Welcome to the liveblog of the final of series five, and more importantly, of Margaret's last shift (sob). I reserve the right to go back in and insert observation, commentary etc after the event due to the pressures of liveblogging, and I'm sure some of my collaborators will appear in the next couple of says to comment, so do come back and see what you've missed.
So, we've had eleven weeks of catering fail, Pantsman, exercise 'boxes' and Lorraine's line of Irish per episode. We're down to two finalists - Kate and Yasmina, either of whom would fit the 'pretty competent one' box that winners so often tick, so who will be given the role of ballsy woman runner-up? We'll find out in an hour, but my money's on Kate to win... or maybe Yasmina...
Previously on The Apprentice... the five remaining candidates got ripped to shreds, and James, Lorraine and Debrabarr went home, and unusually, I felt sad for all of them. Normally there's at least one in this stage that I love to watch being chewed to pieces (Paul Tulip, for example).
The finalists piece to camera about how much they want the job, and Yasmina says it doesn't matter if you come 2nd or 20th as she really wants the job.
They go to Bankside in London for their final briefing. Yasmina's got her hair up and a swirly black and white blouse thing on, Kate a white blouse and grey skirt.
Here come the losers to be on the teams. Yasmina wins the toss and Picks howard. Kate's first pick is Ben (???), Y - Lorraine, K - Debrabarr, Y- James, K - Kimberly (Philip must be crapping his pants). Yasmina picks Philip and Kate takes Rocky. What this says about Philip and Kate's relationship, I'm not sure. I'm rather upset Paula the fierce and Noorul the poor aren't here. Someone in the chat room I'm in bemoans the loss of upside-down-mouth Anita. [What, no love for Mona? She went on a journey! She talked to a transsexual! - Steve]
The task is to make and market a brand new box of chocolates. Chocolate is, we're told, a 3.5 billion pound industry. In the offices of a 'top London ad agency', they have to decide on a target market. In team Yas, James ponders selling for men and Philip says 'what about quirky?' Yas brings the two ideas together and says to market at a woman to buy for men might be quirky.
In team Kate, Ben suggests going down the route of marketing to couples as chocolate can be sensual and then says 'it could be like having a threesome with your box of chocolates'. Um. Kate quite likes the his'n'hers idea.
The teams now need to come up with an idea for a box. Let's hope Kimberly doesn't get involved here. Ben draws a 69 on a page and says he's being 'deadly serious'. Kate calls him a fool, because it's romantic, not perverted, and he gets the huff.
Team Yas ask a focus group of men if their girlfriends buy them chocolates. They all say no, and they don't think women would buy chocolates purely for the men. Now, I'm no dating expert here, but surely men would like their partners to buy them chocs? All the men I know love chocolate, plus that chocolate flavour Lynx has gone down a storm, hasn't it? Anyway. Philip says it's a great misunderstood idea, like Pantsman - people didn't get it at the time, but they will do eventually. Yasmina says 'er no, that's not a good example'. They discuss product names - Cocoa, CocoElectric, and having a display of electric shocks. Eh?
Kate's team like the idea of pairs, two's company, perfect match. From nowhere, Kimberly says 'three's a crowd'.
Team Kate experiment with flavours - strawberries and champagne, lavender, sea salt - all nice, but all rather expensive for their 'mid-brand' chocolate. Do we know if price is a factor here? We know how much Sralan values profit over quality...
Kate asks if £13 (what it might cost) is a valid price point for a 'night in' box of chocs. It sounds more like a special occasion box of chocolates to me rather than a Friday night with a DVD type, but I suppose it depends on what they're aiming at here.
Yasmina's team love the idea of Coriander and Orange, which is surely more of a soup kind of idea? Now cardamom and orange chocolate, THAT is lovely, but coriander? They also discuss peppery caramels (surely salty caramels is more usual?) and chilli.
Kate's team settle on 'Intimate' for a name, which Nick rightly rubbishes, and links to 'feminine freshness'. [In fairness, it was originally 'The Intimate Chocolate Company', which I thought was rather good, but then the box design had INTIMATE in size 46 font and the rest of the words practically minuscule, which was what made it sound Tampaxariffic. - Steve] People in the chat room I'm in say it sounds like Tampax, and seconds later, Debrabarr repeats this exact comment. They throw some names around and settle on 'Choc d'Amour', chocolate of love.
8am, and the printers have sent a sample box. The cocoa elctric box is black with pink writing and a pink ribbon (how manly) which looks exactly like the boxes Thorntons use for Eden. It's a nice box, but is pink the right colour here?
Commercial time, and Kimberly resumes her role as director. Two models are sharing a 'romantic night in', feeding each other chocs in a vaguely porny way.
Yasmina's team get their sweets, they're round flavoured. They try the strawberry and basil ones and Howard pulls a face. Now Rococo sweet basil and lime chocolate, that's how you get basil in chocolate, my friends. Anyway, Margaret asks which she should try and they say chili. She tries one and says she's 'waiting for the explosion'. They ask if she wants another and she says one's enough, thank you.
Philip is trying to chorograph his team's ad. A nation facepalms.
Yasmina is directing hers. She tells the model, who resembles Ziggy from Big Brother to put one in his mouth. He asks if it's strawberry and basil, pulls a face and asks if he can spit it out. Heh. [Even better: Yasmina says "no." - Steve] [But he does anyway and hands it to her, how rude! - Fiona]
There's a bit of decor for the venue shopping, which I miss...
Kate tells Kimberly her advert is a bit cheesy and 80s and says she wants the girl to rip the man's tie off and then be seen with chocolate smeared all over her face. Mmm, sexy. She looks ridiculous, like a three year old after a meal. Nick says Kate's given it some 'bite', so maybe he sees something we don't. [Or he has watched films we haven't - Fiona]
The Cocoa Electric team look at the faces in their ad. They all look 'shocked', but shocked in a 'holy fuck what the HELL is this shite' way, rather than a 'wow! Unexpected pleasure' kind of way.
They decide to put their lightning logo in the centre of their ad and Philip nearly comes at his own genius and channels Lee McQueen with a 'now that's what I'm taking about'.
Kate PTCs that she's confident because it's the only state of mind she can have, but she might be different tomorrow. Yasmina says she's excited, it's going to be the biggest night of her life, and more exciting than getting married. Is Yas married? Can someone check? [I can't find anything one way or another - Fiona]
The venue for the launch gets everyone excited, and we see Kate rehearsing her speech and talking about their romantically themed flavours. Her team are setting up candelabras.
Yasmina rehearses and asks Lorraine if she makes sense when babbling on about electric shocks. Lorraine says 'erm, no not really' and Yas bemoans the fact that she'll never be Martin Luther King.
Kate's presentation and she pronounces it 'shock d'amour' which brings the other team to mind. Their slogan is 'for him, for her, to share' (not for teh gayz, clearly). She mentions the 'current economic climate' of course and says staying in is the new going out. Her podium is covered in roses. She tells people to taste the chocolates. There are six flavours, all with romantic names, [I saw 'couples caramel which is not so much romantic as shit - Fiona] but she doesn't tell us what they are. She tells us they cost £13. Sralan says £13 is a bit much. Kate says you can buy them in nice shops, supermarkets, duty free, er anywhere you buy chocolate.
Their advert looks rather cheap and the woman smearing choc on her face looks nasty, but the idea could be good with a bit of polish, I suppose. The box looks attractive, but rather small... Kate says she believes it's a romantic experience, and really more than just a box of chocolates.
A man in the audience questions their margins, basically pointing out they seem to be aiming a more high-end product at a more mainstream market, which I agree with. In a posh shop, you may pay £13 or more, but in Asda or Tesco, you're going to balk at going over a tenner, aren't you?
Team Yas. She's wearing a pink dress and Philip has a strip of pink Michael Stipe-like strip make up across his eyes. Of course. They have pink lighting anf a group of dancers dancing to Electric Six's 'Danger! High Voltage', which is a little tacky. Sralan looks confused.
People I'm chatting with discuss Yasmina's scar and whether she got it from Voldemort, thus inspiring the logo. Ouch.
Yasmina starts by saying 'let's talk about the concept' and says things like 'take some strawberrry and basil, what do you get? Cocoa electric'. The audience look befuddled. Yas presses on and says she knows they don't all have a box (fail) but they can see it's a nice box. They have 18 chocs and plan to sell for £6.
The ad shows people of both sexes (I presume they've gone away from the male thing then) reacting to eating a chocolate as if they are having an electric shock, with appropriate sound effects (and the Electric Six soundtrack). The problem is, they look as if they're having an unpleasant shock, not an exciting one. A woman in the audience asks why an electric shock is pleasant. Yasmina says well they didn't want to go down the lightning striking route (which could hardly be seen as pleasant either), but it was unusual. A man asks if the flavours work, Yas asks if he's tried them. He says, of course, that's why I'm asking. She says they've had positive feedback, especially about the strawberry and basil. Lots of people laugh. Oops.
Someone else says £6 sounds cheap. Yas says they can make them for 7p each so it'll work out OK. Some people giving vox pops say they love the concept but aren't sure anyone would buy a second box after trying them. Ouch.
Pre-boardroom chat. Yasmina doesn't think she could have done any more. Kate says she won't bitch about Yasmina but just tell Sralan why she should be the next apprentice. London porn. Dramatic music.
Boardroom. Sralan jokes to James about being prophetci and this being the chocolate factory. James says he's got Lorraine's gift. Lulz all round.
Sralan asks how they enjoyed it and Kate says she did, and her team all say she's great. Debrabarr says she thinks Kate would be a good winner. Kate explains about their laboured process of name choosing.
Sralan says that Yasmina's team went for the 'cheap end of the market', and I wonder if they would be better swapping round - couples for a night in would go for cheap, whereas posh high-end stuff tends to have weird flavours. Yas says their research showed men didn't buy choc and Sralan agreed. Sralan says their chocolate was shockingly bad and tasted really cheap, unlike the other team's chocolates, some of which were really good. He says she got there with the money but not the product (in a reversal of the Noorul/Paula cosmetics fight. I *would* liken it to the food week, too, but neither team produced quality then).
The team jump to her defence and say she's fabulous and a great talent. In her Irish moment of the week, Lorraine says they're both great finalists. Philip doesn't stick up for Kate, in a further moment of 'hmmm' about their relationship.
Nick says he was sitting with some top chocolate people who said they;d hire both of them, and Nick says he was really proud of them both. Aww. We then see some snippets of Nick, Margaret and Sralan saying how great they are (but we don't know which comment applies to which of them contestants).
Sralan says this will be the hardest decision EVER as they're both great and asks them to tell him their best bits.
Kate says she liked winning her pitches and people working well with her. Sralan says she's a good presenter and liked, but he needs more than that. she says she's got 'good business skills'. He asks what her ambition was, and she says she wants to work in a company to become a commercial director. He says 'so title means a lot to you' and she says it's the kudos and achievement.
Yasmina says her highlights were learning things she hasn't done before, and she was nervous last night to pitch against the personal pitcher. She says she was pleased to win three PM-ships [Pleased she got that little trufact in there - Fiona] and liked being a good project manager or working alongside good ones. He says you, unlike Kate, have your own business, twenty staff, that's an achievement. He says 'do you understand my dilemma?' She says, yes I do understand, but I feel that letting me go would be a big risk. Sralan says he doesn't want to put 20 people out of work. She says they won't be as her brother will keep them in work.
Kate may have given a better performance in the task, but Yas gave a great boardroom there...
Sralan likes them both, but he's worried about where Kate would fit in in his organisation and what she would do. He says to Yasmina that he got 'made' in his own business and didn't need anybody else, he could do it himself, and he thinks she can do it herself too, and if he took her on, would she resent him in the next few years. He says they're the best he's ever had in the final in this boardroom (and aside from Ruth Badger, I'd agree). His instincts are telling him... big pause... Yasmina, you're hired.
Kate looks gutted but says she's pleased for her. Yasmina promises to be the best apprentice he's ever had. Margaret smiles.
And on that note I'll leave you there, before we have to face a future without soon-to-be-Doctor Margaret Mountford, sadly (and without Sralan (or even Ludallan) if the Tories have their way). Personally, I'd love them to take a break so they can come back and have to call Margaret Doctor Margaret (and Nick can get himself a funky title in that time), but ratings matter, so we'll see you for series six no doubt (or even Junior Apprentice).
Showing posts with label apprentice uk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label apprentice uk. Show all posts
Sunday, 7 June 2009
Saturday, 6 June 2009
In which that horrible ruddy-faced bastard does not appear
So, after weeks of cleaning things and cooking things and selling things and going on the telly to sell things, we are down to the interview stage, if by interview you mean ‘see how well the contestants handle being insulted to their faces for several hours’.
We get the usual bumph and then the recap of last week’s episode, where Debrabarr excelled at being the sort of almost-human that does well on shopping channels, and Howard went home.
The comparatively late time of 6.30. Kate answers the phone with no make-up. The cars are coming in 30 minutes. She stomps about rousing people. The Humanise Debrabarr Edit continues apace, as she sits in a tracksuit and singsongs ‘We’re going for interviews!’ to Lorraine like a small child, then gives Lorraine a bit of a pep-talk and a hug and tells her not to worry about the interviews. Yasmina to-cameras that she’s never had an interview and not got the job. Lorraine to-cameras that all the rest are looking forward to interviews, but she’s bricking it.
A kind of dull and repetitious introduction to the candidates. Debrabarr is a bit mean. Kate is unflappable. Lorraine has six wins and is the most successful (Yasmina’s 3 for 3 record as project manager would like to have a word) and has a spotty CV because she spent time raising her kids. Yasmina is going to be brilliant at the interviews, she says. James says he’s the best candidate. Yuh-huh. He makes an unpleasant analogy involving his arse and Alan Sugar.
At Viglen’s offices, Sralan’s like ‘no tasks lol! Interviews though! 3 of you will be bladdy fired! Lol!’
The four rottweillers are (and as ever, I reserve the right to misspell their names, because they’re asses) Borden Chatchuk, CE of Viglen; Claude Littner, ex-assassin of Sralan; Karrrren Brady, MD of Birmingham City; and Alan Watts, a bladdy lawyer [presumably to prove that he doesn't hate them after all - Rad].
There’s a weird badly-edited confusing montage of interview clips. We see several of them saying ‘Pleased to meet you’ to the interviews, which: sigh. The correct, polite, thing to say is ‘How do you do?’ when meeting someone for the first time in a formal situation. [I didn't know that. Never let it be said that this blog isn't educational. - Steve] Kate just wants to get started. James thinks it’s like waiting to see the headmaster.
Claude tells James his CV is ‘exceptional’ – but exceptionally bad. He goes on for about twenty minutes about how James has far too many telecoms-specific terms in it; though he does complain about ‘SLA’, which is ‘service level agreement’ and isn’t that bizarre, really. [Seriously. I've encountered that one in nearly every job I've had. - Steve]
Kate tells Bodrun about herself – first class degree, marketing for a coffee chain, so on. Bodrun is impressed, but asks why she’s there. She says she wants to work in another industry, and get the chance to progress. As she comes out, the other candidates are amused that she’s smiling. She says ‘I always smile’ and then does a funny little twitch, which is either her taking the piss out of her own smiling façade, or is it legitimately slipping. Either way: heh.
Karrrren asks Yasmina about her restaurant. She and her brother were working in a restaurant and decided ‘Rah! No more making money for The Man! We shall make money for ourselves!’ Claude looks at her CV, and we get to see that she is owner, finance director and waitress of her restaurant (Claude has written ‘Why not MD?’); that she was fired from a housekeeping job in the Alps; and that her hobbies are eating nice food, horse-riding, and surfing. He praises her website and says the restaurant looks lovely. He then gets into her figures. 4.5% of her turnover was profit. She gets a bit flustered and says ‘bottomline profit’ and then gets confused between gross and net profit. Then Claude pulls out her accounts, to her astonishment, though he says ‘they’re public documents’ and she calms down. Then he tells her off some more about what she claimed her turnover was – she said it was £8,000 a week, but her accounts didn’t show £400,000 for the first year. She asks if it says £370,000 and he refuses to tell her. Which, yeah. C’mon Yasmina. Know your own figures [seriously. Has she never watched Dragon's Den? I know it's not the same show, but surely the same principle applies - Rad]. She’s dressed like a pilgrim. She comes out and tells everyone he was nice, and it was enjoyable. [or not! - Rad]
Lorraine says she’s nervous, Yasmina reassures her. Lorraine goes to see Karrrren – ‘Pleased to meet you!’ GRRR! – and Karrrren asks about Lorraine’s CV, which claims she has ‘a special gift’. Turns out this is intuition, and not firing pingpong balls from her cooch. Karrrren then picks her up on the fact that she says her job was May 07 to present, when in fact it was May 08, and asks why she LIED. [She should have said 'because lying on your CV wins you this show' - Rad]
James says the guy interviewing Debrabarr will be more scared than she is. Claude says that she’s got a great degree and so on, but she’s not a team player and seems a bit ruthless. Debrabarr says she’s ambitious, but she doesn’t want to ‘ruin’ anyone else, and she doesn’t really like the term ruthless.
Claude tells James off for saying that his job was ‘putting a leash on people who spunk money up the wall’ and then asks James why the hell he said he brought ‘ignorance’ to the table on his CV. James claims it’s a good ignorance. That’s okay then. Lorraine says that James said he was there for the challenge, and Debrabarr is all ‘Nuh-uh! He don’t challenge himself no how!’ Alan calls James immature. James gets het up and says that he doesn’t want to be seen as the joker, and has achieved everything asked of him. You weren’t asked to lose all those tasks, sweetness.
Claude asks why Kate’s CV says her greatest challenge would be working in an all-female team. She starts off fine, saying that she has worked with men more, and that’s her comfort zone, but then says that women have more ‘emotions and bitching’ but she does acknowledge that it’s a generalisation, and only her experience. Still though. Poor show, Kate.
Alan says one of Debrabarr’s references say she’s arrogant and tells people to fuck off. Does she? Yes she does! He then says that if you have to swear to communicate (fine so far), it shows that you’re arrogant (WRONG). If you have to swear to communicate it shows that you’re too inarticulate to express yourself any other way, which, by the way, is a bigger flaw in a businessperson than arrogance. Interviewer FAIL. [I don't like this assumption about people "having" to swear. I don't HAVE to, I just fucking choose to. - Steve] Then Karrrren dives in and says that her colleagues says ‘you love her or hate her, but lots of people hate her’ and ‘she thinks she’s the dog’s bollocks’. Debrabarr literally snorts with laughter at this and responds brilliantly, basically saying that yes she’s driven, yes she’s passionate, and if you see those qualities in a woman, it’s easy to turn around and call her a bitch. Karrrren, who, by the way, is wearing this bizarre white smock thing, with like a cummerbund with a blue pattern on it – looking like she’s inspired by Lady GaGa’s china outfit and got a bit muddled – goes on about how she’s a successful businesswoman, but nobody calls her a bitch. Debrabarr doesn’t even dignify that shit with a response and just stares at Karrrren. Outside, they ask if anything was nice at all, and Debrabarr says ‘Yeah! “Pleased to meet you”!’ and laughs beautifully. She really should laugh more.
