drink tasted a bit strong without a mixer. Stella admits it was, and says that she delegated that (as did Chris). Sralan says maybe she should have gone to taste it, but Stella points out that Melissa and Christopher drink the stuff and she doesn’t so they’d be better placed to tell. Fair point, Sralan, fair point Stella. Surely people talking sense in the boardroom isn’t right?

Sralan says there was a lot of criticism about the colour of Prism at the launch, and suggests people thought it was not a male product. Chris says Liz and Shibby were asked to do a clear drink (or were asked in his head at least, like when your mum thinks that by thinking she’s told you something she’s actually done it) but went for natural colouring. Sralan gets a quick pop at Shibby in before they move onto Chris’s monotone delivery. Nick says it got a bit better. Shibby says Chris can take five words to say something, not twenty. Sralan claims that he likes that, despite claiming only a couple of weeks ago that Stubaggs’ field of ponies made total sense. Joanna says Stella’s adapted well to the tasks, and Christopher says she’s cool and level headed. Alex fails in his act of Team Chris solidarity and says they are both level headed and Sralan should take both of them – he would. Like Alex is ever going to be in the position of employing people. Sorry, a bit below the belt, BUT TRUE.

Sralan likes the three-sided bottle, three elements thing but thinks Stella’s bottle looks a little too much like a vinegar. He likes the concept and name, though.

He sends them out to talk to Nick and [insert long pause while he remembers her name]Karren. Karren bigs up her woobie Chris and Nick bigs up Stella. I can’t really call Stella anyone’s woobie, can I?

NotFrances sends them both back in. Sralan tells them to be proud of themselves and then they get to plead. As an aside, do we know if they did the requisite ‘work for NotAmstrad for ages’ thing this time around given there was such a long gap between filming and the series being shown? They clearly filmed this boardroom then, not now, given how both candidates’ appearances have changed (well, a bit) in the interim.

Stella says she is consistent, proactive and drives things, and has the best task record. Sralan says Stella has experience , 10 years on Chris. Chris says he’s done well in tasks (given how often he was on the losing side so often I’m not sure this is a wise move) and talks about selling the tie dress mostly. He then, ridiculously, tries to bring out the ‘I’m like you Lord Sugar’ card, despite being the one who is probably LEAST like Sralan, at least since Raleigh left. (And I didn’t even see Raleigh in the You’re Hired audience. SHAMEFUL).

Sralan is unsure if he wants someone with experience or someone young to go ‘through the hassle of training with’. That’s kind of the point of an apprentice, Sralan. Stella points out that she likes her current job and has left her family to do this, which proves she wants the job. She then goes a fraction nuts (but not full-on Paloma nuts) and says she has the passion Chris doesn’t have. Chris interjects and says she can talk about herself all she wants but to leave him out. Stella dismisses him with a ‘thank you’. Oh, Stella, stay classy. [I really thought she might blow it at the last minute and trying to diss Chris at this point seemed pointless - Fiona]

Sralan says Stella is well liked and works hard and has had a tragic background determination. Chris has some great entrepreneurial ideas (but would lose you 20% of your business). Sralan does a hire tease by saying he won’t worry about the other candidate, making out he’s chosen Chris, but no, the winner is Stella.

We don’t see Chris’s coat, but Stella’s is the same boring black business jacket she had on already. Stella taxintrerviews about how she’s just ‘Little Stella’ from a humble background, which she doesn’t really need to do as she’s got the job now. It’s not revealed what super-duper task Sralan has given her in NotAmstrad, sadly.

And that’s our lot for another year! Join us next series, unless we have been karmically retributed by then!

Third nipples and key cogs

2010-12-17T07:24:00.000-08:00

Previously on The Apprentice, the teams (by now who can possibly tell who’s a Synergist and who’s an Appolonian?) had to run tours in London and make loads of lovely wonga. Like so many tasks, success or failure rested entirely on getting one person on side, in this case the awesome smug bitch from the tourist centre, which Chris Bates succeeded in doing by making the daring innovative masterstroke (massive glaring miscalculation that fluked into success) of giving the tourist centre 20% of all his team’s takings. Chris, Jamie and Joanna won, despite the fact that their tour was a ghouls and ghosts tour, in the day time, on a bus, and consisted solely of Jamie talking about Sweeney Todd as if he actually existed for about fifteen hours and revealing that the Thames is the second biggest river in London, the clock on the Tower of Westminster has a width of 20 diameters, and that that building that looks like a gherkin is called the Gherkin because it looks like a gherkin. Stella took her tourists round the East End and showed them, like, piss-stained mattresses and used needles and bankrupt nail salons, but also sang Knees Up Mother Brown, thereby deftly disproving the idea that she is too cold and corporate, the only criticism levelled at her the whole series. And isn’t that what really matters? The failure rested entirely on Liz and Stubagg’s utter inability to sell tickets, so Stella was never going anywhere. Despite Liz being smart, competent and selling £100,000 worth of baby death thermometer suits, Sralan got utterly snowballed by Stubaggs’ display of ‘I’m just like you Sralan, I’m an entrepreneur’ and ‘I’m a field of ponies’ and Liz was fired for not being dynamic (for not being nearly as exciting a prospect for evisceration at interviews as Stubaggs).

For yes, indeed, it is time for interviews, and as has become traditional at Apprentbitch Towers, I’m here to guide you through.

Jamie answers the phone, Stella wakes Stubags in a rather maternal fashion. Stella says she’s never failed an interview, Jamie thinks it will be long, hard and drilling (that’s what SHE said!), Chris thinks that Sralan would have fired him by now, and is proud of his CV. With seven victories, Joanna has the best record, but she’s nervous because she’s not done many high level interviews, and says she’s been seen as ‘just the cleaner from Leicester’. Joanna criticises Jamie’s suit and says Chris looks better, and Jamie likens Chris to John Major (‘John Major was called John Major because he was a major; he was also the first Prime Minister of London’).

Jamie sells property in Cyprus. He thinks his abilities are a little bit ahead of everyone else. No, that doesn’t quite make sense. Stella left school with no qualifications, grew up on the biggest council estate in Europe, but now heads up a division at a major Japanese bank. Stubaggs has a telecoms business on the Isle of Man, and believes that when Sralan said he saw a bit of himself in Stubaggs, that ‘that was the biggest compliment you can pay somebody’. Hmm. I think ‘nice shoes’ probably beats being likened to Sralan. [Getting ID for me everytime - Fiona]

They arrive at Viglen. The candidates wait half way up a staircase, Sralan yells at them a bit, three are getting fired, they go back down the staircase. Stella says ‘We’re gonna be here allllllll day’, with much relish. The interviewers this year: Claude Littner (global troubleshooter), who offers Chris a chance for a tough interview or an easy one without bullshit (Chris opts for no bullshit); Alan Watts, litigation lawyer, is told by Stella that she’s not here to make friends (HOORAY!); Viglen boss Bordun Tchatchuk pulls Jamie to shreds over his use of the phrase ‘solely responsible’ and Jamie bitches about the ‘smallest hole’ being picked up on (you say smallest hole, I say outright lie); and, finally, last but most, MARGARET MOUNTFORD, bitches! Stubaggs goes in and says ‘Margaret!’ and ‘pleased to meet you’, (which, I have told you cretins before, it’s ‘How do you do?’ because pleased to meet you is too informal) and she takes him to task. He says he feels like he knows her, she’s all ‘you don’t’ and he calls her Miss Mountford.

Margaret reads out Jamie’s CV (by CV I mean application form at all points), that the most interesting thing about him is his third nipple, and then that the biggest lie he’s told is that he has a third nipple. Margaret asks ‘is that supposed to make me laugh?’ and then calls Jamie puerile. He clearly doesn’t know what that word means. It’s awesome.

Alan tells Stubaggs that he will do anything and has no ethics, and that the worst lie Stubaggs told was that a competitor was going bust. Alan says not only is it dishonest, it’s defamatory. Stubaggs says he has integrity, but that in an interview he’d be like ‘Hire me, not those twats’ and Alan says ‘You should be saying hire me because of X, Y, Z’ and not worrying about the other people. Stubaggs thinks it’s over, but Alan comes back to the defamation, and Stubaggs tries to brush it off with ‘We’re all young once, we all do silly things’. That gets about as short shrift as you’d imagine. In the waiting room, Stubaggs makes a lol about ‘I’ve got the job!’ and explains how what you say has to tally with your form. Stella says that it depends on how you filled out your form (ie, don’t bullshit and tell lies) and Stubaggs says he promises that Stella won’t sail through without criticism. Stella’s face is all ‘We’ll see about that’.

Stella meets Claude. He asks what she’s accomplished in. She says she’s got ten years of banking experience, and Claude tries to be all ‘what you switching for then?’ and Stella’s like ‘I came in with no GCSEs and no experience and worked my way up and am awesome’. Claude says that she’ll be switching from a corporate atmosphere to an entrepreneurial one (and for goodness sake, it’s still a CEO type position for a company that’s part of a multi multi million portfolio of businesses; she’s not going to be opening a whelk stall or selling dusters door to door); and she says that she can create income and run something and not just assist in the process. Claude actually says ‘okay’ and drops the matter, which should kind of indicate how well she dealt with it all. They all ask how it went. Stella says ‘good’. Jamie asks her to elaborate and Stella just says ‘good’ again. All the other candidates look kind of freaked out by Stella’s implacable calm. [She just psyched all of them out, interviewers included - Fiona]

Bordun meets Joanna. He asks her about what she knows about Sralan’s companies. She says ‘Viglen’ wrongly, and then she reveals that she knows nothing about what Viglen or any other of Sralan’s companies do. She doesn’t realise that Sralan has not got Amstrad any longer. She apologises, and is horribly flustered, and says that it’s unprofessional; Bordun says it’s not unprofessional, it’s unprepared. The whole thing is rather uncomfortable. [She suddenly seemed a lot younger than she has previously - Fiona]

Margaret and Chris next. He’s rather bigged himself up on his CV, saying he’s ‘revered’ as a theology scholar. Margaret pulls him on the word revered, saying it’s ‘awed respect’ and Chris, to his credit, owns it and says that yes, in his school he did have awed respect and he was top five in the country, so he’d have respect from anyone who did the same course. Margaret tries to criticise him for being ‘fixated’ with his academic record, but Chris says he’s not and he’s not that into bragging about his achievements. Margaret says he’s good at bragging, though. [Look I lead the Chris Lovely Lips Bates love round here and even I found that one hard to swallow... - Fiona]