Karrrren then goes to Kate, oooh, you’ve got trouble with emotions in the workplace, but you had emotions for Philip, didn’t you? Kate’s like, nah, not really. Karrrren’s like ‘oh, but it was a problem for other people!’ as though Lorraine wasn’t using it as a brilliant boardroom tool as opposed to something the actually gave a shit about. Kate says it’s ‘a nonsense’ and people’s own binniz be they own binniz. Karrrren’s like, so you’re not whinging and moaning then? Kate’s like, well, yeah, I am now and we see a flash of personality for a second, but she locks that down with a quickness to ‘everyone has the right to whinge and moan’ sometimes. Karrren, all smug like she’s just struck the coup de grace says, but that’s your greatest problem! Women who whinge and moan! I caught you out! I am the fucking Sherlock Holmes of Apprentice interviews! Much like Debrabarr, Kate doesn’t even respond.
Alan has a big go at Yasmina that her mother remortgaged her house to raise finance for Yasmina’s restaurant. As though she held her mother at gunpoint, rather than this grown woman making her own decision. What a bullshit thing to complain about.
Karrrren asks if Lorraine is tough. She claims she is – dealing with her husband leaving her and her daughter being ill. Karrrren asks if she rubs people the wrong way, and Lorraine is like ‘Apparently! Who knew?’
Claude tells Kate she’s Little Miss Perfect – she says nobody is perfect – and that even though she’s clearly very very competent, and even in this interview she’s well within her comfort zone – but she’s not passionate. Kate says that she is and says that at 16 she was the youngest person to be put forward for the McDonald’s management programme (managing in her tone of voice to express ‘this is a little bit ridiculous, but it does still prove my point’) and that you can’t achieve excellent results without having passion.
Debrabarr tells Alan that the biggest thing she’s learned the past ten weeks is how her personality may impact on other people, and even though that was hard it was brilliant, because at 23 she has the opportunity to transform that. Perfect answer.
James says blah blah blah he doesn’t want to go home yet.
Debrabarr has never had so much negative feedback in one day, but really wants to be the Apprentice.
Back at the flat, they eat dinner and Cheers! each other. Lorraine’s second Irish line of the episode tells us that she’s a bit shocked and she says that if she gets this it will show she’s more than what she’s achieved so far.
To the boardroom. NotFrances’s computer has no icons at all on the desktop.
Sralan’s interviewers chat to him, Nick and Margaret. Alan starts off on Lorraine. She talks too much but doesn’t answer the question. Karrrren goes off on one about the special gift and intuition. Bordun goes on about how she claimed to read minds. We see in a clip she said no such thing, but that she was able to mirror people. He asks what he’s thinking, and her third Irish line of the episode says he doesn’t know if she’s for real. Margaret defends her, saying she makes the right call when others don’t, but doesn’t know when to shut up about that. Others say that she’s not right and wouldn’t cope with the stress.
Claude says Yasmina actually shows entrepreneurial spirit, and has her own business, but that she didn’t do that well once he questioned her accounts. Alan asks why would she want to be back on the ladder, rather than running her own business. Claude then goes back to that bullshit well about her mother’s mortgage. Karrrren tells him to shut up because the restaurant is a success and so it was a good risk. Claude says ‘Hindsight is great!’, all petulant, and srsly, what the hell is your damage, Mary? Sralan then reminisces that his parents used all their savings to buy him a car, so shut up Claude. Nick says parents make sacrifices, so shut up Claude. Karrren (now wearing a nasty blue dress that appears to be made out of some rubberised material an has funny little peak sleeves like the uniforms in Captain Scarlet, and as we will see, again with the weird patterned cummerbund) says Yasmina is great.
James didn’t have a good interview with Karrrren. He recognised that it wasn’t good. She gave him one opportunity to say something impressive, and he said he wanted Sralan to be Willy Wonka and give him the keys to the factory; he couldn’t stop joking. Bordun says he’s got some impressive achievements. Nick says he’s lucky and ‘shimmied through’.
Karrren was very impressed with Kate, but perhaps she was too good, and a bit robotic. Interview flashback to Karrrren and Kate, with Kate saying that she definitely isn’t boring, and anyone who knows her would say that. Nick says, as a genuine suggestion, ‘maybe she hasn’t got a personality!’ Karrrren raises her complaint about bitchy emotional women again. They conclude that unflappability isn’t a bad thing and that Kate would be a great employee.
Karrrren says that Debrabarr’s references were harsh, and Alan says he wasn’t convinced by her argument that she’s learnt to moderate her personality. Bodrun says she might upset people. Claude says she’s young enough to be able to change. Sralan says she’s got some nasty ways, but some great qualities. They all agree that she’s very mature for 23, (although 23 isn’t the magical age of 24, so she doesn’t carp on about it), and has some great qualities but could be risky.
The interviewing folk leave. Margaret says they’re all good but none are perfect, but that would be too much to ask. NotFrances sends the candidates through. Sralan wants them to tell him why they should get the job. Who wants to kick off? Nobody responds. Eventually James does, saying that he doesn’t look great on paper, and has lots of losses, but he thinks he and Sralan could be a good match. At this, Kate’s eyes practically bulge out on stalks. James prattles on about how he’s not just a joker blah blah blah.
Sralan moves to Debrabarr. They’ve forgotten that she’s just 23, but can she curtail her attitude? She says that she’s taken on the negative feedback, which has been hard, but she’s now willing to adjust her personality if that’s what’s necessary. Sralan says she needs to conquer herself before she conquers the world.
He tells Kate that the interviewing people considered her robotic; she awesomely says ‘I’ll take that as a compliment’ and says that she’s very composed and controlled. Sralan says he’s never met anyone that controlled who is successful. She says she isn’t always like that, but in interview situation, it shows strength of character to stay composed and not get flustered. Sralan says that he’s a bit old-fashioned and doesn’t like storyboards and spreadsheets and so on; Kate says that’s great, and it’s about acting appropriately for the situation.
Lorraine has had some tough times and Sralan does believe she’s tough as an ox. However, she’s been a focal point of conflict, and has been a bit more critical of people than others. She was a bit shocked by the feuding and so on. Sralan’s like ‘that’s nothing compared to these CREDIT CRUNCH times!’.
Sralan asks Yasmina why she wants to curtail her freedom by coming to work for him and she says that she feels a bit wasted in the catering industry, and she wants to develop her skills and then get that freedom back later. He asks if she’s one of the most credible, and she says definitely.
Sralan, verbatim: ‘Debra, leopard, spots. Will it change? Won’t it change? Young.’
‘Yasmina. Here for the right reason? Dunno.’ Cue HWUH? face from Yasmina.
Lorraine might not be right, Kate always has the right answers. He tells James there’s nothing wrong with being friendly, but he’s a corporate man and that don’t exist at Sralansugarindustries Incorporated, so with regret he’s fired. James thanks him, and says it’s been brilliant.
Debrabarr starts to cry. Yasmina, seated between them, has an arm on Debrabarr and Lorraine, reassuring them. Sralan sends them out for a breather. Sralan, Margaret and Nick says James is great. Notfrances sends them back in.
There will only be two people in the final. HOORAY! He tells Yasmina he’s concerned about her commitment because of her restaurant. She says that she didn’t want to do the graduate training programme like everyone else (cue slight bitchface from Kate, who did one) and wanted to learn about business from the grassroots level. Kate’s received lots of compliments, but she’s clinical and robotic. She says that she’s performed well and achieved results, and you don’t do that as a robot. She claims she’s not short on personality but manages to seem like a total robot while doing so. I think Kate’s issue is that she’s so into this ‘being professional and composed’ mode, which is a good thing, that she finds it hard to let it slip and let herself come out. I don’t believe she’s a robot, she just has incredibly strict Work-Life boundaries.
Lorraine starts on about her tough background, and Sralan basically says ‘I’m sympathetic, but shut up’. She says that she’s learnt when to push herself forward more and will take it with her for the rest of her life. Sralan says to take that with her now, cos she’s fired. She thanks him for the opportunity. She and Debrabarr share a touch as she leaves.
Sralan says there are three awesome people left, basically. He tells Yasmina that the big hiring computer would tell him not to hire her cos she already has a business. He tells Debrabarr that if she manages her character, her reputation will manage itself. She says she can do that. He says that’s just words. She says no, she’s done it over the last ten weeks and will continue doing so. [Which is true, and is also pretty much what Claire did last year - Rad]
Sralan says, ‘Kate, you’re in the final’ and it’s bizarre to watch. First you have her very professional ‘thank you Sralan’; then a ZOMG!!! Face; then professional calm; then ZOMG!! again.
He tells Debrabarr and Yasmina there is nothing between them and it was a tough decision. He’s not worried about the person who’s leaving. Debrabarr, you should be proud of yourself, and I wish you the best of luck, you’ll be successful in the future, you’re fired. And, because it’s awesome, Debrabarr verbatim: ‘Thank you very much, each of you, for your feedback, and I’ll take it with me, and be a success’. Sralan tells her to keep in touch. She grins hugely and hugs Yasmina and then Kate. Nicest firing and best firing response ever. [It almost felt like Debrabarr fired Sralan, somehow, given how she totally came out on top. It was awesome. - Steve]
Yasmina can’t seem to process that she’s in the final. It was the toughest decision he’s had to make, and walking out that door might be his biggest mistake. He doesn’t want them to let him down, blah di blah. Back to the penthouse! Kate and Yasmina hug and prance in the lobby.
Now, I love both Kate and Yasmina, so this is an awesometastic final. And last year’s four-way final was ricockulous. But a three-way Debrabarr, Yasmina, Kate final would have been amazing.
Londonporn. The girls gossip in the back of a taxi. Very excited, blah-di-blah.
Next week (or rather, on Sunday): the fired candidates come back (obviously) (Yasmina: ‘Awww!’). They have to design and launch a new box of chocolates. Debrabarr says ‘It looks like a box of Tampax.’ Philip choreographs something. I generally like to predict who’ll win by which fired candidates they take, but as Kate appears to have Ben, and Yasmina appears to have Philip, they’ve got an albatross each, so who can say?
[Join me tomorrow LIVE! For a Liveblog! And crying about Margaret quitting - Rad]
We get the usual bumph and then the recap of last week’s episode, where Debrabarr excelled at being the sort of almost-human that does well on shopping channels, and Howard went home.
The comparatively late time of 6.30. Kate answers the phone with no make-up. The cars are coming in 30 minutes. She stomps about rousing people. The Humanise Debrabarr Edit continues apace, as she sits in a tracksuit and singsongs ‘We’re going for interviews!’ to Lorraine like a small child, then gives Lorraine a bit of a pep-talk and a hug and tells her not to worry about the interviews. Yasmina to-cameras that she’s never had an interview and not got the job. Lorraine to-cameras that all the rest are looking forward to interviews, but she’s bricking it.
A kind of dull and repetitious introduction to the candidates. Debrabarr is a bit mean. Kate is unflappable. Lorraine has six wins and is the most successful (Yasmina’s 3 for 3 record as project manager would like to have a word) and has a spotty CV because she spent time raising her kids. Yasmina is going to be brilliant at the interviews, she says. James says he’s the best candidate. Yuh-huh. He makes an unpleasant analogy involving his arse and Alan Sugar.
At Viglen’s offices, Sralan’s like ‘no tasks lol! Interviews though! 3 of you will be bladdy fired! Lol!’
The four rottweillers are (and as ever, I reserve the right to misspell their names, because they’re asses) Borden Chatchuk, CE of Viglen; Claude Littner, ex-assassin of Sralan; Karrrren Brady, MD of Birmingham City; and Alan Watts, a bladdy lawyer [presumably to prove that he doesn't hate them after all - Rad].
There’s a weird badly-edited confusing montage of interview clips. We see several of them saying ‘Pleased to meet you’ to the interviews, which: sigh. The correct, polite, thing to say is ‘How do you do?’ when meeting someone for the first time in a formal situation. [I didn't know that. Never let it be said that this blog isn't educational. - Steve] Kate just wants to get started. James thinks it’s like waiting to see the headmaster.
Claude tells James his CV is ‘exceptional’ – but exceptionally bad. He goes on for about twenty minutes about how James has far too many telecoms-specific terms in it; though he does complain about ‘SLA’, which is ‘service level agreement’ and isn’t that bizarre, really. [Seriously. I've encountered that one in nearly every job I've had. - Steve]
Kate tells Bodrun about herself – first class degree, marketing for a coffee chain, so on. Bodrun is impressed, but asks why she’s there. She says she wants to work in another industry, and get the chance to progress. As she comes out, the other candidates are amused that she’s smiling. She says ‘I always smile’ and then does a funny little twitch, which is either her taking the piss out of her own smiling façade, or is it legitimately slipping. Either way: heh.
Karrrren asks Yasmina about her restaurant. She and her brother were working in a restaurant and decided ‘Rah! No more making money for The Man! We shall make money for ourselves!’ Claude looks at her CV, and we get to see that she is owner, finance director and waitress of her restaurant (Claude has written ‘Why not MD?’); that she was fired from a housekeeping job in the Alps; and that her hobbies are eating nice food, horse-riding, and surfing. He praises her website and says the restaurant looks lovely. He then gets into her figures. 4.5% of her turnover was profit. She gets a bit flustered and says ‘bottomline profit’ and then gets confused between gross and net profit. Then Claude pulls out her accounts, to her astonishment, though he says ‘they’re public documents’ and she calms down. Then he tells her off some more about what she claimed her turnover was – she said it was £8,000 a week, but her accounts didn’t show £400,000 for the first year. She asks if it says £370,000 and he refuses to tell her. Which, yeah. C’mon Yasmina. Know your own figures [seriously. Has she never watched Dragon's Den? I know it's not the same show, but surely the same principle applies - Rad]. She’s dressed like a pilgrim. She comes out and tells everyone he was nice, and it was enjoyable. [or not! - Rad]
Lorraine says she’s nervous, Yasmina reassures her. Lorraine goes to see Karrrren – ‘Pleased to meet you!’ GRRR! – and Karrrren asks about Lorraine’s CV, which claims she has ‘a special gift’. Turns out this is intuition, and not firing pingpong balls from her cooch. Karrrren then picks her up on the fact that she says her job was May 07 to present, when in fact it was May 08, and asks why she LIED. [She should have said 'because lying on your CV wins you this show' - Rad]
James says the guy interviewing Debrabarr will be more scared than she is. Claude says that she’s got a great degree and so on, but she’s not a team player and seems a bit ruthless. Debrabarr says she’s ambitious, but she doesn’t want to ‘ruin’ anyone else, and she doesn’t really like the term ruthless.
Claude tells James off for saying that his job was ‘putting a leash on people who spunk money up the wall’ and then asks James why the hell he said he brought ‘ignorance’ to the table on his CV. James claims it’s a good ignorance. That’s okay then. Lorraine says that James said he was there for the challenge, and Debrabarr is all ‘Nuh-uh! He don’t challenge himself no how!’ Alan calls James immature. James gets het up and says that he doesn’t want to be seen as the joker, and has achieved everything asked of him. You weren’t asked to lose all those tasks, sweetness.
Claude asks why Kate’s CV says her greatest challenge would be working in an all-female team. She starts off fine, saying that she has worked with men more, and that’s her comfort zone, but then says that women have more ‘emotions and bitching’ but she does acknowledge that it’s a generalisation, and only her experience. Still though. Poor show, Kate.
Alan says one of Debrabarr’s references say she’s arrogant and tells people to fuck off. Does she? Yes she does! He then says that if you have to swear to communicate (fine so far), it shows that you’re arrogant (WRONG). If you have to swear to communicate it shows that you’re too inarticulate to express yourself any other way, which, by the way, is a bigger flaw in a businessperson than arrogance. Interviewer FAIL. [I don't like this assumption about people "having" to swear. I don't HAVE to, I just fucking choose to. - Steve] Then Karrrren dives in and says that her colleagues says ‘you love her or hate her, but lots of people hate her’ and ‘she thinks she’s the dog’s bollocks’. Debrabarr literally snorts with laughter at this and responds brilliantly, basically saying that yes she’s driven, yes she’s passionate, and if you see those qualities in a woman, it’s easy to turn around and call her a bitch. Karrrren, who, by the way, is wearing this bizarre white smock thing, with like a cummerbund with a blue pattern on it – looking like she’s inspired by Lady GaGa’s china outfit and got a bit muddled – goes on about how she’s a successful businesswoman, but nobody calls her a bitch. Debrabarr doesn’t even dignify that shit with a response and just stares at Karrrren. Outside, they ask if anything was nice at all, and Debrabarr says ‘Yeah! “Pleased to meet you”!’ and laughs beautifully. She really should laugh more.
Karrrren then goes to Kate, oooh, you’ve got trouble with emotions in the workplace, but you had emotions for Philip, didn’t you? Kate’s like, nah, not really. Karrrren’s like ‘oh, but it was a problem for other people!’ as though Lorraine wasn’t using it as a brilliant boardroom tool as opposed to something the actually gave a shit about. Kate says it’s ‘a nonsense’ and people’s own binniz be they own binniz. Karrrren’s like, so you’re not whinging and moaning then? Kate’s like, well, yeah, I am now and we see a flash of personality for a second, but she locks that down with a quickness to ‘everyone has the right to whinge and moan’ sometimes. Karrren, all smug like she’s just struck the coup de grace says, but that’s your greatest problem! Women who whinge and moan! I caught you out! I am the fucking Sherlock Holmes of Apprentice interviews! Much like Debrabarr, Kate doesn’t even respond.
Alan has a big go at Yasmina that her mother remortgaged her house to raise finance for Yasmina’s restaurant. As though she held her mother at gunpoint, rather than this grown woman making her own decision. What a bullshit thing to complain about.
Karrrren asks if Lorraine is tough. She claims she is – dealing with her husband leaving her and her daughter being ill. Karrrren asks if she rubs people the wrong way, and Lorraine is like ‘Apparently! Who knew?’
Claude tells Kate she’s Little Miss Perfect – she says nobody is perfect – and that even though she’s clearly very very competent, and even in this interview she’s well within her comfort zone – but she’s not passionate. Kate says that she is and says that at 16 she was the youngest person to be put forward for the McDonald’s management programme (managing in her tone of voice to express ‘this is a little bit ridiculous, but it does still prove my point’) and that you can’t achieve excellent results without having passion.
Debrabarr tells Alan that the biggest thing she’s learned the past ten weeks is how her personality may impact on other people, and even though that was hard it was brilliant, because at 23 she has the opportunity to transform that. Perfect answer.
James says blah blah blah he doesn’t want to go home yet.
Debrabarr has never had so much negative feedback in one day, but really wants to be the Apprentice.
Back at the flat, they eat dinner and Cheers! each other. Lorraine’s second Irish line of the episode tells us that she’s a bit shocked and she says that if she gets this it will show she’s more than what she’s achieved so far.
To the boardroom. NotFrances’s computer has no icons at all on the desktop.
Sralan’s interviewers chat to him, Nick and Margaret. Alan starts off on Lorraine. She talks too much but doesn’t answer the question. Karrrren goes off on one about the special gift and intuition. Bordun goes on about how she claimed to read minds. We see in a clip she said no such thing, but that she was able to mirror people. He asks what he’s thinking, and her third Irish line of the episode says he doesn’t know if she’s for real. Margaret defends her, saying she makes the right call when others don’t, but doesn’t know when to shut up about that. Others say that she’s not right and wouldn’t cope with the stress.