We cut to Claude and Chris, and Claude takes an utterly ridiculous tack of criticising Chris for stopping studying law and changing subjects. He tries to say Chris flunked, which Chris dismisses by saying that he didn’t flunk, he chose to change his course. Chris says that he didn’t want to continue studying law when he didn’t want to be a lawyer; Claude says that law degrees can be useful in business; Chris says perhaps but lots would be irrelevant; Claude says how would you know, you didn’t study it; Chris says that he studied it for half a year; Claude says ‘That makes you an expert does it?’, which Chris just bats away with ‘No’. Claude says that Chris did something and quit it and therefore fell at the first hurdle, and that because Chris didn’t pursue his Politics and American Studies degree (after getting a first by the by) that his interest can’t have been that great. Claude then goes on to the fact that Chris got his good job in a bank, but quit after nine months, so Chris is a quitting quitter who quits. He quit his law degree and he quit his job (umm… so that he could be on The Apprentice) so he’s a dirty quitting quitter who quits and the only thing he won’t quit is quitting because he loves quitting so much, the quitter. Chris is like ‘that’s bullshit and I wouldn’t quit the job with Sralan because it would be amazing and the only way you would get me out of the building is through force’. Claude looks utterly ridiculous through the whole exchange. Partly because Chris just deflects all the criticism but mostly because a 24-year-old who changed his degree for one he liked (and excelled in) and then left his job so that he could be on The Apprentice cannot in any way be characterised as a serial quitter. I get that the interviewers have to be all grr scary attack dogs, but find something better to attack than that. [It was utterly ludicrous and well done Chris for not rising to it - Fiona] Back outside, Chris tells the guys that he thinks he held his own and answered the questions well. (He did.)

Jamie now. He talks about how he wasn’t academic, and Margaret pulls him up, saying that he seems to blame his parents for it because they didn’t push him. Jamie admits his results weren’t good and Margaret’s like ‘Not good? They were SHIT.’ (Cs to Fs, by the way.) Then a lengthy, massively boring exchange with Bordun and Jamie about Jamie’s dodgy timeshare business or whatever it is. His partner in Cyprus doesn’t have any shares, and Jamie says the other guy does no work but takes half the money, and that they’re going to part ways. Bordun asks if Jamie is not, in fact, a bit shit, as he’s supposed to generate sales, and if Bordun can create 35% growth in a market that is shrinking by 8%, then Jamie’s breaking even is hardly being an ‘excellent salesman’. Bordun says Jamie is looking for an ‘escape chute’ and then Jamie comes out and tells the other candidates that it was a really good interview but you can tell he’s totally dissembling.

Margaret and Stubaggs. Stubaggs says he has hundreds of ideas and wants to invent with Sralan a tiny microchip that you can track anywhere so that you can find your lost pets. Margaret’s like ‘my cat’s already chipped’ and Stubaggs says yes, but you still have to find the cat. This chip you can track remotely. ‘And that’s just one of my ideas’. I desperately wish we’d heard more. A toy car that makes you feel like a grown up because it has a really vrooomy engine noise! Ear warmers for your field of ponies! A machine that gives scores to decide who’s won when you get into street fights about ticket sales for bus tours of London! The mind boggles. Margaret ask if he wants to be an apprentice or a business partner, and Stubaggs says ‘absolutely both’. Margaret says ‘Both?’ in full ‘A HANDBAG?’ mode. Stubaggs says that he’s going to work 24/7 for Sralan and Margaret, witheringly, says ‘And give it 110% no doubt?’ and Stubaggs, utterly failing to hear the contempt dripping from the words, agrees eagerly. Oh Stubaggs. [Ms Mountford reads The Apprentbitch doesn't she? - Fiona]

Stubaggs meets Claude now. Claude, dickishly, refuses to shake his hand. Claude is utterly furious about ‘Stuart Baggs the brand’, going on about ‘You’re not a brand’ and ‘Don’t try to tell me what a brand is, you are NOT a brand’, and Stubaggs says ‘I think I might be.’ Claude asks why Stubaggs wants the job, and Stubaggs says he’s a big fish in a small pond, and Claude says ‘You’re not a fish’. [Claude has anger issues - Fiona]

Claude meets Joanna. She says her company isn’t huge but it gets her by and is doing all right. Claude says that that isn’t very ambitious. She doesn’t want to be a cleaner, she wants to be a successful businesswoman. Claude says it’s a two-way street and she wants direction, but what can she bring? She says that she hasn’t got the qualifications, but she’s got the business instinct (or ‘inkstink’ as she puts it). Claude says she hasn’t, because she’s giving up on her business too quickly. He praises her, seemingly genuinely and enthusiastically for having the ‘gumption’ and ‘strength of character’ for starting a business, but it’s ‘ridiculous’ and ‘a great shame’ that she doesn’t want to expand it. Outside, she says it’s ‘like mental torture’.

Alan says that Stella is clearly skilled at management, but she’s just a ‘very very very good PA’. She says that that’s insulting, that she’s a senior manager on the trading floor and the only woman (at that level presumably, not at all) in a Japanese bank. Alan says that she started as a PA and she says yes, but she always set her sights much higher.

Bordun reads from Chris’s CV that he’s ‘the strongest ever’ candidate and Chris says that he’s done well on tasks, broken a sales record, but you’d expect that for a candidate and he’s also got the intelligence and business nous.

Alan wants to know what he should tell Sralan about Joanna. She says she’s ‘a decent person who wants to do well’ and has outlasted people, who, on paper are much better than her.

Now, in a section that made Jamie’s Business Facts earlier look positively thrilling, we get Part One (Of Eighty) of Bordun And Stubaggs’ Insight Into Telecommunications Law On The Isle Of Man. It goes on and on and on. Suffice to say, Stubaggs claimed to have a fully licensed telecoms company but in fact only has a licence to be a broadband ISP, which costs £350 and anyone can get. Bordun claims that ISP stands for ‘internet service protocol’. You know, to be fair, on the Isle of Man I figured it would be a licence for two cups and a piece of string. Stubaggs reveals that he doesn’t even know Bordun’s name. Upshot: Stubaggs is a lying shit who doesn’t have the licence he claimed to on his CV.

Interviews! Are! Ovah!

Joanne to-cameras that she’s desperate to go through. Stubaggs says he’s the only one to take Sralan out of the recession. Stella says she needs to get to the final, ‘and then the real work starts’.

Sralan chats to his attack dogs in the Boardroom. He calls Margaret one of the best advisers he could have. Damn right!

Margaret likes Joanna; she started a successful business and deserves a lot of credit. Claude says much the same, and we cut to Joanna saying ‘I don’t no longer want to be known as Joanna the cleaner’ and Claude says she doesn’t have to be, she can Joanna the MD of a cleaning company; Bordun calls her a self-starter. Sralan says she was a bit of a bull in a china shop and a bit defensive, and Margaret says that if she started mouthy, she’s learnt because she interviewed very well.

Alan says that Chris has straight As at A-level and a First in his degree (which, if that’s all it takes, I’m available Sralan), but left his bank job to be on The Apprentice, and because he felt the bank wasn’t recognising his talents. Alan and Bordun share a lol about how you shouldn’t wait for praise for Sralan because it won’t be forthcoming. [in that joking way that means they really ARE desperate for any crumb of praise - Fiona] Bordun says that Chris was ‘monotonous’ and that he was trying to get him to crack, but he hasn’t got that tenacity. Karrren disagrees, and says he’s awesome, and they chat for about twenty minutes about how he has a buzzsaw drone but the actual words are smart. Margaret says that Chris is obsessed with his academic achievement (which really isn’t that valid because what else can he point to?) and that he probably likes to spend evenings admiring his certificates. [I know what I'd spend evenings doing. Sorry Rad. Again - Fiona]

Jamie next. Margaret, she hate Jamie big time and ‘found it hard to sit through 15 minutes with him’. There’s a lovely cut back to interviews where Jamie claims to be a ‘key cog in a wheel’ and Margaret says ‘in any wheel?’ and Jamie says ‘I’m a key cog’ about fifty times. Margaret says ‘It doesn’t mean anything, does it, “I’m a key a cog”?’ and Jamie says sorry, to which Margaret says ‘Don’t apologise, it’s a fact’. God I’ve missed Margaret. Margaret tells Sralan that for an apparent selling genius wideboy he seemed a bit nervous. Karren, quite astutely, says that Jamie relies on his confidence and he’s lost it so he’s got not much left. Bordun says he hates Jamie and his blame culture, his parents, his business partner, etc. Claude says that Jamie’s ‘business’ is just a get rich quick scheme. Bordun says that Jamie does at least have property experience, which might be useful.

Claude says Stella is smart and great, and would be amazing for a major corporate, but what would she do here? Bordun says that Stella is the admin queen but doesn’t see much beyond it (Stella has a vagina and therefore should be fired). Karrren says ‘she’s more than that’ and Alan says that she hasn’t had the chance; she started as a PA, is clearly intelligent, and has had roles created for her because she’s indispensable. Nick says she’s ‘entirely decent’ and you ‘could trust her to the end of the Earth’. Bordun’s like ‘but admin! (vagina!)’ and Margaret’s like ‘good for her, for doing what she excels at’. Karrren says that Stella’s always given a good account of herself and remained professional, and when she got called corporate she immediately went out and did Knees Up Mother Brown, which doesn’t entirely disprove it but show she’s willing to listen and adapt. Alan says it’s a gamble, but one that could work. This whole section was delightful. Bordun yelping ‘admin vagina!’ and being utterly shouted down by everybody else in the room. So good.

Stubaggs now. Margaret’s criticism is basically ‘He called me Margaret’ and she doesn’t see the need to say anything else. Claude says he’s a dreamer ‘though he claims never to sleep’, and has technical knowhow, and could be considered. Bordun’s Isle Of Man Telecoms recap, now, saying that ‘anyone’ could have the licence for broadband, ‘even you Karrren’. Karrren takes that in better grace than I would. [I was actually baffled that sentence left his lips and that she didn't twat him for it - Fiona] Alan raises the whole ‘lying about a competitor going bust’ thing.

Sralan thanks his attack dogs and they depart. The candidates go through.

Sralan tells Chris the feedback was mixed and wonders if he was a bit daunted. Chris says they were a bit of a grilling and maybe he didn’t get his passion across, but he was always told you should be composed and concise in interviews and that’s what he tried to do. He really is very, very good at the boardroomy interviewy bits. Sralan goes on about Chris’s obsession with his academic record and Chris makes explicit ‘other than my ten months’ work, that’s what I’ve got’. Sralan asks about the law degree and Chris says he was always encouraged ‘be a banker, be a lawyer’ but now he wants to build his own career.

Sralan tells Stella that they think she’s corporate too. Sralan persists with the lie, again, some more, that NotAmstrad is in some way not a corporation, that they need to start stuff. Stella says she’s proven that she will go in at the deep end and that maybe she’s misunderstanding, but they seem to be saying she just takes instruction, and that’s not true. Nick says she’s maybe struggling to break out of a straitjacket career. She says maybe, but her companies created roles for her (the implication I think being that they did it to fit her abilities), but she’s not going to apologise for doing her job well, because that’s what she’s paid to do. Sralan says ‘absolutely’, when she says this.