Claude says Yasmina actually shows entrepreneurial spirit, and has her own business, but that she didn’t do that well once he questioned her accounts. Alan asks why would she want to be back on the ladder, rather than running her own business. Claude then goes back to that bullshit well about her mother’s mortgage. Karrrren tells him to shut up because the restaurant is a success and so it was a good risk. Claude says ‘Hindsight is great!’, all petulant, and srsly, what the hell is your damage, Mary? Sralan then reminisces that his parents used all their savings to buy him a car, so shut up Claude. Nick says parents make sacrifices, so shut up Claude. Karrren (now wearing a nasty blue dress that appears to be made out of some rubberised material an has funny little peak sleeves like the uniforms in Captain Scarlet, and as we will see, again with the weird patterned cummerbund) says Yasmina is great.
James didn’t have a good interview with Karrrren. He recognised that it wasn’t good. She gave him one opportunity to say something impressive, and he said he wanted Sralan to be Willy Wonka and give him the keys to the factory; he couldn’t stop joking. Bordun says he’s got some impressive achievements. Nick says he’s lucky and ‘shimmied through’.
Karrren was very impressed with Kate, but perhaps she was too good, and a bit robotic. Interview flashback to Karrrren and Kate, with Kate saying that she definitely isn’t boring, and anyone who knows her would say that. Nick says, as a genuine suggestion, ‘maybe she hasn’t got a personality!’ Karrrren raises her complaint about bitchy emotional women again. They conclude that unflappability isn’t a bad thing and that Kate would be a great employee.
Karrrren says that Debrabarr’s references were harsh, and Alan says he wasn’t convinced by her argument that she’s learnt to moderate her personality. Bodrun says she might upset people. Claude says she’s young enough to be able to change. Sralan says she’s got some nasty ways, but some great qualities. They all agree that she’s very mature for 23, (although 23 isn’t the magical age of 24, so she doesn’t carp on about it), and has some great qualities but could be risky.
The interviewing folk leave. Margaret says they’re all good but none are perfect, but that would be too much to ask. NotFrances sends the candidates through. Sralan wants them to tell him why they should get the job. Who wants to kick off? Nobody responds. Eventually James does, saying that he doesn’t look great on paper, and has lots of losses, but he thinks he and Sralan could be a good match. At this, Kate’s eyes practically bulge out on stalks. James prattles on about how he’s not just a joker blah blah blah.
Sralan moves to Debrabarr. They’ve forgotten that she’s just 23, but can she curtail her attitude? She says that she’s taken on the negative feedback, which has been hard, but she’s now willing to adjust her personality if that’s what’s necessary. Sralan says she needs to conquer herself before she conquers the world.
He tells Kate that the interviewing people considered her robotic; she awesomely says ‘I’ll take that as a compliment’ and says that she’s very composed and controlled. Sralan says he’s never met anyone that controlled who is successful. She says she isn’t always like that, but in interview situation, it shows strength of character to stay composed and not get flustered. Sralan says that he’s a bit old-fashioned and doesn’t like storyboards and spreadsheets and so on; Kate says that’s great, and it’s about acting appropriately for the situation.
Lorraine has had some tough times and Sralan does believe she’s tough as an ox. However, she’s been a focal point of conflict, and has been a bit more critical of people than others. She was a bit shocked by the feuding and so on. Sralan’s like ‘that’s nothing compared to these CREDIT CRUNCH times!’.
Sralan asks Yasmina why she wants to curtail her freedom by coming to work for him and she says that she feels a bit wasted in the catering industry, and she wants to develop her skills and then get that freedom back later. He asks if she’s one of the most credible, and she says definitely.
Sralan, verbatim: ‘Debra, leopard, spots. Will it change? Won’t it change? Young.’
‘Yasmina. Here for the right reason? Dunno.’ Cue HWUH? face from Yasmina.
Lorraine might not be right, Kate always has the right answers. He tells James there’s nothing wrong with being friendly, but he’s a corporate man and that don’t exist at Sralansugarindustries Incorporated, so with regret he’s fired. James thanks him, and says it’s been brilliant.
Debrabarr starts to cry. Yasmina, seated between them, has an arm on Debrabarr and Lorraine, reassuring them. Sralan sends them out for a breather. Sralan, Margaret and Nick says James is great. Notfrances sends them back in.
There will only be two people in the final. HOORAY! He tells Yasmina he’s concerned about her commitment because of her restaurant. She says that she didn’t want to do the graduate training programme like everyone else (cue slight bitchface from Kate, who did one) and wanted to learn about business from the grassroots level. Kate’s received lots of compliments, but she’s clinical and robotic. She says that she’s performed well and achieved results, and you don’t do that as a robot. She claims she’s not short on personality but manages to seem like a total robot while doing so. I think Kate’s issue is that she’s so into this ‘being professional and composed’ mode, which is a good thing, that she finds it hard to let it slip and let herself come out. I don’t believe she’s a robot, she just has incredibly strict Work-Life boundaries.
Lorraine starts on about her tough background, and Sralan basically says ‘I’m sympathetic, but shut up’. She says that she’s learnt when to push herself forward more and will take it with her for the rest of her life. Sralan says to take that with her now, cos she’s fired. She thanks him for the opportunity. She and Debrabarr share a touch as she leaves.
Sralan says there are three awesome people left, basically. He tells Yasmina that the big hiring computer would tell him not to hire her cos she already has a business. He tells Debrabarr that if she manages her character, her reputation will manage itself. She says she can do that. He says that’s just words. She says no, she’s done it over the last ten weeks and will continue doing so. [Which is true, and is also pretty much what Claire did last year - Rad]
Sralan says, ‘Kate, you’re in the final’ and it’s bizarre to watch. First you have her very professional ‘thank you Sralan’; then a ZOMG!!! Face; then professional calm; then ZOMG!! again.
He tells Debrabarr and Yasmina there is nothing between them and it was a tough decision. He’s not worried about the person who’s leaving. Debrabarr, you should be proud of yourself, and I wish you the best of luck, you’ll be successful in the future, you’re fired. And, because it’s awesome, Debrabarr verbatim: ‘Thank you very much, each of you, for your feedback, and I’ll take it with me, and be a success’. Sralan tells her to keep in touch. She grins hugely and hugs Yasmina and then Kate. Nicest firing and best firing response ever. [It almost felt like Debrabarr fired Sralan, somehow, given how she totally came out on top. It was awesome. - Steve]
Yasmina can’t seem to process that she’s in the final. It was the toughest decision he’s had to make, and walking out that door might be his biggest mistake. He doesn’t want them to let him down, blah di blah. Back to the penthouse! Kate and Yasmina hug and prance in the lobby.
Now, I love both Kate and Yasmina, so this is an awesometastic final. And last year’s four-way final was ricockulous. But a three-way Debrabarr, Yasmina, Kate final would have been amazing.
Londonporn. The girls gossip in the back of a taxi. Very excited, blah-di-blah.
Next week (or rather, on Sunday): the fired candidates come back (obviously) (Yasmina: ‘Awww!’). They have to design and launch a new box of chocolates. Debrabarr says ‘It looks like a box of Tampax.’ Philip choreographs something. I generally like to predict who’ll win by which fired candidates they take, but as Kate appears to have Ben, and Yasmina appears to have Philip, they’ve got an albatross each, so who can say?
[Join me tomorrow LIVE! For a Liveblog! And crying about Margaret quitting - Rad]
Thursday, 14 May 2009
Summer gays , drifting away
Previously on The Apprentice... Our hapless heroes thought they were going somewhere exotic but they went Oop North. Mona didn’t go for any of Sralan’s ace leads put pulled off some awesome negotiations. Lorraine’s team picked some rubbish items and Philip, Ben and Kate couldn’t be arsed to sell anything. In the boardroom Philip was a dick, Lorraine snitched on his relationship with Kate, Kate wiped the floor with both of them and Philip was fired, which was a joke. According to Philip.
It's 5.10am(!), and NotFrances calls. Mona, barely awake, answers the phone. The cars will be with them in half an hour and they have to take an overnight bag. Sunrise over London porn.
This week’s tenuous venue isthe Millennium Dome the O2, built ‘about ten years ago’. Yes, Sralan, for that big thing that happened ‘about 10 years ago’ called the millennium. Anyway, it rebranded successfully (allegedly, although I defy anyone to see a picture of it and not think of it as the Dome first) and so they’re going to rebrand Margate. Considering the wealth of creative brandng talent on show so far this series, I bet Margate can't wait. They're surely kicking themselves over Philip's firing last week when he could have come up with a wonderfully inappropriate concept this time around as well.
The teams have two days to come up with a ‘marketing makeover’. In team one, everyone wants to be the manager, especially Howard, but Debrabarr tells him he can be the subteam manager if he wants. I can't work out whether she's incredibly harsh here or just incredibly awesome by deciding she's PM and not engaging in any debate. It's pretty forceful, whatever.
In team two, Yasmina and Kate are wearing matching waistcoat/tanktop combos. Yasmina wants to be PM and everyone else agrees.
Mona apparently knows Margate well and says ‘it’s all about families’. Which, yes, it's a seaside resort, that stands to reason. Howard and James say that’s not rebranding. Howard asks how they feel about the gay market. Mona says she’d rather go with families but the others want to actually rebrand as per the task remit, so the gays it is. Mona PTCs that Kent is not a place for the gays and no gays are in Kent. Kent says no to gays!
Over in team two, Lorraine says with the ‘economic downturn’ (drrrink) more families will want to holiday in Britain. The team quickly agree to sell to families.
Lots of London porn and twiddly classical music.
In team two’s car, Lorraine is working a Jenny Celery-esque scarf and discussing things with Ben and it’s all rather amicable. It's actually quite amazing how the dickwipe quotient in that car has decreased by about 110% (drink!) since Philip left - even though it still has Lorraine AND Ben in it.
Mona and James discuss how they need to find out what’s going on in Margate.
Team one – Empire, apparently – are casting for their models. They have two men and Howard asks if they’ve ever done any same sex modelling? They say no. Howard then gets lots of boys to touch each other up for his and Debrabarr’s pleasure.
Margate, we are told, is ‘just another faded seaside town’. Cue lots of shots of broken glass and boarded up shops. However! Margate needn't be sad, as the candidates will fix all of this! Or! The producers have just dealt the Margate tourist board a nasty blow.
Mona and James talk to the locals and say they want to rebrand Margate. The locals say ‘that’s our job’. They mention attracting the gays. The locals are all well up for it, but Mona keeps trying to talk them out of it. Kent is up for the gays after all!
Yasmina and Kate, still in matching outfits, audition for the ‘perfect’ mum and dad. They get people to flash their legs and chests. These auditions are really just an excuse for a good old perv, aren’t they?
Ben and Lorraine are looking for something to make Margate special and attract young upwardly mobile (hello 1987) families. They settle for a nice shot of some rockery in what’s either a park or a crazy golf course, I can't really tell, with a view of the sea behind. Ben VTs that Margate is hardly the Seychelles. He comes up with a slogan ‘shellebrate family fun’ and phones Y and K with this. They lol and are all ‘NO WAI’. He then says something about it being the epitome of British culture and they LOL some more. Lorraine suggests seeing it through children’s eyes and they are up for that.
Mona talks to a pre-op transsexual and asks if Margate is for the gays and then asks what her sexuality is. She is told about waiting for the op and asks so ‘are you a boy or a girl’ and says 'you can't tell' (which: you could tell a mile off, sorry) seems rather shocked by the whole thing. Oh, Mona. The complete horror of this exchange doesn't work so well in recap but it's essentially something only to be watched through the gaps in your fingers.
James phones back and says everyone’s thought it was time to move on from the blue rinse brigade, and they’re onto a winner.
8am, the morning of the photo shoot and it’s all fogtastic. It will be interestinf to see if Sralan can blame then for the bladdy weather in the boardroom. I wouldn't put it past him. Lorraine and Ben call Yasmina in a panic and she’s all ‘get a nice shot, we want background with lots of space in’ and not really getting the whole weather situation.
Over at team gay, five models are pretending to be lesbian and gay. The lesbians are clearly in a three-way setup. Progressive! Not only is Margate embracing the gays, it's embracing threesomes! Brilliant! Mona asks them to pose. James hangs on to a pole-dancing pole. Nick says it’s all looking a bit stiff and wooden (heh) and they’re not getting much direction. I'm not entirely sure why Howard isn't in team Margate, as being the creative one, it would seem to make more sense.
Ben is taking control of team nuclear family and making lots of square ‘framing’ gestures with his fingers to show he knows what he is doing, right. It's all very Michael Sophocles, film director, except even crapper, which I wouldn't have thought was possible.
In London (because there are no design guys in Margate, clearly), Yasmina lays out her leaflet, whilst Debra and Howard are struggling with their posters – Howard thinks there’s too much text and there should only be four words. The design guy sits and stares into space. Debrabarr's, all 'I dunno, four words isn’t many'. Howard says you’re not listening to me, which, no, she’s just not convinced, Fishy. At this point I assume they'll come up with a compromise, you know, more than four words, but less than oooh, let's say ten. Let's see whether this happens, shall we?
James is taking a shot of two ‘gay’ men with ice-creams and says ‘not too much suggestive licking guys’.
Ben is back ‘framing’ again and says ‘none of this horrible stuff; more of the sea, less of Margate’. The Margate tourist board put their collective heads in their hands. Lorraine thinks the shots are too boring (families sitting down) and wants an action shot with them jumping for a beach ball. In London, Yasmina receives the photos and bitches that they don’t have enough empty space for the text. Ben rings and she says ‘Ben you dickwad, where’s my empty space? And you Lorraine’. Lorraine’s all ‘you don’t put text on photographs in posters’ which: when was the last time you saw a poster, Cassandra?
Debrabarr and Howard have a discussion. Debrabarr suggests comparing Margate to Manchester and Brighton, as the next big gay destination. Howard says ‘thought you knew about Margate?’ It all seems very civil.
Yasmina asks Lorraine what she thinks of the poster. Lorraine says 'I think the photo should be the centre'. Yasmina says 'we need to finish it and then talk about it afterwards'. Lorraine’s all ‘that would be too late, numpty’. They then have a big fight. We see the poster and it’s a random image of a child and parent doing pottery with a slightly random font choice - a nice font, but rather formal for a child-oriented thing. Kate tries to bridge over the troubled waters a little.
Team gay aren’t convinced by their leaflets because they don’t have enough content and the design guy doesn’t have enough time to get all the content on. It’s not clear whose fault this is. They leave a big space in the bottom right hand corner, which Nick points out and they decide they have to leave it. In the taxi, Debrabarr says she’s pissed off they didn’t finish the leaflet. Howard asks if there’s an image, a colour, anything in the gap. Debrabarr says no, they left it empty. Howard pulls the face of one who knows they've just lost.
They now have to pitch to ‘industry experts’ and the people of Margate. First to hear the pitches are two industry chiefs and a tourism expert.
Kate’s team show their posters and Kate gives a reasonable presentation that sounds confident and mentions how they played on the British weather. One exec asks if they took their logo off, would they recognise it as their campaign? They say yes, the blue is key, the ad execs say, well not really. The logo is a wave with margate on, and the design is all blues and whites, which is quite nice, but it all looks rather formal rather than ‘fun’.
Howard pitches for team gay. He starts by asking ‘do you know Margate?’. One exec withers ‘yes’. Their posters are ridiculous and I can only deduce that their graphic designer is either a fake, or hates the gays/the candidates, because regardless of the 'creative direction' of the candidates, no graphic designer worth their salt would even contemplate something that looks like this. They've used ugly as hell fonts and a nasty beige colour that all looks so amateur, and there are several paragraphs of text on each poster, although some of their photos could be nice if used differently. Essentially, it looks like a year eight poster produced in a PSE lesson to promote some sort of 'issue'. Howard fudges the blank on the leaflet saying it’s for adverts. One ad man says ‘posters should be under 10 words, yours has 70’. One ad lady says ‘your leaflet isn’t finished, is it?’ Mona says it’s a work in progress, and really, just hold your hands up and say you ran out of time.
Pitching to Margate. Kate pitches through children’s eyes. Slogans say things like ‘see the children enjoy themselves’ and ‘award winning sandy beaches’ which seem more parent-oriented to me, but, hey. One lady says Kate’s pitch was ace but the leaflet image looks like an oil slick and she thought they might offer something different. A man says it’s solid, safe and pedestrian, they want to promote arts and culture and there’s nothing there. Kate says some nonsense about long-term strategy and this being the first campaign in a lengthy rebranding. Oh Kate, you know how this show works by now, and longevity is never a factor (except when offerng exclusivity on other people's products like Princess Lindi and The Best Salesperson in Europe).
Howard says people associated Margate with dull, grey, old people and the camera pans to some older, grey haired officials. Ooof. Howard explains their publicity better than he did with the execs. A woman says nice pitch but dreadful visuals – we can’t read the posters. Howard says, yeah, you’re right. The man who told Kate they were safe then tells them off for limiting the marketing just to the gays. What the hell does Margate want? Howard says where the gays lead, everyone else follows.
Boardroom time, and there’s a shiny blue screensaver on NotFrances’s desk to match the shiny blue lighting and shiny blue eyes. Mona is now wearing Kate and Yasmina’s shirt/tank top uniform.
He asks Ignite how they came up with a family theme. Yasmina says they had a bit of discussion. Sralan interjects as to why she was PM. She says they all wanted her to do it. Sralan: hmmm. Sralan asks about their ideas and the others try to claim they had some brilliant ones. They go on about children liking the beach and Sralan points out there weren’t any children on their rather arty beach shot. Surprisingly, Lorraine doesn't bang on about her unused beach ball photo here.
He asks who put themselves forward as Empire team leader. Debrabarr says she and Howard wanted to. Sralan asks how did you decide? Howard says they agreed on a compromise. If compromise means Debra telling you what you're doing, then sure. Howard explains they chose the gays because it was all about rebranding. Sralan says yes, but your marketing sucks. Howard says ‘we had some clear points’. Sralan says, yes, very clear and shows two blank sides of paper. Fail. He asks Debrabarr who was weakest on their team. She says James and Mona.
The marketing people marked the teams out of 10. From the Margate jury, Team gay: 4; Team nuclear family: 7. From the pro jury, Team gay: 4; Team Nuclear family: 7. It seems to boil down to them having nicer looking publicity and an actual slogan, which is fair enough, even though they didn’t really do any rebranding, and if they'd lost, you just know Sralan would have taken them to task for this. They win some fast car driving, which is probably a bit more fun than laughter yoga. James almost cries.
At the car track, Ben has an orgasm to the camera and they all whoop a lot. Last year's apprentices collectively shudder as watching the fast cars evokes the memory of the supercar task.
In the café of doom, Mona says the fail was because Margate hates the gays (even though they clearly love the gays as we all saw). She then asks if Debrabarr only left an hour for the leaflet. Debrabarr says we wanted to wait for you. James says we lost because our leaflets and posters were shit and turned around in five minutes. Trufax.