Sralan tells Joann that they were surprised she didn’t know much about business. She says she’s 25 (!!!) and doesn’t have experience, and wants direction. She could go and get a big contract, but she doesn’t want to do that, she ‘deserves to be a businesswoman’. It’s again rather sad, as though she doesn’t think she’s good enough, or that the company she started isn’t an achievement. She says that she’s got the business inkstink again.

Sralan tells Jamie that he’s got a blame culture, that he blamed his parents for not pushing him in education, and his partner for the business. Jamie’s like ‘I don’t blame him!’ and then goes on to blame him. Sralan’s like ‘I get it, you twat’ and says ‘everybody jumped into Cyprus when the market was good, were you one of those?’ and Jamie is like ‘I also went to Bulgaria’ and Sralan is like LOL YOU FAIL. Jamie says the recession hit hard; Sralan says ‘Blame game LOL!’ Jamie says it was his fault, it’s about making mistakes, learning and moving on. Sralan totally ignores it and moves on to Stubaggs.

Stubaggs said it was probing and hostile. Yet more about Isle of Man telecoms. Stubaggs is still trying to weasel out of the fact that he lied about his licence. He also says ‘I’m a wireless network’. A wireless network AND a field of ponies! [There is no start to his talent! - Fiona]

Sralan says that his advisers sat around the table and said that Stubaggs is ‘full of shit, basically’ and Sralan is then very angry that Stubaggs’s claims have made Liz be fired, and it makes him sick. ‘I’m annoyed with myself that you have been allowed to come this far through the process’, says, Sralan. ‘I’m annoyed with myself. Stuart, you ARE fired.’ Stubaggs at least gives a ‘thank you for the opportunity’. In the cab, he’s got a horrible indigo scarf. He cabterviews that he was misunderstood etc. No you weren’t, Stubaggs. You’re a total chancer and they finally spotted it. At least maybe this will finally render true Sralan’s insistence that people saying ‘I’m just like you Sralan’ isn’t a total free pass.

They give their little ‘hire me’ speeches. Stella starts to say that she’s been pigeonholed as corporate and amazingly, Sralan says ‘forgive me for bringing that up so many times’, and to forget it and just says what she’ll do. She has a wealth of experience, and has shown in her life, that she’s not just intelligent, she makes things happen. ‘I’ve made my whole life happen’ and in any one of your companies I’ll do the same thing.

Jamie just spouts about a hundred thousand nonsensical clichés about wanting to get involved and even when Sralan says ‘you’re talking in clichés’ Jamie just goes on to say some more, with a side helping of his whole ‘I was there at every single win and big decision on every task on both teams and am a key cog’ bullshit that he likes to spout.

Joanna says she is raw and has business inkstink, and while she’s ‘ashamed and embarrassed’ that she doesn’t know that much about business, but she’s outlasted people with better CVs ‘and that speaks volumes’.

Chris says he’s not the finished article, but he will think of new ways of doing things and will approach things differently. (I think his business genius/utter fluke on the tour task last week is his trump card there.)

Sralan starts with Joanna. He says they all admire here, and while she doesn’t like what she’s doing, she should get to like it, because he regrets it but doesn’t see where she’ll fit. He says she leaves with her head held high and ‘I’m sorry to say, you’re fired.’ She’s crying, and Chris gives her a comforting pat, but it’s the patented Nice Firing, and I think she deserves it. Some weeks I hated her, some weeks I thought she was great, but I hope she’s not so ‘I am a worthless cleaner’ any more. [110% agree, I didn't like her to start with but she did try and use the feedback (last weeks incident with Jamie aside). She lost all her confident facade in the interviews and I was sad for her - Fiona]

Sralan goes to Stella. She gets a total ‘Oh, god, get it over with and fire me then’ face, but with no flim flam at all, he puts her through to the final. Obviously.

Jamie gets ‘I think you’ve come to the end of the road. Jamie, you’re fired.’ Ha! Not an abusive Stubaggs firing, or a comforting Joanna firing, just an ‘Are you still here?’ dismissive flick off. About all he’s earned. To his credit, he at least congratulations Stella and Chris.

Stella and Chris hug and giggle.

Jamie cabterviews that he thought he was through because he’s so amazing. Blech. Joanna cabterviews that she knows that she’s not the cleaner, she’s ‘definitely Joanna the businesswoman’. Hooray!

Next week: lots of the fired ones return. They have to create an alcoholic drink. PALOMA IS BACK. Yay, yay, yay. Stella and Chris have been my total favourites, and this is the final two I’ve wanted since Paloma went, but they’re both resolutely uncreative so this’ll be interesting to say the least.

Magical Mystery Tour

2010-12-11T12:37:00.000-08:00

Week 10
Aired 8 December 2010

Last week on The Apprentice, the Apprenti tried to locate 10 items and purchase them in 10 hours for the least amount of spondooles without the aid of google. Jamie bullied a jeweller, Chris & Stubaggs told stupid lies but despite getting only 7 items compared to the girls' 10 they won and Sralan finally got the opportunity to fire Laura.

Jamie jogs half heartedly to answer the phone to NotFrances (and then we have a nice topless shot of Chris brushing his teeth and a not nice shot of trouserless Stubaggs looking like an overgrown school boy). In half an hour the cars will arrive to take them to Wandsworth bus garage. In the boys car Stubaggs is of the opinion that 'the unknown is like walking in to a room of knives blindfolded' - m'kay.

They all look a little confused except Jamie who is working that enthused and engaged thing but just comes off as gormless. Sralan brings them up to speed pretty quickly. The London bus is an icon to all tourists apparently and the task is to set up and run a London bus tour company. Sralan is giving them an open top bus (but not to keep) so they can run bus and walking tours. He mixes the teams up: Jo to Synergy and Stubaggs to Apollo. [Otherwise known as the 'make sure the only person who likes Stella is on the other team' manoeuvre. Cunning. - Steve]

Over 26 million people visit London every year. The teams must get some of them on the bus, round the sights and off the bus for a 'themed' walk. Stubaggs is PM for Apollo. Stella suggests the East End for their tour theme and that for their walk they could visit pearly kings and queens and a jellied eels stall. Liz and Stubaggs look pretty unimpressed but go for it anyway and somehow dump all the work on her as the 'nearest thing they have to a cockney' [I have no idea how that works - Rad] and start hedging their bets early just in case 'if she is too cold and corporate we'll blow it. If we blow it, it is her fault.'

Joanna, Chris and Jamie are up for a Ghost, ghouls and Sweeney Todd theme at Jamie's suggestion. With Joanna in charge she gets starts by getting potential tour guide Jamie by the balls - 'if you fuck up I am taking you off this yeah?'

In the East End Liz and Stubaggs are scoping out places to stop on their tour. Their COCKERNY accents and rhyming slang are as good as you might expect. Liz totally insults a jellied eel seller by asking him to cockney it up. He looks stunned and a customer(?) verbalises for him how patronising and generally shit that is. In the car, Stella is trying to show she is fun and not uptight as she somewhat painfully practices her tour spiel. She is not cold and corporate K? Got it? Good!

At London Bridge Joanne and Jamie are also completing a recce but can't find ghosts, Jamie wants to escape Joanne and go to the pub because Joanne is a rottweiler who is nagging him to death. 'Do you know what you are doing Jamie? Are you sure Jamie? Aren't you a bit shite Jamie? Get a move on Jamie. Don't cross the road without me Jamie.' Interesting that Synergy choose to have the person who will be giving the tour involved in deciding where the tour will go - just saying.

Liz and Stubaggs seem to be randomly wandering about looking scared of Londoners and insulting the East End. There doesn't seem to be a lot of forward planning happening. Joanna is still sticking her boot up Jamie's arse while Nick gurns. When Jamie finally snaps at her she says he is 'scaring her and acting like a mad man'. Never seen a mad man then. She feels he is being aggressive, not her and she feels threatened... WTF? I know that Jamie divides opinion and he can be a prize smug twat more often than not. I know that he has been mostly monosyllabic in his replies to Joanna but she has not stopped whinging at him. Joanna is normally pretty aggressive herself so why she is playing the poor defenceless and intimidated woman here is anyone's guess. [I assume the punchline to all of this is them ending up in bed together. Or is that just what happens in soaps? - Rad]

Cockney tour sorted, Liz and Stubaggs are trying to set prices. They think £30-£35 seems quite reasonable. As well as selling directly to the public the teams can also pitch to London Visitor Centre who will promote the tours in return for a cut of the sales. Apollo pitch their 'Cockney' tour first. The nice Visitors' Centre people seem quite happy with the pitch but ask if the customers get to keep the bus afterwards for that price [Ha! The Visitors' Centre were so much better at "business" than either team it was hilarious - Rad]. Stubaggs and Liz offer them a 25% cut of the tickets the Centre sells despite being told they normally take 35%.

While Joanne and Jamie flog tickets to the public, Chris sexy buzzsaw pitches the 'chilling and terrifying Ghost and Ghouls' tour to the London Visitors Centre. Their prices are a more reasonable £25 for adults and £10 for children or 2 adults and 2 children tickets for £50. He offers them 20% of their TOTAL revenue, hang on - including the tickets Synergy sell directly to the public. The Visitors' Centre bods obviously can't believe their luck and double check several times that Chris means 20% of EVERYTHING and he confirms that yes he does. Going back to Jamie and Joanna, she picks straight up on this and interviews that this is foolishness. Chris says blah blah sexy lips commercially viable whatever. [I'm beginning to suspect that your interest in Chris is not entirely based around his business acumen, Fiona. - Steve] Colin from the visitors centre shockingly rings to say they are going with Synergy - well no shit Sherlock.

Back to the Apprentmansion. The tour guides are practising their spiel. Jamie's Sweeney Todd speech is pretty gruesome.

6.30am the next day and the Apprenti are all getting dressed in a sort of bus driver/air hostess mash up outfit. In the blue corner we have Synergy and in the red Apollo. Chris looks like Parker from Thunderbirds, just hotter. [I did not want that mental image, thanks - Rad] [No, me neither. - Steve] [Sorry - Fiona]

Both teams have got 3 scheduled tours. Stubaggs says 'tourists are just bags of money' he will 'dip into *slurping noises*'. Honestly he is being a vile little toad and if he wants people's money he should at least try and hide the contempt he so obviously holds them in.

Joanne goes to the Visitors' Centre and tries to get out of the 20% of ALL revenue deal. She tries to pass it off as Chris not understanding what he was offering. Shockingly they don't budge - well why would they? They are making money whether they actually sell a single ticket or not. It doesn't really reflect well on them either, the deal is done and it was the basis that the Centre choose to promote them on so they should just suck it up now and not try and weasel their way out of it.