Sralan says they made a bold statement about going for the gay market, then whispered the message. Howard says ‘we didn’t want to alienate people’. Sralan says the people were all up for the gays, you just sucked. Sralan says the posters were confusing. Margaret says they should have one big picture and only ten words. Howard says they wrote too much text. Sralan says who wrote it, you or her? Howard and Debrabarr say they both did. Sralan says Mona, you live in Kent, so why didn’t you give them hints? Mona says yes I live there but Debra didn’t listen [to my homophobia]. Sralan says Nick and Margaret say Mona doesn’t have many ideas and where’s her creativity? Mona says she found locations and spoke to a gay, which must mean she's creative and progressive, right? James says she was inappropriate at times. Mona says it was because she was uncomfortable with the subject. Mona says she didn’t agree with the concept. James says whatever your own opinions you need to leave them aside and get on with it. James has come a long way from the doofus of the early weeks, hasn't he?
Sralan says this leaflet isn’t finished. Debrabarr flusters and Nick says you said it was designed for advertisers. Margaret says they didn’t like being lied to and it blew the trust between advertisers and clients. Sralan: 'you’d have been better off saying to them…' Debrabarr: ‘I had Mona in my ear for 15 minutes and couldn’t get on?’ Sralan: 'exactly'. James says he and Howard had no responsibility. Mona says she and James were shocked that nothing was done when they arrived. Debrabarr says the Margate team weren’t creative enough. No-one takes any responsibility. Debrabarr: is it just the images and text that were wrong? (Well, no, it;s the lack of them in the case of the leaflet) Sralan: maybe it’s you. Debrabarr’s bringing back James and Mona. Sralan says you couldn’t bring Howard back because he did loads, although he was also with the 'designer' so I'm not entirely sure he should escape all culpability.
Margaret says they didn’t get a lot of support from the team in Margate, Sralan says Debrabarr needs to think on her feet more and stop lying, although surely you end up lying if you think on your feet too much?
He asks James for a rundown as he hasn’t had much time to talk to him in recent weeks. James says Debrabarr is a bulldog and difficult, but at least she's consistent, whilst Mona blows hot and cold. Debrabarr says Mona wasn’t up for it. Mona says ‘why did I talk to a gay person if I wasn’t?’ Debrabarr says they gave her limited ideas. James and Mona said she thought their ideas were great. Sralan asks who was responsible for the lousy posters. James says Mona was responsible for 15 minutes and Debrabarr for six hours. Debrabarr says I was sat in front of the computer but I needed my team and I wish I was you two sat out eating fish and chips. She and Mona fight a bit.
Sralan tells Mona she sits in the background and doesn’t do anything. Mona says ‘with all due respect Nick and Margaret are not always there and don’t always listen'. What's with the candidates trying to hate on Nick and Margaret this series? Sralan says she just says what she thinks people want to hear. Sralan accuses James of also taking a backseat. James says he doesn’t. Debrabarr asks what he did. He says he sorted out all the photos and didn’t have time to look at the posters. Sralan says he’s playing a clever game to make sure he doesn’t get brought back into the boardroom. James says if he’s looking for someone who says yes Sralan no Sralan three bags full Sralan, that’s not him, he's not a knucklehead. Unfortunately James, that's exactly the kind of person Sralan wants in his organisation.
Sralan says Debrabarr is bossy and can’t afford that in his organisation (but she'll be a good one to come second, or to go out in the rottweiler stage). He says James is a court jester, but he’s not looking for that, and with Mona he doesn’t see any creativity and has to think abot where she would slot into his oh-so-creative organisation. He thinks she might be right at the end of the pier in this process. Mona, with regret, you’re fired. He’s going to keep his eyes on James. I'm not getting why Sralan still hates James so much. I mean, he sucked royally at the start, but he's seemed pretty competent recently, and everyone else seems to like him.
Coatwatch: boring black but with a fetching green scarf. Note to other candidates: if you must wear boring black coats, accessorising is the way to go.
In the cab we hear that Sralan was wrong because Mona’s a stronger candidate, but she’s not going to cry over it.
Crackden apts. They’re not sure who will be back. Lorraine really likes Debrabarr but thinks she’s gone. Ben hopes it's James because to send back the weakest would be an ideal situation for him, because he knows he's going to get fired soon anyway. They return and Debrabarr says she’s ace so she knew she wouldn’t go, and she thought James would go before Mona. Ouch.
Next time: the candidates scare small children at a baby goods sales fair.
It's 5.10am(!), and NotFrances calls. Mona, barely awake, answers the phone. The cars will be with them in half an hour and they have to take an overnight bag. Sunrise over London porn.
This week’s tenuous venue is
The teams have two days to come up with a ‘marketing makeover’. In team one, everyone wants to be the manager, especially Howard, but Debrabarr tells him he can be the subteam manager if he wants. I can't work out whether she's incredibly harsh here or just incredibly awesome by deciding she's PM and not engaging in any debate. It's pretty forceful, whatever.
In team two, Yasmina and Kate are wearing matching waistcoat/tanktop combos. Yasmina wants to be PM and everyone else agrees.
Mona apparently knows Margate well and says ‘it’s all about families’. Which, yes, it's a seaside resort, that stands to reason. Howard and James say that’s not rebranding. Howard asks how they feel about the gay market. Mona says she’d rather go with families but the others want to actually rebrand as per the task remit, so the gays it is. Mona PTCs that Kent is not a place for the gays and no gays are in Kent. Kent says no to gays!
Over in team two, Lorraine says with the ‘economic downturn’ (drrrink) more families will want to holiday in Britain. The team quickly agree to sell to families.
Lots of London porn and twiddly classical music.
In team two’s car, Lorraine is working a Jenny Celery-esque scarf and discussing things with Ben and it’s all rather amicable. It's actually quite amazing how the dickwipe quotient in that car has decreased by about 110% (drink!) since Philip left - even though it still has Lorraine AND Ben in it.
Mona and James discuss how they need to find out what’s going on in Margate.
Team one – Empire, apparently – are casting for their models. They have two men and Howard asks if they’ve ever done any same sex modelling? They say no. Howard then gets lots of boys to touch each other up for his and Debrabarr’s pleasure.
Margate, we are told, is ‘just another faded seaside town’. Cue lots of shots of broken glass and boarded up shops. However! Margate needn't be sad, as the candidates will fix all of this! Or! The producers have just dealt the Margate tourist board a nasty blow.
Mona and James talk to the locals and say they want to rebrand Margate. The locals say ‘that’s our job’. They mention attracting the gays. The locals are all well up for it, but Mona keeps trying to talk them out of it. Kent is up for the gays after all!
Yasmina and Kate, still in matching outfits, audition for the ‘perfect’ mum and dad. They get people to flash their legs and chests. These auditions are really just an excuse for a good old perv, aren’t they?
Ben and Lorraine are looking for something to make Margate special and attract young upwardly mobile (hello 1987) families. They settle for a nice shot of some rockery in what’s either a park or a crazy golf course, I can't really tell, with a view of the sea behind. Ben VTs that Margate is hardly the Seychelles. He comes up with a slogan ‘shellebrate family fun’ and phones Y and K with this. They lol and are all ‘NO WAI’. He then says something about it being the epitome of British culture and they LOL some more. Lorraine suggests seeing it through children’s eyes and they are up for that.
Mona talks to a pre-op transsexual and asks if Margate is for the gays and then asks what her sexuality is. She is told about waiting for the op and asks so ‘are you a boy or a girl’ and says 'you can't tell' (which: you could tell a mile off, sorry) seems rather shocked by the whole thing. Oh, Mona. The complete horror of this exchange doesn't work so well in recap but it's essentially something only to be watched through the gaps in your fingers.
James phones back and says everyone’s thought it was time to move on from the blue rinse brigade, and they’re onto a winner.
8am, the morning of the photo shoot and it’s all fogtastic. It will be interestinf to see if Sralan can blame then for the bladdy weather in the boardroom. I wouldn't put it past him. Lorraine and Ben call Yasmina in a panic and she’s all ‘get a nice shot, we want background with lots of space in’ and not really getting the whole weather situation.
Over at team gay, five models are pretending to be lesbian and gay. The lesbians are clearly in a three-way setup. Progressive! Not only is Margate embracing the gays, it's embracing threesomes! Brilliant! Mona asks them to pose. James hangs on to a pole-dancing pole. Nick says it’s all looking a bit stiff and wooden (heh) and they’re not getting much direction. I'm not entirely sure why Howard isn't in team Margate, as being the creative one, it would seem to make more sense.
Ben is taking control of team nuclear family and making lots of square ‘framing’ gestures with his fingers to show he knows what he is doing, right. It's all very Michael Sophocles, film director, except even crapper, which I wouldn't have thought was possible.
In London (because there are no design guys in Margate, clearly), Yasmina lays out her leaflet, whilst Debra and Howard are struggling with their posters – Howard thinks there’s too much text and there should only be four words. The design guy sits and stares into space. Debrabarr's, all 'I dunno, four words isn’t many'. Howard says you’re not listening to me, which, no, she’s just not convinced, Fishy. At this point I assume they'll come up with a compromise, you know, more than four words, but less than oooh, let's say ten. Let's see whether this happens, shall we?
James is taking a shot of two ‘gay’ men with ice-creams and says ‘not too much suggestive licking guys’.
Ben is back ‘framing’ again and says ‘none of this horrible stuff; more of the sea, less of Margate’. The Margate tourist board put their collective heads in their hands. Lorraine thinks the shots are too boring (families sitting down) and wants an action shot with them jumping for a beach ball. In London, Yasmina receives the photos and bitches that they don’t have enough empty space for the text. Ben rings and she says ‘Ben you dickwad, where’s my empty space? And you Lorraine’. Lorraine’s all ‘you don’t put text on photographs in posters’ which: when was the last time you saw a poster, Cassandra?
Debrabarr and Howard have a discussion. Debrabarr suggests comparing Margate to Manchester and Brighton, as the next big gay destination. Howard says ‘thought you knew about Margate?’ It all seems very civil.
Yasmina asks Lorraine what she thinks of the poster. Lorraine says 'I think the photo should be the centre'. Yasmina says 'we need to finish it and then talk about it afterwards'. Lorraine’s all ‘that would be too late, numpty’. They then have a big fight. We see the poster and it’s a random image of a child and parent doing pottery with a slightly random font choice - a nice font, but rather formal for a child-oriented thing. Kate tries to bridge over the troubled waters a little.
Team gay aren’t convinced by their leaflets because they don’t have enough content and the design guy doesn’t have enough time to get all the content on. It’s not clear whose fault this is. They leave a big space in the bottom right hand corner, which Nick points out and they decide they have to leave it. In the taxi, Debrabarr says she’s pissed off they didn’t finish the leaflet. Howard asks if there’s an image, a colour, anything in the gap. Debrabarr says no, they left it empty. Howard pulls the face of one who knows they've just lost.
They now have to pitch to ‘industry experts’ and the people of Margate. First to hear the pitches are two industry chiefs and a tourism expert.
Kate’s team show their posters and Kate gives a reasonable presentation that sounds confident and mentions how they played on the British weather. One exec asks if they took their logo off, would they recognise it as their campaign? They say yes, the blue is key, the ad execs say, well not really. The logo is a wave with margate on, and the design is all blues and whites, which is quite nice, but it all looks rather formal rather than ‘fun’.
Howard pitches for team gay. He starts by asking ‘do you know Margate?’. One exec withers ‘yes’. Their posters are ridiculous and I can only deduce that their graphic designer is either a fake, or hates the gays/the candidates, because regardless of the 'creative direction' of the candidates, no graphic designer worth their salt would even contemplate something that looks like this. They've used ugly as hell fonts and a nasty beige colour that all looks so amateur, and there are several paragraphs of text on each poster, although some of their photos could be nice if used differently. Essentially, it looks like a year eight poster produced in a PSE lesson to promote some sort of 'issue'. Howard fudges the blank on the leaflet saying it’s for adverts. One ad man says ‘posters should be under 10 words, yours has 70’. One ad lady says ‘your leaflet isn’t finished, is it?’ Mona says it’s a work in progress, and really, just hold your hands up and say you ran out of time.
Pitching to Margate. Kate pitches through children’s eyes. Slogans say things like ‘see the children enjoy themselves’ and ‘award winning sandy beaches’ which seem more parent-oriented to me, but, hey. One lady says Kate’s pitch was ace but the leaflet image looks like an oil slick and she thought they might offer something different. A man says it’s solid, safe and pedestrian, they want to promote arts and culture and there’s nothing there. Kate says some nonsense about long-term strategy and this being the first campaign in a lengthy rebranding. Oh Kate, you know how this show works by now, and longevity is never a factor (except when offerng exclusivity on other people's products like Princess Lindi and The Best Salesperson in Europe).
Howard says people associated Margate with dull, grey, old people and the camera pans to some older, grey haired officials. Ooof. Howard explains their publicity better than he did with the execs. A woman says nice pitch but dreadful visuals – we can’t read the posters. Howard says, yeah, you’re right. The man who told Kate they were safe then tells them off for limiting the marketing just to the gays. What the hell does Margate want? Howard says where the gays lead, everyone else follows.
Boardroom time, and there’s a shiny blue screensaver on NotFrances’s desk to match the shiny blue lighting and shiny blue eyes. Mona is now wearing Kate and Yasmina’s shirt/tank top uniform.
He asks Ignite how they came up with a family theme. Yasmina says they had a bit of discussion. Sralan interjects as to why she was PM. She says they all wanted her to do it. Sralan: hmmm. Sralan asks about their ideas and the others try to claim they had some brilliant ones. They go on about children liking the beach and Sralan points out there weren’t any children on their rather arty beach shot. Surprisingly, Lorraine doesn't bang on about her unused beach ball photo here.
He asks who put themselves forward as Empire team leader. Debrabarr says she and Howard wanted to. Sralan asks how did you decide? Howard says they agreed on a compromise. If compromise means Debra telling you what you're doing, then sure. Howard explains they chose the gays because it was all about rebranding. Sralan says yes, but your marketing sucks. Howard says ‘we had some clear points’. Sralan says, yes, very clear and shows two blank sides of paper. Fail. He asks Debrabarr who was weakest on their team. She says James and Mona.
The marketing people marked the teams out of 10. From the Margate jury, Team gay: 4; Team nuclear family: 7. From the pro jury, Team gay: 4; Team Nuclear family: 7. It seems to boil down to them having nicer looking publicity and an actual slogan, which is fair enough, even though they didn’t really do any rebranding, and if they'd lost, you just know Sralan would have taken them to task for this. They win some fast car driving, which is probably a bit more fun than laughter yoga. James almost cries.
At the car track, Ben has an orgasm to the camera and they all whoop a lot. Last year's apprentices collectively shudder as watching the fast cars evokes the memory of the supercar task.
In the café of doom, Mona says the fail was because Margate hates the gays (even though they clearly love the gays as we all saw). She then asks if Debrabarr only left an hour for the leaflet. Debrabarr says we wanted to wait for you. James says we lost because our leaflets and posters were shit and turned around in five minutes. Trufax.
Sralan says they made a bold statement about going for the gay market, then whispered the message. Howard says ‘we didn’t want to alienate people’. Sralan says the people were all up for the gays, you just sucked. Sralan says the posters were confusing. Margaret says they should have one big picture and only ten words. Howard says they wrote too much text. Sralan says who wrote it, you or her? Howard and Debrabarr say they both did. Sralan says Mona, you live in Kent, so why didn’t you give them hints? Mona says yes I live there but Debra didn’t listen [to my homophobia]. Sralan says Nick and Margaret say Mona doesn’t have many ideas and where’s her creativity? Mona says she found locations and spoke to a gay, which must mean she's creative and progressive, right? James says she was inappropriate at times. Mona says it was because she was uncomfortable with the subject. Mona says she didn’t agree with the concept. James says whatever your own opinions you need to leave them aside and get on with it. James has come a long way from the doofus of the early weeks, hasn't he?
Sralan says this leaflet isn’t finished. Debrabarr flusters and Nick says you said it was designed for advertisers. Margaret says they didn’t like being lied to and it blew the trust between advertisers and clients. Sralan: 'you’d have been better off saying to them…' Debrabarr: ‘I had Mona in my ear for 15 minutes and couldn’t get on?’ Sralan: 'exactly'. James says he and Howard had no responsibility. Mona says she and James were shocked that nothing was done when they arrived. Debrabarr says the Margate team weren’t creative enough. No-one takes any responsibility. Debrabarr: is it just the images and text that were wrong? (Well, no, it;s the lack of them in the case of the leaflet) Sralan: maybe it’s you. Debrabarr’s bringing back James and Mona. Sralan says you couldn’t bring Howard back because he did loads, although he was also with the 'designer' so I'm not entirely sure he should escape all culpability.
Margaret says they didn’t get a lot of support from the team in Margate, Sralan says Debrabarr needs to think on her feet more and stop lying, although surely you end up lying if you think on your feet too much?
He asks James for a rundown as he hasn’t had much time to talk to him in recent weeks. James says Debrabarr is a bulldog and difficult, but at least she's consistent, whilst Mona blows hot and cold. Debrabarr says Mona wasn’t up for it. Mona says ‘why did I talk to a gay person if I wasn’t?’ Debrabarr says they gave her limited ideas. James and Mona said she thought their ideas were great. Sralan asks who was responsible for the lousy posters. James says Mona was responsible for 15 minutes and Debrabarr for six hours. Debrabarr says I was sat in front of the computer but I needed my team and I wish I was you two sat out eating fish and chips. She and Mona fight a bit.
Sralan tells Mona she sits in the background and doesn’t do anything. Mona says ‘with all due respect Nick and Margaret are not always there and don’t always listen'. What's with the candidates trying to hate on Nick and Margaret this series? Sralan says she just says what she thinks people want to hear. Sralan accuses James of also taking a backseat. James says he doesn’t. Debrabarr asks what he did. He says he sorted out all the photos and didn’t have time to look at the posters. Sralan says he’s playing a clever game to make sure he doesn’t get brought back into the boardroom. James says if he’s looking for someone who says yes Sralan no Sralan three bags full Sralan, that’s not him, he's not a knucklehead. Unfortunately James, that's exactly the kind of person Sralan wants in his organisation.
Sralan says Debrabarr is bossy and can’t afford that in his organisation (but she'll be a good one to come second, or to go out in the rottweiler stage). He says James is a court jester, but he’s not looking for that, and with Mona he doesn’t see any creativity and has to think abot where she would slot into his oh-so-creative organisation. He thinks she might be right at the end of the pier in this process. Mona, with regret, you’re fired. He’s going to keep his eyes on James. I'm not getting why Sralan still hates James so much. I mean, he sucked royally at the start, but he's seemed pretty competent recently, and everyone else seems to like him.
Coatwatch: boring black but with a fetching green scarf. Note to other candidates: if you must wear boring black coats, accessorising is the way to go.
In the cab we hear that Sralan was wrong because Mona’s a stronger candidate, but she’s not going to cry over it.
Crackden apts. They’re not sure who will be back. Lorraine really likes Debrabarr but thinks she’s gone. Ben hopes it's James because to send back the weakest would be an ideal situation for him, because he knows he's going to get fired soon anyway. They return and Debrabarr says she’s ace so she knew she wouldn’t go, and she thought James would go before Mona. Ouch.
Next time: the candidates scare small children at a baby goods sales fair.
Thursday, 30 April 2009
Value Added Twats
As you may have heard, there’s this job going at NotAmstrad. The pay will be bang on £100,000 which is much less than the runners-up will make from media appearances, and in order to succeed at it, you’ll need to lose all sense of personality or ambition and develop a strong appreciation for sitting in a storecupboard with no windows. Still, that’s months away and for now you’ve got a telly show to make… welcome to The Apprentice.
I’ve realised that every time I get to do a recap it’s a really dull week so I apologise in advance for this one and the rather dull task, it’s clearly my fault for being on the rota. So, onwards.
Last week Kate stormed to victory with an advert that had a jingle I’ve still got in my head a week later, whilst on the losing team, Philip bulldozed everyone into thinking selling breakfast cereals to children using a character called Pantsman, who is allowed to wear his pants outside his clothes, but you’re not because eating the cereal means you don’t put your pants on over your clothes. Everyone was confused, Kimberly proved to be a cream puff, but not in the least bit ruff or tuff and was FIRED and Steve recapped it all for you a little further down the page.
Crackden Apartments. Philip finally answers the phone in his pants, but it’s too late to try and get us interested in you now, cuntwipe.
This week we’re off to an auction house in Chiswick and in this place people come to have their products VALUED and sold. Get the emphasis there? Good, because the next think Sralan says is that this task is about selling. He’s then all cryptic and like ‘sell them but don’t take everything at face value’.
More team swapping, which makes Ignite and Empire meaningless as team names. Anyway, Kate and Noorul swap, presumably on the grounds that swapping possibly the best candidate with possibly the worst one will make the teams more even. Ben and Philip are the team leaders which automatically means there’s no-one to root for this week.
Sralan asks if everything’s clear – it truly isn’t.
Sralan PTCs that they have ten items but don’t have to sell them all, they do have to sell them at the right price and the right value. This wasn’t particularly clear from his instructions earlier, although it was revealed on You’re Fired that the written brief was a little clearer. The items they have to sell include a rug, some shoes and a box of books. Ben tells Imnite they need to value their items.
Ben VTs that he is a natural born leader and that’s what Sandhurst saw in him, and situations when he’s under pressure, under gun fire, is when he can lead. Interestingly, his voice wobbles a bit as he’s saying this.
Over at Egpire, Philip says he and Lorraine fight but he doesn’t want that any more. He then tells Lorraine off for looking at a rug which isn’t important. He VTs that she’s erratic, for example, she’s looking at a rug made ‘about five years ago’ and that she’s volatile.
Ben decides to ‘lead from the front’ and takes seven items to sell, whilst Philip divides his team’s articles in half.
Philip is convinced the skeleton has the highest value and goes to see a dealer in old curiosities. They tell him it’s amazing and ask if he’s sold that kind of thing. The dealer says no, it’s too new, and suggests they try the universities.
Ben ‘leads an assault’ on book dealers. Interestingly their pile includes some sort of Take That annual circa 1992. The VO tells us the booksellers know their stuff but can’t be rushed. After a few seconds, Ben starts to ask for a decision on a costume book, which the dealer says is worth £10 at the most. After a couple of valuations, Ben leads and says he can’t take any shit ‘I’m fed up of these book people talking shit to me for too long’. Debrabarr says they just want to talk at you. Ben then snarks that this is a horrible task for him to be PM of so will no doubt blame the task if it all goes wrong.
Philip still has his skeleton bone-on whilst Lorraine is keen on the rug. Philip says ‘it’s a nylon rug, made in the last year, try and heed some of my advice’. Lorraine tries to persuade him to get a valuation and he dismisses her.
Ben’s team go to another book dealer with their first edition Octopussy – it’s a James Bond specialist store, so they’ve struck gold. Debrabarr negotiates well and gets £100 from him. Ben shakes his hand, just in case you were worrying he didn’t totally nail that negotiation with his ace skillz.
Philip and co wheel their skeleton into a pub and accost some customers asking if they are doctors or nurses. Philip then shouts out ‘anyone interested in buying a skeleton?’ Someone asks how much and says he’ll give them two quid. Another man asks what it retails at. Philip says £250-300 and the man offers £150. They agree on £160 cash. Margaret says they were very lucky ‘they found someone in a bar who’d wanted one all his life’ but that they learned it was worth trying. I think she might be vaguely impressed at their gall.
Kate tries to flog another book to a market trader and they debate over whether or not she has hungry eyes, and I think he's trying to come onto her a bit which makes me feel rather queasy.
Yasmina and Ben sell some jellied eels in melting ice for £30 to a fishmonger who doesn’t seem keen but thinks getting on the telly might boost his business.
The voiceover tells us that the Indian rug is worth over £200. At this point, everyone I was watching with exploded with glee.
Philip tries to sell it at a flea market and the sellers all think it’s too expensive for them to afford. Margaret says this must be one of the most stupid activities they have ever engaged in. Lorraine VTs that she keeps bringing up the need for the rug to be valued and keeps being told it’s a piece of shite, so she;s quite confused as to whether it’s a gem or a piece of shite. Heh, love Lorraine a little bit today.
Noorul’s found a taker for the skeleton, and both the voiceover and Yasmina sound amazed he’s managed to sell. It’s apparently worth over £150 (not £250-300). They meet a man who says he’s a student and therefore needs a discount. He offers them £50 and Noorul flounders for an eternity before Ben steps in and says he appreciates the man’s a student, ‘but it’s springloaded on the jaw!’ They agree on £60.
Yasmina and Deke go to some rug shops in North London but are told it’s too expensive for that area by several shop owners, who clearly wouldn’t know a piece of one year old nylon shite if it walked into their shop rolled up. Oh, wait…
Philip and co try selling door to door, but people don’t seem to need rugs. Margaret is speechless and apart from Lorraine, they’ve ignored its true value all day and they’ll be lucky to get £10 for it the way they’re going on.
Two hours left and Ben can’t get a buyer for the commode. He suggests selling it as ‘an accessory, rather than what it actually is’. A dealer says it’s not interested as he doesn’t have clients for those types of chairs. They ask if he’ll buy it for a fiver. He says he’ll give them a fiver to go away. Ben wonders if they should offer people money to take it. He calls Debrabarr’s half of the team and tells them to get rid of the rug and come back to him. She says they don’t have time. Yasmina bitches that Debrabarr’s tone of voice is horrible, and she clearly hasn’t forgiven her for futureblackbabygate.
In Greenwich market, Ben’s trying to offload his remaining five items, including vintage shoes worth over £100. He suggests selling them as a load of crap for £1. Nick VTs that they’re treating the whole thing as a ‘flog-off’ and Ben needs to get a grip.
Thirty-five minutes to go, and Philip still has the rug and he ‘cannae believe they cannae sell it’. A market trader tells him she doesn’t have the clientele for it. Philip has not heard a single word a trader has said to him all episode. I imagine Philip’s head is like Homer Simpson’s when he has that little cartoon jingle going on in it all the time, only in Philip’s head is a loop of him singing the ‘pants on your head’ song and guffawing at himself. They call out at a passer by and ask if he wants to buy a rug. The man asks if it’s blue. Philip says he needs to sell it and will offer £50. The man says he wants blue. Mona says ‘there’s blue in it’. The man is all ‘are you avin’ a larf?’ He says he’ll give them £50 because it’s brand new (and he’s on telly). He goes off and Lorraine says ‘that was the gem’ and she feels the rug and the shoes were the valuable items. Philip says ‘you never fail to disappoint, you didn’t say anything about the rug all day and now you’re changing your tune’. A whole nation throws darts at their tellies.
Boardroom.
Sralan says some of those products were worth more than you thought, bit like him, not much to look at but worth lots. He asks if Ben was a good team leader. A couple of the team go ‘alright’ in the most damning-with-faint-praise way ever. Sralan asks if he’s tired. Ben says ‘exhausted’. Sralan says ‘never mind’. He asks Ben if it was too tough for him. Ben says yeah but no but yeah but no.
He asks if Philip was a good team leader and if they've gotten over last week. Lorraine says yes, they were professional. Philip talks about the books and Sralan makes a racialist slur by saying he can’t understand Philip’s accent. He asks if anyone else made valuations. Lorraine says she wanted to value the rug but no-one else did and she didn’t want to cause trouble like on the previous task. Sralan says ‘but you were right last time’. Yes, and you told her off for it. Margaret calls her the ‘Cassandra’ of the team, which no-one else in the room gets, but Margaret is clearly on a BBC-sponsored mission to educate and inform us about classical mythology, so now we all know that Cassandra was a 'prophetess' who was always right but nobody listened to. Sralan says Lorraine needs to speak up, which is exactly the opposite of what he told her last week, so I think the poor bladdy woman's on a hiding to nothing, and tells Philip off for not taking any notice of his team.
Sralan will be calculating profit/loss on what they sold against what the items were worth. Impire make a loss of £96 and Egnite make a THUMPING net loss of £269. Sralan says as far as Philip’s team are concerned they won, but not for him as they made a bladdy loss. He says Philip’s mind is like concrete, fully mixed but set in its ways. Heh. He says their prize is truffle tasting, but not the chocolate kind. Kate cheers and everyone else looks nonplussed, presumably as they’d prefer chocolate.
The other team need to prepare themselves and they’re gonna need that bladdy commode as one of them’s gonna get fired.
At the meal, Philip says he’s always wanted this to happen to him, although we’re not clear what the ‘this’ is and he says there must be a real difference between cheap wine and other stuff because what they’re drinking is really smooth. No shit, Sherlock. He toasts ‘Cassandra’ for putting up with him and she looks displeased because she knows he's learned fuck-all this past couple of tasks.
Loser café is looking even more crumbly than ever. Yasmina says ‘it’ll be interesting to see where Sralan points us to apportion the blame’, clearly proving she will know how to read a boardroom should she end up leading a team in there. Interesting. Debrabarr VTs that she doesn’t know who’ll get fired but it won’t be her.
Sralan says anyone with half a brain cell would sit down and work out where the gems are in the pile of stuff and work out what to sell. Why didn’t that happen? It didn’t happen in the other team either, which might suggest that your instructions were a crock of shit. I’m just saying. Sralan says they failed in identifying prices and seemed to think it was important to sell at any price because for the first time ever they were clearly thinking of previous tasks. Nick says Ben closed the deal with the skeleton. Noorul says ‘no he didn’t, I did’. Nick says erm no you dickweed, you floundered about and Ben had to step in.
Sralan asks Debrabarr what the problem was and she says the division of items didn’t work, they should have divided them equally. Yasmina jumps in on her very quickly and says she’s making the same point over and over again and Debrabarr is just a vortex of negativity. Debrabarr says she sold the most and didn’t cause any rift in her group (Ben: ‘that’s cos I didn’t let you’). Nick says Ben was instrumental in the books. Debrabarr says ‘Nick, how can you say that? I sold it and Ben was just there’ and although SHE DID NOT just shout at Nick, she is actually completely in the right here. Ben flounders, because he knows he did fuck all, and ends up saying ‘are you disagreeing with Nick?’
Sralan tells her off for talking to Nick like he’s a second-class citizen, and really, she should totally know better than to react like that in the boardroom, but I can understand her frustration. However, making an enemy of Nick is never a good move, and this could come back to bite her in future weeks.
Sralan asks Ben who he’ll bring back. Ben says when you decide you look at how people have done over the whole competition. Sralan says ‘no you won’t, that’s my job, you pick on this task, you asswipe’. Ben says he’ll bring back Noorul and… Deke. Deke and Sralan are all ‘Deke? Read the room’ so Ben says ‘oh no no I was deliberating between Deke and Debra’. Debra says BRING IT LOSERBOY and Ben flimflams that he’ll bring Debra, he doesn’t know what James contributed. Sralan asks if he was bringing back Deke because a village was missing its idiot. In the end it’s Debra and Noorul. Noorul says ‘you’d better have good reasons for bringing me back’. Oh, Noorul.
Nick, Margaret and Sralan conflab and Nick says Ben’s lost his fighting spirit, and this from a man who got an offer from Sandhurst. Margaret: ‘he didn’t actually GO there, though, did he?’
Sralan says Ben looks like a defeated man. Ben says 'I CAN WIN', which is apparently this year’s MAKE ME PM and 'the man to my left doesn’t have any qualities'. Noorul tries to defend himself and the two of them shout over each other. Noorul says he was brought in because he had the balls to say the strategy was flawed because the others were shitting it in case speaking up puts them in the bottom three, which is the only insightful thing he’s said all series. Ben shouts that his strategy was fine. Debrabarr tries to argue and he shouts at her to shut up and LET ME FINISH. Debrabarr says ‘when you’re finished, will you let me know?’. Heh.
He moans at Debrabarr about being ‘corrosive’ and she says they should have divided the items up. He says ‘that’s got nothing to do with it’ (even though he had five items to flog at the last minute). They all bicker and Ben shouts and whinges that the other two shout too much. He says he brought Debrabarr back because she was rude about booksellers. Pot. Kettle. Debrabarr helpfully reminds him of this and he sniffles about how he didn’t and his MUM IS DEAD. Oh, wrong show.
Sralan asks Noorul why he shouldn’t be fired. Noorul says he sold three items (also: is it just me, or does Noorul look like a Halloween mask with those big dark circled hollow eyes of his?), and names the skeleton as one of these and the bike as another. Sralan says he sold the bike at a lower price than anything else. He says Ben is volatile and didn’t do anything, he’s rude, arrogant and doesn’t let anyone speak. This is usually the cure for Sralan to make some comment about how someone reminds him of his youth, so I’m not excited it’s going anywhere. Sralan says Ben talks down to so many people, he’s getting a rick in his neck looking up. Noorul thinks Ben should be fired.
Debrabarr thinks Ben should go for being an asswipe and Ben thinks Noorul should go becauseSralan hates him and has had it in for him for weeks he’s sat on the fence throughout the competition. Noorul tries to defend himself and Ben goes ‘just let me finish (big huffy sigh), just let me finish’. Noorul tells him to speak properly and justify his reasons. Ben fails to do so.
Sralan asks why Ben shouldn’t be fired. He says I’m a good leader and I’m really really good at it and I CAN DO THIS. Noorul says Ben’s always on about his magazine deals. Ben says ‘that’s unfair, I say that erm, as a joke’. Sralan’s bladdy eyes go through his bladdy eyebrows.
Sralan is worried Ben is a broken man because of his age, which is not 24. Ben shakes his head. Sralan says Noorul is a bit lucky and other people have been outraged he hasn’t been brought into the boardroom when they were. Debrabarr, I can’t put up with someone with a mouth like yours, trust me love, you’re nothing special (but you could easily come in second). However, Noorul, to no-one’s surprise whatsoever, you’re fired. He tells Debrabarr never to shoot her mouth off like that again but fails to warn Ben for being a total cunt. He says whoever employs Noorul better get a receipt. That’s us isn’t it, from our taxes? Money back, NOW.
Coatwatch, boring and grey. How appropriate. (Although I’m secretly excited that it’s grey and not black). Noorul gives the usual ‘Sralan made the wrong choice’ spiel, but I don’t think he believes it.
Crackden apts. They are split over who should return, but ‘Cassandra’ thinks it’ll be Debrabarr in a shock firing. Ben and Debrabarr return. Deke tells Ben he gives it all mouth and then he crapped his pants. Beginning to love Deke, despite him clearly being a bit crap.
Next week: trade sales, which is always cause for much epic failery, although two sales tasks in two weeks is a little badly planned.
I’ve realised that every time I get to do a recap it’s a really dull week so I apologise in advance for this one and the rather dull task, it’s clearly my fault for being on the rota. So, onwards.
Last week Kate stormed to victory with an advert that had a jingle I’ve still got in my head a week later, whilst on the losing team, Philip bulldozed everyone into thinking selling breakfast cereals to children using a character called Pantsman, who is allowed to wear his pants outside his clothes, but you’re not because eating the cereal means you don’t put your pants on over your clothes. Everyone was confused, Kimberly proved to be a cream puff, but not in the least bit ruff or tuff and was FIRED and Steve recapped it all for you a little further down the page.
Crackden Apartments. Philip finally answers the phone in his pants, but it’s too late to try and get us interested in you now, cuntwipe.
This week we’re off to an auction house in Chiswick and in this place people come to have their products VALUED and sold. Get the emphasis there? Good, because the next think Sralan says is that this task is about selling. He’s then all cryptic and like ‘sell them but don’t take everything at face value’.
More team swapping, which makes Ignite and Empire meaningless as team names. Anyway, Kate and Noorul swap, presumably on the grounds that swapping possibly the best candidate with possibly the worst one will make the teams more even. Ben and Philip are the team leaders which automatically means there’s no-one to root for this week.
Sralan asks if everything’s clear – it truly isn’t.
Sralan PTCs that they have ten items but don’t have to sell them all, they do have to sell them at the right price and the right value. This wasn’t particularly clear from his instructions earlier, although it was revealed on You’re Fired that the written brief was a little clearer. The items they have to sell include a rug, some shoes and a box of books. Ben tells Imnite they need to value their items.
Ben VTs that he is a natural born leader and that’s what Sandhurst saw in him, and situations when he’s under pressure, under gun fire, is when he can lead. Interestingly, his voice wobbles a bit as he’s saying this.
Over at Egpire, Philip says he and Lorraine fight but he doesn’t want that any more. He then tells Lorraine off for looking at a rug which isn’t important. He VTs that she’s erratic, for example, she’s looking at a rug made ‘about five years ago’ and that she’s volatile.
Ben decides to ‘lead from the front’ and takes seven items to sell, whilst Philip divides his team’s articles in half.
Philip is convinced the skeleton has the highest value and goes to see a dealer in old curiosities. They tell him it’s amazing and ask if he’s sold that kind of thing. The dealer says no, it’s too new, and suggests they try the universities.
Ben ‘leads an assault’ on book dealers. Interestingly their pile includes some sort of Take That annual circa 1992. The VO tells us the booksellers know their stuff but can’t be rushed. After a few seconds, Ben starts to ask for a decision on a costume book, which the dealer says is worth £10 at the most. After a couple of valuations, Ben leads and says he can’t take any shit ‘I’m fed up of these book people talking shit to me for too long’. Debrabarr says they just want to talk at you. Ben then snarks that this is a horrible task for him to be PM of so will no doubt blame the task if it all goes wrong.
Philip still has his skeleton bone-on whilst Lorraine is keen on the rug. Philip says ‘it’s a nylon rug, made in the last year, try and heed some of my advice’. Lorraine tries to persuade him to get a valuation and he dismisses her.
Ben’s team go to another book dealer with their first edition Octopussy – it’s a James Bond specialist store, so they’ve struck gold. Debrabarr negotiates well and gets £100 from him. Ben shakes his hand, just in case you were worrying he didn’t totally nail that negotiation with his ace skillz.
Philip and co wheel their skeleton into a pub and accost some customers asking if they are doctors or nurses. Philip then shouts out ‘anyone interested in buying a skeleton?’ Someone asks how much and says he’ll give them two quid. Another man asks what it retails at. Philip says £250-300 and the man offers £150. They agree on £160 cash. Margaret says they were very lucky ‘they found someone in a bar who’d wanted one all his life’ but that they learned it was worth trying. I think she might be vaguely impressed at their gall.