Both teams seem to be doing a good job of selling their tickets but as the buses set off they are hardly packed [it probably didn't help that it looked like a miserable day and the buses were open-topped - Rad]. With the buses gone the remaining team members are out selling tickets. Stubaggs starts following Joanna's customers and trying to 'neutralise them' by promising them a £4 cheaper fare. Here is where Joanna should be channelling her anger (and her fist straight into his flabby face).

Stella is doing a reasonably factual presentation. On the 'Ghost & Ghouls' tour Jamie is enthusiastically but incorrectly imparting little factoids. For example the Thames is London's second largest river and Big Ben's face is '20 diameters wide' - everyone looks confused. 'O look that is Westminster Abby - you can go there, it's a church'. [Essentially, this episode was one giant facepalm, wasn't it? - Rad]

Stubaggs is now trying to mug customers directly outside the visitors centre because 'they went with the wrong team'. Petulant much? The nice lady comes out and tells him to move. First he tries the whole 'it's a free country and pavement and you don't own it and shit'. When that doesn't work he says 'maybe the fair thing to do would be to call the police?' That is a a bit of an epic leap! She just laughs at him and says 'now fuck off my land'.

Jamie's group are now off the bus being treated to gems such as 'see the building that looks like a gherkin? its called a gherkin... cos it looks like a gherkin' [Except... it's not actually called The Gherkin at all - Rad] [Indeed as all Me Too! fans know it is actually Harlequin hospital where Dr Juno works - Fiona] [Still, if allocating names to things based on what they look like is acceptable, then I feel entirely justified in calling Jamie a Smug Bollock-Faced Cunt. - Steve]

Stella meanwhile has a real Pearly King for her show and tell, it might make up for being stuck right next road works.

In the west end Stubaggs and Liz do battle with Chris and Joanne in Trafalgar Square. Stubaggs has a system which wholly consists of approaching anyone that Synergy talk to or even look at. When Chris tells him to fuck off he starts with 'are you gonna hit me?' which confuses Chris because er no he isn't, specially not with a camera crew with them. Another epic leap there Stubaggs. Thanks to Steve we can enjoy the whole exchange:

Chris: "Seriously, Stuart, fuck off."
Stubaggs: "No, YOU fuck off, this is our pitch."
Chris: "This is OUR pitch."
Stubaggs: "Go on, hit me then."
Chris: "I'm not going to hit you."
Stubaggs: "But you mouth off..."
Chris: "Shut up Stuart, you fat twat. Why don't you fuck off down there?" [I love it when posh boys swear. Chris can call me a fat twat any time. As long as he calls me, if you know what I mean. - Steve]
Stubaggs: "That's professional, isn't it?!"
Joanna: "Just ignore him, he's not worth it!"

Meanwhile Stella has got lost in the arse of the East End - ooops. Mind you after Liz insulted Mr Jellied Eel earlier it might be for the best that she has no idea where she is meant to go. Of course if Stella had been included in the location scouting exercise there would have been a better chance of her knowing where to go. After wandering around, asking passersby for directions she suggests they go back to the bus and everyone looks relieved. While Joanna and Chris are pulling in the punters for Jamie, Stella has a mere 8 people waiting for the next tour. Is everyone enjoying themselves she asks? She threatens them that they will be singing Knees Up Mother Brown. An interestingly toothed man giggles, everyone else looks bored - and now she is announcing landmarks after they have gone past them.

Jamie's Sweeney Todd story is getting ever more gruesome. Some of his tourists are starting to look a bit sick. Do any of them actually know this ISN'T A TRUE STORY? [I suspect Jamie doesn't. - Steve] Stella is now reduced to showing her customers graffiti which may or may not be a Banksy. It is hard to tell who is less interested, her or her 8 customers.

In a moment of inspiration Jamie gets a rousing version on 'London's Burning' going as they go under London Bridge. Stella and Mr Strange Teeth's version of Knees Up Mother Brown is less of a success.

As Synergy's final tour departure time looms, they have no bookings from the visitors' centre and Joanne and Chris aren't having much joy drumming up custom. Apollo have got their last tour booked an hour later at 4pm and they have nearly a full bus, due to dropping the price to £15. They don't have to hand anything over to the visitors' centre unlike Joanna who just gave them a huge wodge of cash. Joanna fears if they have lost this will be why.

Boardroom Time!

Synergy say they got on 'OK' and Nick says Jamie was very good at being the tour guide. That is pretty fulsome praise. [Especially given that he was shit - Rad] Chris tries to justify the 20% of EVERYTHING to the Visitor Centre and pretends that was exactly what he meant to do. Sralan says it was 'adventurous' and takes umbridge at Jo trying to backtrack with the centre and says she should have stuck by her team.

On to Apollo where Stubaggs is quick to 'give' Stella credit for the cockney tour idea. Sralan bitch slaps Liz by commenting her idea of a London tour would have been a walk down Bond Street. Ouch. [Bladdy Wimminz love shopping right? - Rad] Sralan brings up the turf war in Trafalgar Square which Chris dismisses as 'handbags at dawn and whatever'. Stubaggs has some sort of fit which is the only possible explanation for his assertion that MUTUAL RESPECT TOOK OVER. Sorry but WTF?! Chris walked off because you were being a twat.