Kate tries to flog another book to a market trader and they debate over whether or not she has hungry eyes, and I think he's trying to come onto her a bit which makes me feel rather queasy.
Yasmina and Ben sell some jellied eels in melting ice for £30 to a fishmonger who doesn’t seem keen but thinks getting on the telly might boost his business.
The voiceover tells us that the Indian rug is worth over £200. At this point, everyone I was watching with exploded with glee.
Philip tries to sell it at a flea market and the sellers all think it’s too expensive for them to afford. Margaret says this must be one of the most stupid activities they have ever engaged in. Lorraine VTs that she keeps bringing up the need for the rug to be valued and keeps being told it’s a piece of shite, so she;s quite confused as to whether it’s a gem or a piece of shite. Heh, love Lorraine a little bit today.
Noorul’s found a taker for the skeleton, and both the voiceover and Yasmina sound amazed he’s managed to sell. It’s apparently worth over £150 (not £250-300). They meet a man who says he’s a student and therefore needs a discount. He offers them £50 and Noorul flounders for an eternity before Ben steps in and says he appreciates the man’s a student, ‘but it’s springloaded on the jaw!’ They agree on £60.
Yasmina and Deke go to some rug shops in North London but are told it’s too expensive for that area by several shop owners, who clearly wouldn’t know a piece of one year old nylon shite if it walked into their shop rolled up. Oh, wait…
Philip and co try selling door to door, but people don’t seem to need rugs. Margaret is speechless and apart from Lorraine, they’ve ignored its true value all day and they’ll be lucky to get £10 for it the way they’re going on.
Two hours left and Ben can’t get a buyer for the commode. He suggests selling it as ‘an accessory, rather than what it actually is’. A dealer says it’s not interested as he doesn’t have clients for those types of chairs. They ask if he’ll buy it for a fiver. He says he’ll give them a fiver to go away. Ben wonders if they should offer people money to take it. He calls Debrabarr’s half of the team and tells them to get rid of the rug and come back to him. She says they don’t have time. Yasmina bitches that Debrabarr’s tone of voice is horrible, and she clearly hasn’t forgiven her for futureblackbabygate.
In Greenwich market, Ben’s trying to offload his remaining five items, including vintage shoes worth over £100. He suggests selling them as a load of crap for £1. Nick VTs that they’re treating the whole thing as a ‘flog-off’ and Ben needs to get a grip.
Thirty-five minutes to go, and Philip still has the rug and he ‘cannae believe they cannae sell it’. A market trader tells him she doesn’t have the clientele for it. Philip has not heard a single word a trader has said to him all episode. I imagine Philip’s head is like Homer Simpson’s when he has that little cartoon jingle going on in it all the time, only in Philip’s head is a loop of him singing the ‘pants on your head’ song and guffawing at himself. They call out at a passer by and ask if he wants to buy a rug. The man asks if it’s blue. Philip says he needs to sell it and will offer £50. The man says he wants blue. Mona says ‘there’s blue in it’. The man is all ‘are you avin’ a larf?’ He says he’ll give them £50 because it’s brand new (and he’s on telly). He goes off and Lorraine says ‘that was the gem’ and she feels the rug and the shoes were the valuable items. Philip says ‘you never fail to disappoint, you didn’t say anything about the rug all day and now you’re changing your tune’. A whole nation throws darts at their tellies.
Boardroom.
Sralan says some of those products were worth more than you thought, bit like him, not much to look at but worth lots. He asks if Ben was a good team leader. A couple of the team go ‘alright’ in the most damning-with-faint-praise way ever. Sralan asks if he’s tired. Ben says ‘exhausted’. Sralan says ‘never mind’. He asks Ben if it was too tough for him. Ben says yeah but no but yeah but no.
He asks if Philip was a good team leader and if they've gotten over last week. Lorraine says yes, they were professional. Philip talks about the books and Sralan makes a racialist slur by saying he can’t understand Philip’s accent. He asks if anyone else made valuations. Lorraine says she wanted to value the rug but no-one else did and she didn’t want to cause trouble like on the previous task. Sralan says ‘but you were right last time’. Yes, and you told her off for it. Margaret calls her the ‘Cassandra’ of the team, which no-one else in the room gets, but Margaret is clearly on a BBC-sponsored mission to educate and inform us about classical mythology, so now we all know that Cassandra was a 'prophetess' who was always right but nobody listened to. Sralan says Lorraine needs to speak up, which is exactly the opposite of what he told her last week, so I think the poor bladdy woman's on a hiding to nothing, and tells Philip off for not taking any notice of his team.
Sralan will be calculating profit/loss on what they sold against what the items were worth. Impire make a loss of £96 and Egnite make a THUMPING net loss of £269. Sralan says as far as Philip’s team are concerned they won, but not for him as they made a bladdy loss. He says Philip’s mind is like concrete, fully mixed but set in its ways. Heh. He says their prize is truffle tasting, but not the chocolate kind. Kate cheers and everyone else looks nonplussed, presumably as they’d prefer chocolate.
The other team need to prepare themselves and they’re gonna need that bladdy commode as one of them’s gonna get fired.
At the meal, Philip says he’s always wanted this to happen to him, although we’re not clear what the ‘this’ is and he says there must be a real difference between cheap wine and other stuff because what they’re drinking is really smooth. No shit, Sherlock. He toasts ‘Cassandra’ for putting up with him and she looks displeased because she knows he's learned fuck-all this past couple of tasks.
Loser café is looking even more crumbly than ever. Yasmina says ‘it’ll be interesting to see where Sralan points us to apportion the blame’, clearly proving she will know how to read a boardroom should she end up leading a team in there. Interesting. Debrabarr VTs that she doesn’t know who’ll get fired but it won’t be her.
Sralan says anyone with half a brain cell would sit down and work out where the gems are in the pile of stuff and work out what to sell. Why didn’t that happen? It didn’t happen in the other team either, which might suggest that your instructions were a crock of shit. I’m just saying. Sralan says they failed in identifying prices and seemed to think it was important to sell at any price because for the first time ever they were clearly thinking of previous tasks. Nick says Ben closed the deal with the skeleton. Noorul says ‘no he didn’t, I did’. Nick says erm no you dickweed, you floundered about and Ben had to step in.
Sralan asks Debrabarr what the problem was and she says the division of items didn’t work, they should have divided them equally. Yasmina jumps in on her very quickly and says she’s making the same point over and over again and Debrabarr is just a vortex of negativity. Debrabarr says she sold the most and didn’t cause any rift in her group (Ben: ‘that’s cos I didn’t let you’). Nick says Ben was instrumental in the books. Debrabarr says ‘Nick, how can you say that? I sold it and Ben was just there’ and although SHE DID NOT just shout at Nick, she is actually completely in the right here. Ben flounders, because he knows he did fuck all, and ends up saying ‘are you disagreeing with Nick?’
Sralan tells her off for talking to Nick like he’s a second-class citizen, and really, she should totally know better than to react like that in the boardroom, but I can understand her frustration. However, making an enemy of Nick is never a good move, and this could come back to bite her in future weeks.
Sralan asks Ben who he’ll bring back. Ben says when you decide you look at how people have done over the whole competition. Sralan says ‘no you won’t, that’s my job, you pick on this task, you asswipe’. Ben says he’ll bring back Noorul and… Deke. Deke and Sralan are all ‘Deke? Read the room’ so Ben says ‘oh no no I was deliberating between Deke and Debra’. Debra says BRING IT LOSERBOY and Ben flimflams that he’ll bring Debra, he doesn’t know what James contributed. Sralan asks if he was bringing back Deke because a village was missing its idiot. In the end it’s Debra and Noorul. Noorul says ‘you’d better have good reasons for bringing me back’. Oh, Noorul.
Nick, Margaret and Sralan conflab and Nick says Ben’s lost his fighting spirit, and this from a man who got an offer from Sandhurst. Margaret: ‘he didn’t actually GO there, though, did he?’
Sralan says Ben looks like a defeated man. Ben says 'I CAN WIN', which is apparently this year’s MAKE ME PM and 'the man to my left doesn’t have any qualities'. Noorul tries to defend himself and the two of them shout over each other. Noorul says he was brought in because he had the balls to say the strategy was flawed because the others were shitting it in case speaking up puts them in the bottom three, which is the only insightful thing he’s said all series. Ben shouts that his strategy was fine. Debrabarr tries to argue and he shouts at her to shut up and LET ME FINISH. Debrabarr says ‘when you’re finished, will you let me know?’. Heh.
He moans at Debrabarr about being ‘corrosive’ and she says they should have divided the items up. He says ‘that’s got nothing to do with it’ (even though he had five items to flog at the last minute). They all bicker and Ben shouts and whinges that the other two shout too much. He says he brought Debrabarr back because she was rude about booksellers. Pot. Kettle. Debrabarr helpfully reminds him of this and he sniffles about how he didn’t and his MUM IS DEAD. Oh, wrong show.
Sralan asks Noorul why he shouldn’t be fired. Noorul says he sold three items (also: is it just me, or does Noorul look like a Halloween mask with those big dark circled hollow eyes of his?), and names the skeleton as one of these and the bike as another. Sralan says he sold the bike at a lower price than anything else. He says Ben is volatile and didn’t do anything, he’s rude, arrogant and doesn’t let anyone speak. This is usually the cure for Sralan to make some comment about how someone reminds him of his youth, so I’m not excited it’s going anywhere. Sralan says Ben talks down to so many people, he’s getting a rick in his neck looking up. Noorul thinks Ben should be fired.
Debrabarr thinks Ben should go for being an asswipe and Ben thinks Noorul should go because
Sralan asks why Ben shouldn’t be fired. He says I’m a good leader and I’m really really good at it and I CAN DO THIS. Noorul says Ben’s always on about his magazine deals. Ben says ‘that’s unfair, I say that erm, as a joke’. Sralan’s bladdy eyes go through his bladdy eyebrows.
Sralan is worried Ben is a broken man because of his age, which is not 24. Ben shakes his head. Sralan says Noorul is a bit lucky and other people have been outraged he hasn’t been brought into the boardroom when they were. Debrabarr, I can’t put up with someone with a mouth like yours, trust me love, you’re nothing special (but you could easily come in second). However, Noorul, to no-one’s surprise whatsoever, you’re fired. He tells Debrabarr never to shoot her mouth off like that again but fails to warn Ben for being a total cunt. He says whoever employs Noorul better get a receipt. That’s us isn’t it, from our taxes? Money back, NOW.
Coatwatch, boring and grey. How appropriate. (Although I’m secretly excited that it’s grey and not black). Noorul gives the usual ‘Sralan made the wrong choice’ spiel, but I don’t think he believes it.
Crackden apts. They are split over who should return, but ‘Cassandra’ thinks it’ll be Debrabarr in a shock firing. Ben and Debrabarr return. Deke tells Ben he gives it all mouth and then he crapped his pants. Beginning to love Deke, despite him clearly being a bit crap.
Next week: trade sales, which is always cause for much epic failery, although two sales tasks in two weeks is a little badly planned.
Thursday, 16 April 2009
The Smell Of success
Tonight I make the executive decision to dispense with the striding, the suitcases, the belligerent boss bit. Still that took as long to type as it does to watch.
Last week it was all about exercise. The teams were told to invent a piece of portable fitness equivalent. James Bingo Buster was a great idea (better than sexercise) but sadly it became an evil box of doom that even Ben slapping his arse couldn't sell. Debra was busy being right on sister but the team did come up the body rocker that looked almost like a real fitness product. Maj got fired. Just like that.
We open with some nice peaceful ducks and London porn. That doesn't sound right somehow....
The phone rings, the fish look worried and Kate answers the phone. She is dressed head to toe in black – whose funeral - or is she really a ninja?
Cue undressed apprentices – not very sexy, teeth brushing and Noorul in a very red vest. Phil seems to be having his make up done, metrosexual indeedy. [I'm thinking this series' trend of women answering the phone in their pyjamas will make a lot of people very unhappy. We all know it's supposed to be men in pants - Rad]
The cars take them to Kew gardens, not just a park, a leading botanical research centre. In the temperate house the very drably dressed candidates gather. Paula is wearing a dress that makes my eyes go blurry.
This week is all about natural body products. Its a lucrative market worth more than 3 billion in the UK alone and its not just women spending the money its men. The task is to produce 2 natural body products and sell them to the public. The teams are mixed up, Yasmina, Debra and Paula move to Empire and Howard and Kimberly move to Ignite.
Sralan decided that as he has been 'quiet' (slight understatement there) Noorul will be the Ignite team leader. Paula will lead Empire.
It's simple the team that makes the most amount of profit will win. The one that doesn't will lose and from that team one of them will be fired.
Sralan VT about needing good profit margins and keeping the cost down. Make it for pennies and sell for pounds.
Paula is happy with her team and on her way to Dorset dismisses some of the other team as weak. In her VT she says she shouldn't be dismissed by anyone just because she comes from the public sector.
VT Noorul – He is not here to be managed by people, he is a natural leader. Right-o. In the Ignite cars Noorul seems confident with his team as Phil wears make up, so he was having his slap done by Kate first thing then. Phil confirms he has 'a fair grasp of the market'.
Poole in Dorset in the mad scientist lair aka an industrial estate, o the glamour. Ben is taking a back seat? Really? He doesn't buy soap? What even after all that time he spends in the gym? They should be aiming for women he says. OK so sit there and be quiet then. No? Thought not. They quickly decide on soap and shower gel.
Ignite look non nonplussed – er soap and bubble bath? O everyone is very fired up! Much puffing up of cheeks and eye rolling and blank stares (and that's just Noorul).
Each team need to select a natural ingredient to use in their products. Empire are liking seaweed (and with mint?) Ocean fresh and all that. Paula acts like a team leader and quickly makes the call in favour of seaweed. James suddenly trying to be team leader reminding Paula about cost. You were in charge last week love but I fear your words may prove prophetic. Paula asks for Ben and Yasmina to keep her on track with costings.....
Over at Ignite Noorul goes into teacher mode and tells them not to talk at once but hey at least they are talking. Phil thinks apples and berries are awesome. Howard VT – Noorul is already struggling and they are off to a shaky start.
Paula sends Debra, James & out on a boat to pick seaweed. In the 'lab' Paula, Ben and Yasmina are doing their best Chris Lloyd impression, mixing and sniffing. [Those bottles looked like Lush ones - at least the font - Rad] Ben pours water in to a pan. This impresses Yasmina, 'look at the chemist' she coos to Ben who retorts he has 'DNA level chemistry'. I assume that's a good thing?
Paula mentions cost again, someone could sit down and work out how much its going to cost. That's a good idea, that, Paula. A very good idea.
Ignite have now decided on honey and Lorraine, Kim and Phil are dispatched to get stung, er collect honey from local bees, but they don't know how much to actually get. While Noorul and co prat around deciding how much, the 3 in bee keeper suit get very stressed and squeally and basically COVERED IN BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES.
Why would you go get in the kit and stand by the hives until you know how much you want?
Back on the beech with Empire they collect seaweed and are scared of crabs.
Mr Simon the perfumer is here to help with fragrances. Yasmina and Paula sniff little strips of cardboard and pronounce one unfortunate concoction smells like Tequila and dog. That would make lovely shower gel? Surely the more they sniff the less they'll smell. Ben is still on his 'girls know about soap and shit but I'm a MAN so will stay here doing my DNA level chemistry'.
Sandalwood £1200 per kilo and Cedar wood £26 per kilo and Yasmin and Paula can't get that straight. O dear. I replayed this bit and Paula says sandalwood and lavender, then cedar wood straight afterwards. Simon asks her to clarify and she says sandalwood Hmmm. Simon thinks they got a bit confused. No shit Sherlock. [The man from Lush, sorry, the anonymous smelly things business place, could have actually said something here. It was a bit unfair. Also, watching it on replay - totally Yasmina's mistake - Rad]
Paula and Yasmina sit down to work out the cost. Not only can they not tell the difference between cedar and sandal neither can they tell the difference between 3 grams and 3 percent. £1.97? That's all you'll pay? Round it up to a fiver? Hmmmm
Kimberly in charge of brand identity. She is a marketing director. She wants to call the honey soap 'Honey I'm Home' [which sounds very Lush - Rad]. Phil says she must have big splinters in her arse from sitting on the fence. I am paraphrasing. He gets a bit shouty and says she is stressing him out but I am not 100% sure what she's done to annoy him.
Paula does the Empire branding. She has chosen 'Rock Poole', which is clever as all the ingredients are from Poole. I like this. Debra thinks so too but she also picks up the huge expense of Sandalwood – no it's OK she's told we only bought half a gram. Er no – 450 grams actually, Yasmina is just pouring a huge beaker of it into the bubbling vat of Georges Marvellous medicine. Maybe she thinks that's what 3 grams looks like. Nick purses his lips.
Nice bit of Lush product placement. [I knew it! - Rad]
Team honey's concoction looks much more appetising but maybe too much like food. The print deadline is looming and Kims' team need a batch code. She is asking Noorul for it when Phil snatches her phone and gets more and more angry and Geordielike sounding and tells her and everyone else to get some balls. She's going to give him balls apparently and as she's at ball height, he better be careful.
Lorraine tries to diffuse the situation and the poor graphic guy timidly points out he's done at last. [I felt sorry for the graphics guy - I always feel sorry for the graphics guys on this show - Rad]
Phil is going to roast Noorul (Mags agrees Noorul is shit) if they fail. But it's OK because the profit margin for Empire isn't going to be healthy is it? Lorraine apologises to poor graphic guy for being so argumentative and unprofessional. [And is kind of unprofessional in the way she phrases it too, but the ticked-off mother aspect was funny, so I'll let her off this time. - Steve]
Empire are boxed up and ready. Now they just need to work out the actual cost per unit so they can price up. 87p per item all in? Having stalked round the periphery, Nick feels his moment has arrived and asks them how much they think they spent on fragrances. He tells them they bought 450 grams of sandalwood Yasmina is non nonplussed, 'no half of 450 grams – shit'. Indeed. Kate's face makes a perfect pink O and the penny drops with a resounding clang. 'Would it surprise you to learn you have spent more than £700?' continues Nick. Paula yes you may well look stunned and yes you are shit at costing, but good deflection on to everyone else. Nick having dropped his bombshell and 'leaving it with them' stalks off. Surprised he has told them!
Next day they all try out their products. Queue more shower scenes but still nothing interesting to report on that score.
Paulas' team are doubling their prices, as well she might (but it would have been funnier if they didn't know.) The soap is beautifully packaged with little labels tied on - seagrass?
Honey soap sounded good but the reality is sticky. It sort of gloops out of the wrapper. It feels nice says Mona, 'slippy and smooth' which is not going to be much a USP for soap really.
The team have 8 hours to sell their products. Half of Empire are based at Portobella market – right next to a hot dog van. One smells nice and one doesn't. Other half at Bond Street tube.
Ignite are at fashionable Carnaby street – in Bee Keeper outfits. They are selling theirs as sets for a fiver and now its called Honey with Love. The rest of Ignite are doing brisk business at Camden Lock. Selling the softness as 'freshness' which is smart.
Lunch time at Portabello James tries to stick a bottle of bubble bath in someone's face. They justify the price by saying how expensive the sandalwood is, a fact surely engraved on their very hearts now and the trendy Notting Hill set are not put off by the price. Nicks looks happy with them.
On Carnaby Street the bee-keepers are happily selling. Well except Noorul – no sale. The sweet smell of success eludes him and the honey can't hide the whiff of desperation. O dear sweepy.... Noorul pulls out of Carnaby Street *snigger* sorry and gets lost. He decided on Bond Street Tube station, hardly a prime selling location as already discovered by Empire who swiftly moved on.
Empire has steady sales so James suggests upping the price by 50p which somehow feels like a shitty thing to do but that's probably because I am not a good capitalist. [I thought they were selling it pretty cheaply even after the price rise, if you compare it to the prices of Lush and similar - Rad]
Noorul's decision to move has badly back fired. People don't want to stop.
At Camden Lock 'customers are melting away' and half the stock unsold so Kim, Howard Phil call Noorul and ask to start selling for £1 but Noorul says 2 for £3 till he gets there. Phil can't believe it and neither can I. Its a bit late to try and impose his authority on the situation and for once I can understand Phils frustration. [I get why they were doing this, but I'd be scared of buying something so cheap for fear of what it would do to my skin - Rad]
Portabello the last dash – Ben is selling very well for a man who thinks soap is girlie. [Ah, but selling is MANLY, GRRR. Or something. - Steve]
Noorul is stuck in traffic on his way to Camden. He shushes Lorraine and Mona is pissed off. Howard begs to be allowed to use his discretion and Noorul finally gives in.
Paula's team sell all their remaining stock to a stall holder. Wins. OK I am actually impressed, I think I have done a total U turn and now want Empire to win. They have come up with a product I would buy and done their best to recover from their huge fuck up. At least Paula has been involved with her team.
Lorraine starts trying to berate rockers to buy honey stuff for his mums. Has he been buzzed? That's a bit personal where I come from. He runs away as well he might. Even Phil thinks she's being scary. Finally we are flogging at 2 for £1 – suddenly I think Paula's team might have got this in the bag – thanks to Nick's heads up. They sell out - somehow that feels profound.
London Porn
Showered, washed and perfumed, it's time for an appointment with Sralan.
The usual opener of 'were they a good team leader?'
Phil and Howard enjoyed working with Noorul. Mags comments that enjoying working with someone and them being a good team leader aren't the same thing. She hands Sralan Ignite's products like they are dirty nappies. Phils confirms they are, in fact, luxurious. Noorul starts to list the contents but SA says it sounds like a bladdy cocktail. Noorul as a chemist and science teacher should know how to make soap shouldn't he?
On the Empire side of the table, James and Ben put the boot in straight away and I am surprised (more fool me) because I thought they had all worked together to try and overcome the small miscalculation. Rather than answer the question Ben already tries to start blaming Paula for the costings. Sralan tells Ben to not read out half the bladdy magna carta and Ben shushes.
And so to the all important figures:
Ignite have sales of £900. 85 They spent £406.88 making a profit of £493.97
Empire had sales of £1073.20 but they spent £1141.24 leaving a £68.04 loss
Damnit I was rooting for them. If they had only gone for cedar wood. Nick laments that if only Paula and Yasmina hadn't confused themselves and opted for cedar wood, they would have made a profit of £598. Ouch.
Sralan says her keeps banging on about controlling cost, what's going on? What's going on is they don't listen.
Noorul's team wins and the prize is a sushi and sake evening. Making and eating. Nice. Fishy fingers. Noorul declares they 'absolutely destroyed the other team' - Noorul you did not destroy the other team – you just fucked up less. Phil quips 'whose he going to sake-e?'
Groan
In loser cafe, Paula insists she delegated costs to 2 financial people and it wasn't done properly. But wasn't it her and Yasmina choosing and working it out? Kate says they should have costed from start to finish. Paula mentions that 'Ben did come over and have a sniff' again that has different conitattions to me but I assume she means he gave the costings a cursory glance. Shes probably going to take Ben and James in then? Ben will 'rip her to shreds' if she tries apparently.
I like Paula's hair by the way. I wish mine looked like that.
In the boardroom Sralan comments that he likes the products far better than the honey shit produced by Ignite. Kate gives credit to product and packaging to Yasmin and Paula. But it's a good product at the wrong price. Paula's 'fragrance for a fiver' comment comes back to bite her bum. Ben was too busy mixing to do any more than take Paula's word for how much it was all costing. He says 'yeah I should have been doing costing but I was like making stuff and Paula said it was a fiver and stuff so it's not my fault'. So even if its a problem with costing and I was meant to be doing it but its not my fault., Nick points out he was only 3 metres away. 'Yeah' says Sralan, 'you weren't in Scotland.' Indeed.
Debs reiterates that if they had chosen cedar wood not sandalwood Sralan feels that the product was good and that's all down to Paula. He compliments Paula on the presentation, in particular the soap and Ben jumps in that was him, so basically everything was him, comments Sralan, except the costings.
Oh, she's bringing back Yasmina and Ben. Interesting...
Ben looks at her like he actually will rip her to shreds.
Sralan suggests they hang on to some of their lovely soap because if they think they are sweating now they soon will be.....
Paula knows how to work out redundancies on a calculator says Sralan menacingly. So why couldn't she work out costings for a bar of soap?
Paula reiterates that she nominated Yasmin and Ben to take care of costs and that she would oversee them. That translates as, 'yes I asked you to do it and then I tried to do it myself and and THEN I remembered why I wasn't doing it in the first place.'
Paula calls Ben 'an idiot' for not checking her costs. Want to talk about idiots he says? This bit is verbatim because I don't like Ben but this is a pretty impressive smack down:
B: 'We're talking about idiots now? Well lets talk about £5 and £700 if you want to talk about idiots (Sralan's eyebrows disappear into his hair line) at the end of the day you made a complete balls up of it, you two were the two responsible for the cock up with the fragrances, you were the project manager, you were the one who should have been going on about me getting involved with the costings if you wanted me to and -'
P: 'I asked you to'
B: 'If you let me finish (because I haven't quite obliterated you) and the next day I sold my bloody heart out for you just to do damage control.'
P: 'The cost of the fragrances was a cost, it wasn't a cost on its own. I asked you to look after costs and you didn't' (eh?)
I don't like him but that's pretty persuasive. Sralan looks shocked that Ben managed to construct a comprehensive put down.
Ben says fire Paula. Yasmina says Paula too but puts it but slightly nicer. Ben tells Paula she 'didn't just get it a bit wrong, she got it very wrong'. Paula brands Ben a bit of a thug and so he drops in his scholarship to Sandhurt because this relates to his ability to sell how? That is bound to score points with Sralan – not. Neither is him interrupting Sralan's summing up. Why do they never learn not to do that? It is rude anyway but just stupid in this situation.
Yasmina has gone 6 steps forward and 10 steps back, its not looking good which of course means she'll have to be project manager another day. O Sralan is getting tricksy!
Paula is deemed ultimatley responsible for the fatal mistake and fired.
Hmmm why do I suspect that Ben is this year's Tre? He isn't going to win but he is such a villain that we can all hate so he'll be around a bit longer mark my words. [At least Tre was occasionally funny. Ben's more like Sophocles or Paul Torrisi, and just typing those two names makes me feel a little gross - Rad] Still Ben can't shut up, 'talk any more and you'll talk yourself out the door'.
If only.
Coat watch – black and a coat. O Lucinda how I miss thee let me count the ways!
In the cab Paula says she's gone for making mistakes and not lying or cheating. Therein is the problem. Going on past series that's what clinches you the win isn't it?
Back at the crack den Mona is quite upset and Yasmin for a moment seems genuinely sad she had to turn on her 'mate' until she adds she'd do it again to any of them because now she knows she can.
Nice.
Next week Pirate Parrots, a giant smurf, healthy breakfast cereals and Sralan has one of them for breakfast. Yes folks, it's the TV ad episode.....
Wednesday, 11 June 2008
Kicking up a stink
Week 12: The final
Broadcast Wednesday 11th June
So here we are, the final stretch of what has been an entertaining, if infuriating, fourth series of The Apprentice, and Fiona and I will be here all night to recap it for you, LIVE! with accompanying typos and missed bits (we're sure the boys will add those in later).
So let us recap where we were. Sixteen 'tycoons of tomorrow' have come to London to seek a terrible jon in NotAmstrad and work for 'Britain's most beligerent boss'. Several tasks made of fail and multiple bullshit firings later, here we are at the final. If you weren't here last week, the rottweilers ripped them to shreds(ish), Lee got found out as a CV-enhancing liar, Claire was Claire, Helene had a tragic background (wrong show) and Alex was 24. And young. And 24. And Lucinda got fired for being too zany. Booo, but also good for her, because Not Amstrad strikes me as a very grey kind of place to work anyway.
And in a SHOCK! TWIST! Sralan decided not to have a mere two people in the final but to have four, because they were all 'credible candidates' (read: he wanted them all to work at NotAmsrad for a few months so he could see whose spirit he'd managed to crush the most). And in case you've forgotten, here's a brief recap of our runners and riders:
Lee McQueen
Has an unfortunate habit of speaking about himself in the third person, knows what he's talking about, even if he's never made that explicit to the rest of us, is the only person in the country (perhaps the world) who knows what a reverse pterodactyl looks and sounds like, only spent four months at uni before dropping out, not two years, can't spell and looks somewhat older than his 30 years. However, he does have a degree of task competence, is a good motivator and team leader and Fiona likes his bottom.
Helene Speight
She has large eyes that mean she can sometimes look quite attractive and at other times like a Kit Kat clock (circa Charlie Brooker). Is tall and looks like she could be quite imposing, but somehow misread her brief and thought it said 'quiet' imposing so has thus stood around in the background most of the time. She is a ballsy woman. Depending on who is editing that week, she is either very competent or doesn't do anything, except perhaps bitch at Lucinda, but as that's not an option anymore, she'll have to actually do some work this week. Sralan doesn't like her much because she is 'tainted by working for a big corporation' and is a bladdy woman.
Claire Young
A German Shepherd/Rottweiler hybrid (in her own words), Claire has gone on the bigest journey (drrrrrrrink) of the series, from being loud mouthed and bitchy, to being a bit less loudmouthed and a bit less bitchy. But hey, this is The Apprentice, any progress at all is a miracle. She is generally competent and likeable and she wouldn't kiss a snake for a million pounds, not even if Sralan told her too, but she would suck the lips off that Paul fella who did the interviews last week.
Alex Wotherspoon
Alex is young, he's only 24 you know. Has an annoying habit of pouting and chewing the inside of his cheek. Is 24. Has hypnotised all his project managers, Sralan, the interviewers and even Nick Hewer by his good looks and magic cock. Is 24. Allegedly sold rocks for £7000 a week with his brother. Has achieved a lot for his age, which is 24. Is a passive aggressive, defensive prima donna. Who is 24.
Tonight we will be watching Claire and Lee and Alex and Helene, with an assortment of former candidates, trying to create and flog some new men's fragrances. Join us at 9 for the inevitable crushing disappointment as Alex wins. It's the final cuntdown!
In the car on the way to meet Sralan. They are at a posh restaurant - or semi-posh, as he 'doesn't have £800million from splashing out on lobster dinners' (circa Claire). Lee tells Sralan he supports Tottenham Hotspur. Nicholas deLacy Brown, that was what you should have said in week one. Helene talks about how they all need to raise their game, and there no strong, oops, I mean, weak link now. Sralan makes a feeble joke about Lee paying for their meals. My sides.
NotFrances calls them, but they seem ready this time, boring shot of Lee shaving (but at least no more shots of Michael in his pants). Today's destination is an empty art gallery. Fiona says it's the same one we've seen before, which it probably is. Some dreadful music plays in the background.
Srlan tells them there'll be two teams: Claire/Lee, Alex/Helene. They will be joint team leaders (how does that work?) A motley parade wanders in to help them: Jenny Celery, Raef, Sophocles, The Best Salesperson in Europe, Matt Lucas and Simon. The Best Salesperson is the last to be picked, so so much for her mad salez skillz. Wot no Lucinda or NDLB? Gip. He tells them the task: design and pitch a fragrance. Both losers will 'leave this process' (not get fired) and one of the people in the winning team will win. Sralan desn't say what criteria he will judge that on.
In the cab Helene lies to Alex that she would have chosen him over the others t work with and in their cab, Lee and Claire discuss being sick together. Yum.
The fragrance has to retail for £29.99 and they show lots of good adverts of men's frgrances to show us what they won't do tonight.
Lee and Helene have Kevin, Raef and BSIE on their team. Alex reminds us he is 24 years of age, he is young, he has the full package. Fiona doesn't want to think about Alex's package and then dissolves in girly giggles so I think she protests too much.
Lee's team has Jenny Celery, Simon and Sophocles. Claire, Sophocles and Simon do a focus group with sme very manly men who may or may not be lorry drivers or similar, as they are wearing some kind of polo shirt uniform. Their plan is to buck the 'metrosexual trend' and go for a 'macho brand' and I smell the scent of FAIL already.
Lee says he doesn't know many men who don't want to smell like James Bond. Fiona says she's married to one.
Alex's team don't know what to do. Kevin and Alex laugh about him smell like 'stimulate'. They discuss brand titles: enigma, trust, connect. Helene, BSIE and Raef hate them all. Kevin bitches that Helene isn't good at making decisions (says him). Fiona suggests they call the fragrance domineering.
Back with the other team, and Celery is wearing some kinky boots.
Kevin pieces to camera that he left the programme too early (srsly?) and wants to prove things today. He and Alex meet with the designers but have no roduct name to base the design on. The designers look exasperated as designers on this show always do. Kevin tells the designer he wants it to feel like the exterior of a stress ball. The designer tells him that his idea is ludicrous.
They have some kind of funky bottle design now, but no name. He tries to describe it to Helene but she is panicking about the name. He says 'you're not panicking are you?' She clearly is. He tries to describe the bottle and she says she has to go. Clearly there is more going on than we are allowed to see but clearly Helene is getting the LOSE edit, at least for now. The Best Salesperson in Europe bitches about Helene.
Lee is in the car making beatbox noises and talking about glow sticks and lights going on a roulette wheel. Clealry he has a nu-rave mets casino theme for his party. And that's what he's talking about. We are told he has won the most tasks of those left but he is nervous about pitching. Yes, because he sucks at it.
Today they have to sort out their presentation and design their advert. Raef is doing his auteur director bit for the campaign for 'Dual', which arrives in a very '80s style silver and black canister. Nick is all like Helene sucks, I LOVE ALEX. Nick is 'buoyed' apparently.
Helene is at a fragrance house and they play twee music that Fiona tinks may have been used in the House of Elliot. She points out that Alex and Helene aren't working together. They discuss fragrances, the perfumier suggests chocolate, curry, candy floss. Helene worries that you don't want to smell like a chicken balti.
Lee's idea is to revive 'the old fashioned gambling gentleman' and the location for their ad is a nightclub. Sophocles is behind the camera again, proving that neither he nor Raef have learned from the task fail before. Lee pulls a sex face and the whole nation feels dirty. He porn directs the models with phrases like 'you've wanted him for months'.
Helene and Alex bitch at each other about what time to get out of bed. They are like an old married couple; Claire will be jealous. Jenny M intervenes and bitches for no reason. They waffle on some more about what time to get up and it's a bit tedious.
Alex accuses Helene of being defensive which is the biggest case of pot and kettle the world has ever seen.
Claire and Lee hang their adverts and they are shockingly, awfully, terrible, like a low-budget 70s film with a leading man that looks like Lee without the scars. FAIL. But then all adverts produced in this show are FAIL so it means nothing. They practice their pitch and Lee stumbles. Here we would ask why Claire isn't doing it but we imagine they both have to do something. Claire tries to encourage him but he is very downbeat.
Alex and Helene are in the car, sitting as far apart from each other as possible and not speaking. Helene has her hair up and it doesn't look great. They and their team arrive at the location. The fragrance smells very chocolatey and they all look worried. Fiona thinks they have formulated the new chocolate Lynx.
Lee is stuttering outside and Claire is being all encouraging.
Time to practise the Dual pitch. Alex is pitching to a fake customer called Adam, who is 26 (not 24 and therefore not young), who works in a bank (doesn't sell grit) and it's all very reminiscent of Mavis, the home shopper.
Kevin says he wants to inject something into Helene (erk) and tries to show them how to pitch. Right.
We see the guests arriving, among them are 'top people' from perfume houses.
Roulette are up first, and here I think they should have just called the bottles Alpha and Rennaissance. Claire cries a bit and Lee says he's worked his tits off (with Helene and her balls, this Apprentice series is very gender challenged). At the event we have a casino layout, with a Christopher Lloyd lookalike juggleing glowsticks and some Moulin Rouge style dancers. We are confused and wish we had drugs and alcohol to help us make sense of this.
Claire pitches that gambling is important and this and fragrance are two booming industries. She gives cliches about placing a bet and really she is way too cheesy. Lee is up and says their guy is Wyan who is sick of metrosexuality and wants to look like a man and smell like a man. The guests look unimpressed and snigger at the smell like a man bit. The advert is rubish but at least shows the perfume, along with cheesy shots of the roulette and the couple. It's about forty years out of date though. The strapline is 'make the roules' which doesn't fit with the name Roulette. Claire says men are sick of smelling like their girlfriends and their fragrance smells of amber, Oriental spices and animals. Lots of gay botoxed men stick white strips up their noses.
They have some questions. One woman says she doesn't want to be endorsing gambling through her own brand. Claire BSes about the man who uses the perfume making his own rules. Claire says she hopes the other team balls it up because she wants to win. So you want to be the least worst then? Lofty ambition.
Alex and Helene have some martial-arty-shadow-boxers to launch theirs. Alex tells us we are going on a journey tonight (drrink). He tells us about Adam who lives in a cosmopolitan 24-hour society, and wants to release his inner self. He is the opposite of Wyan then.
They unveil Dual. Helene says there is nothing else like it: yuo can take out a 25mil bit from it but it isn't clear what the big bit does. She says it is something new that will stand out and their pitch is all a bit basic but probably better than the other team's in fairness. Their advert shows a young man being a twat, with some shape shifting action going on and a Raef vo about 'Dual: release your inner self' but the product doesn't appear til the end which Sralan won't like. One of the people in the audience loves the ad, says the message is coherent and Sralan is smiling. FUCKING ALEX IS GOING TO WIN, NO?
Someone asks them if they've done their pricing research. Alex says it would cost a few 'percentage points' more to make. What about pounds and pence, pretty boy? Sralan is sitting near Tim.
Some people there like the product but not the packaging. Some say Roulette owuld work immediately but wouldn't sell for long.
The voiceover growls that Sralans boardroom beckons, in the air the scent of victory andthe smell of defeat. The music playing sounds like Eminem's Lose Yourself and as they go into the boardroom, may I just point out the photos on the waiting room wall were taken by Dave Gorman.