And so it is down to the facts and figures. Apollo's total profit was £834.30 for their 3 tours. Synergy made a profit £1099.43 AFTER giving their 20% cut to the visitors centre AND only doing 2 tours presumably - Chris Lovely Lips rolled the dice with his 'innovative way of doing things' and came in with a good win. They are getting flown to Jersey to look at people 'collecting' oysters and a Michelin star slap up meal. Outside the boardroom there is much rejoicing because it isn't a shit prize for once! [I beg to differ - Rad]

In loser cafe Stubaggs is gutted. Stella says she put her 'heart and soul into the task' and reckons Stubaggs is for the chop and Liz would 'assign blame' to him too. Stubaggs thinks 'they are all to blame'. I think his shitty behaviour means he is a goner.

Whilst flying to Jersey Jamie hilariously keeps up his tour guide persona, Joanne balks at eating raw oysters and they all go for a nice meal, toast themselves and the sweet taste of success.

Back to the boardroom for Apollo round two. Stubaggs surmises that they were too expensive and that lost them the Visitors Centre and that screwed them up. Sralan doesn't disagree, offering them 25% commission isn't that high plus 25% of nothing is nothing plus they would have expected to be offered 35%. Maybe if Stubaggs hadn't been working on the basis that he could financially rape tourists for as much money as he wanted he would have got further. Sralan sees Chris' 20% global commission deal as a shrewd business move. I suspect he would have called it something else if it had lost Synergy the task.

Sralan turns on Liz, 'you have a business degree and have you actually shown the ability to deal with things in a special way', special how exactly? Liz blows some hot air, shares the blame with Stubaggs and no one makes eye contact with her. U-oh....

Stella says she wanted to throw herself into the tours and show she wasn't corporate and wooden (that really stung didn't it?) That seems fair enough to me but our favorite baggy eyed mogul goes after her for doing the 'easy job' and says she should have been doing 'more business related stuff and shit'.

Stubaggs deals with the charge that their tickets we ridiculously over priced and says they did drop their price through 'negotiating' on the day but Karen says tourists don't want to negotiate. 'Yeah' Sralan says and 'Liz sold twice as much as you chipmunk'. He sends them outside so he can talk to Karren and Nick about the last 10 weeks.

Karren says Liz and Stubaggs were both to blame for the price and they had no structure. Nick says Stubaggs 'won't acknowledge he sold half the amount of Liz'. Plus he whispers on Sralan's shoulder 'you can always get rid of two....' Stella doesn't really seem to be figuring in this much.

The trio troop back in. Sralan turns first to PM Stubaggs, 10 weeks ago he was making outrageous claims about making money for Sralan and being a rough diamond. Stubaggs launches into a speech about being so committed to making Sralan huge sums of cash he will work 24/7. 'I don't want a night watchman and a fly has enthusiasm' say Sralan 'it headbutts a window over and over again'. Stu explodes into such passionate and vomity hyperbole that I can't transcribe it. No I can't because I am being sick. 'I'm not a 1 trick pony, I'm not 50 ponies, I have a field of ponies waiting to run at this'. Sralan sums it up well, 'at 21 you believe in what you are spouting but not so long ago you believed in the tooth fairy too'.

Next up is Liz. She talks about her 'energy and determination'. 'Yeah great whatever. Where is your spark of genius' says Sralan and more pointless cliches are banded about. Liz points out she could launch into hyperbole too but it wouldn't mean anything. O Liz do you not know how this works? I am getting a bit bored, but then how many ways can you beg for your reality tv career life in business speak?

'So, steady Stella what are you going to say to me?' asks Sralan. Stella goes for it big style 'I've gone from being practically homeless to being here - I AM MICHELLE FREAKIN' DEWBERRY'. You might as well go back to the Apprentmansion.

Back to Stubaggs, 'I'm only 21, I have my own company and we make 3 million annually and my mum and dad didn't give my nothing but a tenner to buy yo-yos to sell at school. And I bought a flat with my money at 18 and people always say my parents must have given it to me and they didn't and it isn't fair.' Sralan sees himself in young Stubaggs but also thinks it all sounds too good to be true. 'Betting on me will be a punt but one that will pay off massively' replies Smugbaggs.

Sralan sums it up, 'Stella's been in the boardroom more times than the other two. But you have taken on our feedback and even sung Knees Up Muvva Brown. Stubaggs you are a loose cannon and childish, am I a businessman or babysitter? Still you gave good pleading and I get off on that shit. Liz you present well and work hard and always deliver sales. I am looking for something special, I need someone unusual not just someone who can only do talking or sales. What Stubaggs says made more sense so working hard and being consistent is great and all but I am looking for someone special so I'm firing you and keeping the over sized toddler in the middle! He sure is special.'

Sralan may say he doesn't fall for bullshitters or people who say they are just like him but er hello? Michael Sophocles mark 2?

I am all WTF and so is Liz. Yes Sralan you are getting soft in your old age. Please tell me this is just so he can be ripped apart by the rottys. If you tell me that I might forgive you.

Outside the ballroom Liz tears up. The goodbyes are surprisingly warm between all 3 but especially Stella and Liz.

Coat Watch - cream short mac with black trim. Channelling Kim Novak and looking as polished and perfect as ever. Liz taxiviews that she is gutted and devastated and that maybe one day Sralan will be knocking on her door. Presumably she will laugh and then slam it in his face if he does.

Back at the house everyone expects Stubaggs to get the boot and no one expects Liz not to be there. They are really genuinely shocked when Stubaggs struts through the door waving his willy before indulging in a bit of 'Final 5' yeehawing.

Next week it is the rotweilers rip you and your CV to shreads round also known as 'the interviews' and hang on to your hats - MAGS IS BACK IN THE BUILDING PEOPLE!