Sralan asks Michael how Claire and Lee were. He says they were great. Jenny Celery and Simon don't say much, having been muted out of the whole programme so far. Claire says consumers want to smell like a man not unisex. Sralan tries to find out whether any of the apprentices are metrosexual. All but Simon, apparently. And Sralan and Nick, I imagine. Sralan questions them on the gambling. Claire says they were careful not to use gambling or chance in their ad or presentation. Nick says roulette=gambling, debt, misry. Some of the experts said the fragrance was 70s, which is exactly what we said some paragraphs up. We know our stuff.
Oh, Alex and Helene's team are Renaissance apparently. Alex tells them about the problems of deciding on a name. Kevin says Alex made all the decisions. Helene says she isn't surprised by the response ad that she helped guide the team discussions and chose how to spell 'dual', a job Lee McQueen clearly wouldn't have been able to do. Sralan says their fragrance was distinctive but he didn't like it. He asked Helene what she wears. She says Angel. Sralan said people had said it smelled like Angel/Amen. Sralan asks who designed the bottle and Alex pussyfoots around the fact that it was the designer's idea.
Sralan thanks the mostly quiet former apprentices and they leave. He tells 'Alpha' they made a mistake with the name roulette, that Lee's presentation has improved and Claire's Q and A was brilliant, but Q and A doesn't sell. Sralan tells Renaissance that the business side had slipped their mind because the packaging would cost 3-4 times more than the standard fragrance bottle. Sralan talks a bit of maths and says they have nothing left for marketing. He accuses them of not doing their sums and Helene says they didnt before Alex can pretend they did in some kind of roundabout way.
Sralan said the task was made up of several elements to bring his concerns to a crescendo and see whether they've signed on (what, like the 12 losers do each week at their local jobcentre plus?). Alex and Helene are fired and though I am sad that Helene is gone because I have her in a sweepy we are both very happy Alex is gone and Fiona is excited because Claire is her sweepy. And Alex is a cunt. We are so glad Alex has gone.
He cries in the car. He's only a baby, only 24, you know. Helene says they failed because of the bottle and blames Alex basically. Neither of them gets to wear a funky eviction coat. Alex goes on about being passionate and not eating. Fiona points out that Claire's been eating. And Sophocles proably. Alex is heartbroken.
We, and the nation, are probably going to be happy whatever. Margaret says they worked well together and managed the team well. I call Lee to win because the ballsy woman always, always comes second.
For some reason all their team are back in the boardroom, oh, it's to give opinions. Michael says Claire has shown tenacity and strength because of being in the boardroom. Simon says if you'd told his eight weeks ago he'd come back and champion Claire he have been surprised, but he loves both of them. Jenny Celery says Lee is an amazing guy and a real gentleman (which is not always true, as Sara and Lucinda could both attest to).
Claire pieces to camera that Lee would have cracked under pressure were it not for her. Lee says he WANTS it, because it's all about that andnot about competence.
Fiona thinks Claire will win, which is the opposite to me. Essex council have apparently offered an unspecified job to the runner up, so wit-woo, they both have the chance of some underwhelming work ahead.
Sralan asks why he should hire them. Claire says she has improved and she wants to keep improving. She says she is tougher than Lee and won't crumble, that she has more drive and she wants it more. Lee says he wants it more than anyone else in the process, that he has shown his leadership and sales abilities and his skills make him the next apprentice. Claire says she's proved it because most people would have cracked under the pressure. Randomly, Lee's gramar is better than Claire's today. Sralan questions Lee's self-confidence and whether he can keep going. Lee says he does and pulls himself together. Sralan says Claire has a point about resilience and Lee is good, doesn't she think? She says she's not interrupting.
Sralan worries whether Lee is a one-trick pony in terms of skills and he's not sure whether he can put up with someone like Claire. He likes Claire and Lee is very convincing. Lee - you're hired.
No alarms and no surprises and Claire joins Saira, Ruth and Kristina in the ballsy woman comes second camp, which I have been saying for weeks. Lee and Claire hug and she cries. Fiona says it's good because she's not sure what else Lee can do.
Lee is in the car saying it's unbelievable. Fiona says it looks like he really did want it.
Lee won a job selling advertising video screens. Umm, good for him.
That's all from us, but there'll be more bitching in August with The Bitch Factor, and join us for more Apprentice action next year! Probably!
Broadcast Wednesday 11th June
So here we are, the final stretch of what has been an entertaining, if infuriating, fourth series of The Apprentice, and Fiona and I will be here all night to recap it for you, LIVE! with accompanying typos and missed bits (we're sure the boys will add those in later).
So let us recap where we were. Sixteen 'tycoons of tomorrow' have come to London to seek a terrible jon in NotAmstrad and work for 'Britain's most beligerent boss'. Several tasks made of fail and multiple bullshit firings later, here we are at the final. If you weren't here last week, the rottweilers ripped them to shreds(ish), Lee got found out as a CV-enhancing liar, Claire was Claire, Helene had a tragic background (wrong show) and Alex was 24. And young. And 24. And Lucinda got fired for being too zany. Booo, but also good for her, because Not Amstrad strikes me as a very grey kind of place to work anyway.
And in a SHOCK! TWIST! Sralan decided not to have a mere two people in the final but to have four, because they were all 'credible candidates' (read: he wanted them all to work at NotAmsrad for a few months so he could see whose spirit he'd managed to crush the most). And in case you've forgotten, here's a brief recap of our runners and riders:
Lee McQueen
Has an unfortunate habit of speaking about himself in the third person, knows what he's talking about, even if he's never made that explicit to the rest of us, is the only person in the country (perhaps the world) who knows what a reverse pterodactyl looks and sounds like, only spent four months at uni before dropping out, not two years, can't spell and looks somewhat older than his 30 years. However, he does have a degree of task competence, is a good motivator and team leader and Fiona likes his bottom.
Helene Speight
She has large eyes that mean she can sometimes look quite attractive and at other times like a Kit Kat clock (circa Charlie Brooker). Is tall and looks like she could be quite imposing, but somehow misread her brief and thought it said 'quiet' imposing so has thus stood around in the background most of the time. She is a ballsy woman. Depending on who is editing that week, she is either very competent or doesn't do anything, except perhaps bitch at Lucinda, but as that's not an option anymore, she'll have to actually do some work this week. Sralan doesn't like her much because she is 'tainted by working for a big corporation' and is a bladdy woman.
Claire Young
A German Shepherd/Rottweiler hybrid (in her own words), Claire has gone on the bigest journey (drrrrrrrink) of the series, from being loud mouthed and bitchy, to being a bit less loudmouthed and a bit less bitchy. But hey, this is The Apprentice, any progress at all is a miracle. She is generally competent and likeable and she wouldn't kiss a snake for a million pounds, not even if Sralan told her too, but she would suck the lips off that Paul fella who did the interviews last week.
Alex Wotherspoon
Alex is young, he's only 24 you know. Has an annoying habit of pouting and chewing the inside of his cheek. Is 24. Has hypnotised all his project managers, Sralan, the interviewers and even Nick Hewer by his good looks and magic cock. Is 24. Allegedly sold rocks for £7000 a week with his brother. Has achieved a lot for his age, which is 24. Is a passive aggressive, defensive prima donna. Who is 24.
Tonight we will be watching Claire and Lee and Alex and Helene, with an assortment of former candidates, trying to create and flog some new men's fragrances. Join us at 9 for the inevitable crushing disappointment as Alex wins. It's the final cuntdown!
In the car on the way to meet Sralan. They are at a posh restaurant - or semi-posh, as he 'doesn't have £800million from splashing out on lobster dinners' (circa Claire). Lee tells Sralan he supports Tottenham Hotspur. Nicholas deLacy Brown, that was what you should have said in week one. Helene talks about how they all need to raise their game, and there no strong, oops, I mean, weak link now. Sralan makes a feeble joke about Lee paying for their meals. My sides.
NotFrances calls them, but they seem ready this time, boring shot of Lee shaving (but at least no more shots of Michael in his pants). Today's destination is an empty art gallery. Fiona says it's the same one we've seen before, which it probably is. Some dreadful music plays in the background.
Srlan tells them there'll be two teams: Claire/Lee, Alex/Helene. They will be joint team leaders (how does that work?) A motley parade wanders in to help them: Jenny Celery, Raef, Sophocles, The Best Salesperson in Europe, Matt Lucas and Simon. The Best Salesperson is the last to be picked, so so much for her mad salez skillz. Wot no Lucinda or NDLB? Gip. He tells them the task: design and pitch a fragrance. Both losers will 'leave this process' (not get fired) and one of the people in the winning team will win. Sralan desn't say what criteria he will judge that on.
In the cab Helene lies to Alex that she would have chosen him over the others t work with and in their cab, Lee and Claire discuss being sick together. Yum.
The fragrance has to retail for £29.99 and they show lots of good adverts of men's frgrances to show us what they won't do tonight.
Lee and Helene have Kevin, Raef and BSIE on their team. Alex reminds us he is 24 years of age, he is young, he has the full package. Fiona doesn't want to think about Alex's package and then dissolves in girly giggles so I think she protests too much.
Lee's team has Jenny Celery, Simon and Sophocles. Claire, Sophocles and Simon do a focus group with sme very manly men who may or may not be lorry drivers or similar, as they are wearing some kind of polo shirt uniform. Their plan is to buck the 'metrosexual trend' and go for a 'macho brand' and I smell the scent of FAIL already.
Lee says he doesn't know many men who don't want to smell like James Bond. Fiona says she's married to one.
Alex's team don't know what to do. Kevin and Alex laugh about him smell like 'stimulate'. They discuss brand titles: enigma, trust, connect. Helene, BSIE and Raef hate them all. Kevin bitches that Helene isn't good at making decisions (says him). Fiona suggests they call the fragrance domineering.
Back with the other team, and Celery is wearing some kinky boots.
Kevin pieces to camera that he left the programme too early (srsly?) and wants to prove things today. He and Alex meet with the designers but have no roduct name to base the design on. The designers look exasperated as designers on this show always do. Kevin tells the designer he wants it to feel like the exterior of a stress ball. The designer tells him that his idea is ludicrous.
They have some kind of funky bottle design now, but no name. He tries to describe it to Helene but she is panicking about the name. He says 'you're not panicking are you?' She clearly is. He tries to describe the bottle and she says she has to go. Clearly there is more going on than we are allowed to see but clearly Helene is getting the LOSE edit, at least for now. The Best Salesperson in Europe bitches about Helene.
Lee is in the car making beatbox noises and talking about glow sticks and lights going on a roulette wheel. Clealry he has a nu-rave mets casino theme for his party. And that's what he's talking about. We are told he has won the most tasks of those left but he is nervous about pitching. Yes, because he sucks at it.
Today they have to sort out their presentation and design their advert. Raef is doing his auteur director bit for the campaign for 'Dual', which arrives in a very '80s style silver and black canister. Nick is all like Helene sucks, I LOVE ALEX. Nick is 'buoyed' apparently.
Helene is at a fragrance house and they play twee music that Fiona tinks may have been used in the House of Elliot. She points out that Alex and Helene aren't working together. They discuss fragrances, the perfumier suggests chocolate, curry, candy floss. Helene worries that you don't want to smell like a chicken balti.
Lee's idea is to revive 'the old fashioned gambling gentleman' and the location for their ad is a nightclub. Sophocles is behind the camera again, proving that neither he nor Raef have learned from the task fail before. Lee pulls a sex face and the whole nation feels dirty. He porn directs the models with phrases like 'you've wanted him for months'.
Helene and Alex bitch at each other about what time to get out of bed. They are like an old married couple; Claire will be jealous. Jenny M intervenes and bitches for no reason. They waffle on some more about what time to get up and it's a bit tedious.
Alex accuses Helene of being defensive which is the biggest case of pot and kettle the world has ever seen.
Claire and Lee hang their adverts and they are shockingly, awfully, terrible, like a low-budget 70s film with a leading man that looks like Lee without the scars. FAIL. But then all adverts produced in this show are FAIL so it means nothing. They practice their pitch and Lee stumbles. Here we would ask why Claire isn't doing it but we imagine they both have to do something. Claire tries to encourage him but he is very downbeat.
Alex and Helene are in the car, sitting as far apart from each other as possible and not speaking. Helene has her hair up and it doesn't look great. They and their team arrive at the location. The fragrance smells very chocolatey and they all look worried. Fiona thinks they have formulated the new chocolate Lynx.
Lee is stuttering outside and Claire is being all encouraging.
Time to practise the Dual pitch. Alex is pitching to a fake customer called Adam, who is 26 (not 24 and therefore not young), who works in a bank (doesn't sell grit) and it's all very reminiscent of Mavis, the home shopper.
Kevin says he wants to inject something into Helene (erk) and tries to show them how to pitch. Right.
We see the guests arriving, among them are 'top people' from perfume houses.
Roulette are up first, and here I think they should have just called the bottles Alpha and Rennaissance. Claire cries a bit and Lee says he's worked his tits off (with Helene and her balls, this Apprentice series is very gender challenged). At the event we have a casino layout, with a Christopher Lloyd lookalike juggleing glowsticks and some Moulin Rouge style dancers. We are confused and wish we had drugs and alcohol to help us make sense of this.
Claire pitches that gambling is important and this and fragrance are two booming industries. She gives cliches about placing a bet and really she is way too cheesy. Lee is up and says their guy is Wyan who is sick of metrosexuality and wants to look like a man and smell like a man. The guests look unimpressed and snigger at the smell like a man bit. The advert is rubish but at least shows the perfume, along with cheesy shots of the roulette and the couple. It's about forty years out of date though. The strapline is 'make the roules' which doesn't fit with the name Roulette. Claire says men are sick of smelling like their girlfriends and their fragrance smells of amber, Oriental spices and animals. Lots of gay botoxed men stick white strips up their noses.
They have some questions. One woman says she doesn't want to be endorsing gambling through her own brand. Claire BSes about the man who uses the perfume making his own rules. Claire says she hopes the other team balls it up because she wants to win. So you want to be the least worst then? Lofty ambition.
Alex and Helene have some martial-arty-shadow-boxers to launch theirs. Alex tells us we are going on a journey tonight (drrink). He tells us about Adam who lives in a cosmopolitan 24-hour society, and wants to release his inner self. He is the opposite of Wyan then.
They unveil Dual. Helene says there is nothing else like it: yuo can take out a 25mil bit from it but it isn't clear what the big bit does. She says it is something new that will stand out and their pitch is all a bit basic but probably better than the other team's in fairness. Their advert shows a young man being a twat, with some shape shifting action going on and a Raef vo about 'Dual: release your inner self' but the product doesn't appear til the end which Sralan won't like. One of the people in the audience loves the ad, says the message is coherent and Sralan is smiling. FUCKING ALEX IS GOING TO WIN, NO?
Someone asks them if they've done their pricing research. Alex says it would cost a few 'percentage points' more to make. What about pounds and pence, pretty boy? Sralan is sitting near Tim.
Some people there like the product but not the packaging. Some say Roulette owuld work immediately but wouldn't sell for long.
The voiceover growls that Sralans boardroom beckons, in the air the scent of victory andthe smell of defeat. The music playing sounds like Eminem's Lose Yourself and as they go into the boardroom, may I just point out the photos on the waiting room wall were taken by Dave Gorman.
Sralan asks Michael how Claire and Lee were. He says they were great. Jenny Celery and Simon don't say much, having been muted out of the whole programme so far. Claire says consumers want to smell like a man not unisex. Sralan tries to find out whether any of the apprentices are metrosexual. All but Simon, apparently. And Sralan and Nick, I imagine. Sralan questions them on the gambling. Claire says they were careful not to use gambling or chance in their ad or presentation. Nick says roulette=gambling, debt, misry. Some of the experts said the fragrance was 70s, which is exactly what we said some paragraphs up. We know our stuff.
Oh, Alex and Helene's team are Renaissance apparently. Alex tells them about the problems of deciding on a name. Kevin says Alex made all the decisions. Helene says she isn't surprised by the response ad that she helped guide the team discussions and chose how to spell 'dual', a job Lee McQueen clearly wouldn't have been able to do. Sralan says their fragrance was distinctive but he didn't like it. He asked Helene what she wears. She says Angel. Sralan said people had said it smelled like Angel/Amen. Sralan asks who designed the bottle and Alex pussyfoots around the fact that it was the designer's idea.
Sralan thanks the mostly quiet former apprentices and they leave. He tells 'Alpha' they made a mistake with the name roulette, that Lee's presentation has improved and Claire's Q and A was brilliant, but Q and A doesn't sell. Sralan tells Renaissance that the business side had slipped their mind because the packaging would cost 3-4 times more than the standard fragrance bottle. Sralan talks a bit of maths and says they have nothing left for marketing. He accuses them of not doing their sums and Helene says they didnt before Alex can pretend they did in some kind of roundabout way.
Sralan said the task was made up of several elements to bring his concerns to a crescendo and see whether they've signed on (what, like the 12 losers do each week at their local jobcentre plus?). Alex and Helene are fired and though I am sad that Helene is gone because I have her in a sweepy we are both very happy Alex is gone and Fiona is excited because Claire is her sweepy. And Alex is a cunt. We are so glad Alex has gone.
He cries in the car. He's only a baby, only 24, you know. Helene says they failed because of the bottle and blames Alex basically. Neither of them gets to wear a funky eviction coat. Alex goes on about being passionate and not eating. Fiona points out that Claire's been eating. And Sophocles proably. Alex is heartbroken.
We, and the nation, are probably going to be happy whatever. Margaret says they worked well together and managed the team well. I call Lee to win because the ballsy woman always, always comes second.
For some reason all their team are back in the boardroom, oh, it's to give opinions. Michael says Claire has shown tenacity and strength because of being in the boardroom. Simon says if you'd told his eight weeks ago he'd come back and champion Claire he have been surprised, but he loves both of them. Jenny Celery says Lee is an amazing guy and a real gentleman (which is not always true, as Sara and Lucinda could both attest to).
Claire pieces to camera that Lee would have cracked under pressure were it not for her. Lee says he WANTS it, because it's all about that andnot about competence.
Fiona thinks Claire will win, which is the opposite to me. Essex council have apparently offered an unspecified job to the runner up, so wit-woo, they both have the chance of some underwhelming work ahead.
Sralan asks why he should hire them. Claire says she has improved and she wants to keep improving. She says she is tougher than Lee and won't crumble, that she has more drive and she wants it more. Lee says he wants it more than anyone else in the process, that he has shown his leadership and sales abilities and his skills make him the next apprentice. Claire says she's proved it because most people would have cracked under the pressure. Randomly, Lee's gramar is better than Claire's today. Sralan questions Lee's self-confidence and whether he can keep going. Lee says he does and pulls himself together. Sralan says Claire has a point about resilience and Lee is good, doesn't she think? She says she's not interrupting.
Sralan worries whether Lee is a one-trick pony in terms of skills and he's not sure whether he can put up with someone like Claire. He likes Claire and Lee is very convincing. Lee - you're hired.
No alarms and no surprises and Claire joins Saira, Ruth and Kristina in the ballsy woman comes second camp, which I have been saying for weeks. Lee and Claire hug and she cries. Fiona says it's good because she's not sure what else Lee can do.
Lee is in the car saying it's unbelievable. Fiona says it looks like he really did want it.
Lee won a job selling advertising video screens. Umm, good for him.
That's all from us, but there'll be more bitching in August with The Bitch Factor, and join us for more Apprentice action next year! Probably!
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