So I guess I’ll see you here next week at the usual time for scary Claude and the rest of them, ripping the contestants to shreds, blood everywhere, dumbfounded candidates quaking in fear. The best bit, basically. Huzzah! See you next week.
Oh god though, no more tasks. I feel so free!
Roisin is incredulous when just Mark comes back. He fills the final other four in that what I basically just said is true. From now on it’s jazz-hands all the way. Next week it’s the scary interviews. We’re nearly there!
Mark is safe. Sanjay and Katie are gone. And the game should stop here. From now on it should be Dragon’s Den with added tap dancing and karaoke. Whatever they do now, it makes no difference if their business idea is a stinker.
Now we come down to it. Alan sacks Sanjay because he doesn’t believe in his business idea. So this whole Generation Game nonsense means absolutely bollock-all and it IS all about the final business plan. We’ve been duped.
He’s flattering Sanjay and lying to Mark. The big choker.
Pause pause pause.
Mark is rolling his eyes and Sanjay is going blue.
I don’t believe he’ll let Sanjay draw another breath in that boardroom. He’ll let them scrap for another minute then, like an cobra, he’ll strike. Bang.
Oh, he’s fired Katie into the sun. She gets a quick suck-up to Karren and Nick in, knowing they are the real power behind the throne, and is gone.
But who else shall perish?
I really sympathise with Katie’s idea. I live in a part of London where Andre Agassi just opened up his first Low Carb Deli. I’m not even making this up. We should all go.
I should warn you that the info for tonight’s episode says there will be another “twist”. If he tries to pull Felipe-gate for a second week I will riot.
Sanjay reassures Alan that in five years his business will be making over a million quid. Mark is shouting him down like Peter Andre who wants someone annoying to stop talking now.
Now the business plans are coming to the fore, the game changes doesn’t it? It becomes about what it should always have been about - which shonky scheme will he chuck his money at?
Even though there are only three of them, Sugar is still sending them out so he can bitch about them behind their backs for a bit longer.
Mark flounders and fights for his life like a more erudite Peter Andre trying to hang on to his Iceland gig.
Sanjay’s idea is also laid bare - a social network for people who go to the gym. Oh that’ll be REALLY interesting. Sorry to anyone who goes to a gym but seriously. Zzzzzzz.
Katie shows her hand and says her new healthy-eating restaurant will open in Sunderland. Sugar glazes over immediately. I think she’s had it. He probably hates Sunderland for some erroneous football reason.
Sanjay blames the old-fashioned branding. Yes, covering the pudding in gingham like an old school summer dress may have caused problems when selling their product as a luxury item.
Katie admits that puddings aren’t her strong point but she is the one who loaded the puddings with a trillion dollars worth of saffron. Her restaurant, she says, won’t be somewhere she actually does the cooking. Katie tries to blame Mark and his puny, consumptive pitch.
Those added violins this series, in the doomy bits, sound just like the ones they use when something truly awful happens in Ripper Street. I like it.
Katie sips warm brown liquid from her polystyrene failure cup and admits it’s crunch time for her because she was PM and she wants Lord Sugar to start a food-based business with her. Is she foreshadowing her own doom? That would be quite neat, narratively.
The James Bond is comedically tiny. Like a little tin bath atop which they are trying to look relaxed and successful without falling overboard into the Thames.
The trifle bores are toast. Off to the cafe with you, you worthless losers.
Waitrose liked Roisin’s tea nonsense - quelle surprise. Dear god the tea people won. Their prize is cake and cocktails on a James Bond boat. Probably in Tilbury Docks, guys. Don’t get excited.
Nick and Karren sum up the supermarket responses. They take their time, obv. For the tension. I might go to the loo.
This bit is quite boring. Alan is telling them what to take away from market research. They’re all nodding and thinking about going to the pub. Mark admits that he “dropped my bundle”. That’s it, Mark. Show Darth Sugar your fear. He likes it when someone rolls over and displays their soft belly to him. He certainly never ever jabs a blade in while nodding and smiling to their faces. No.
Roisin admits that she wanted Daniel a thousand nautical miles away from any pitch she was conducting. She isn’t even bothering to hide her disgust.
Sanjay starts his charm offensive about joining the new team but Karren reminds him he had a pop at Bianca. He looks a bit flushed. She lets him off.
Roisin is in the full glare of Sugar’s angry headlights and starts spluttering about grazing consumers. Rows and rows of them in a field, chewing the cud and waiting for the next snack to come along the conveyor belt.
And so to the boardroom. Alan starts with Roisin and opens with a terrible joke about a chocolate teapot. Usual rules, if you’re affected by the bad puns on tonight’s show, get therapy and bill Sugar. He’ll be fine with it.
A text from Jon - my phone-a-friend when it comes to pitching - tells me that Mark failed to breath properly and that is why he coughed like a miner.
Mark launches their Tesco pitch by lecturing them on the worth of the luxury pudding market but he has a very unfortunate nervous cough. He sounds like he’s trying to get someone’s attention without actually saying anything. “Sorry guys,” he keeps saying as someone else steps in. He’s literally choked it. Katie’s smile gets tighter and tighter. Katie and Sanjay are literally clasping their hands in supplication. Please don’t send us away empty-handed they’re thinking as Mark continues to clear his throat.
Roisin and co are facing off with Tesco who like the lemon. Lemon is good. Everyone enjoys the zing of lemon. Daniel bangs on about the green tea even though he bloody hates green tea.
Tesco man tries to be positive but I’d put money on them not buying a single pudding. Wait, they’re still saying nice things even though the team has left the room. One of the boys, Solomon I think, is crowing that one of the Tesco women winked at him. Winked!
Someone tell me how much money they think Katie has spunked on the superfluous saffron.
The man from Waitrose points out that there is way, way, WAY too much saffron in their pudding. His sophisticated pallet picks it up straight away
They’re going to full on fist fight in front of the people from Waitrose aren’t they? Food fight!
Back to Katie and Mark in their car. Sanjay gets a call from them asking him to lead the Waitrose pitch. Is there a greater honour? Sanjay doesn’t see it that way and gets snitty with Katie about her insistence that she needs to go in on the pitch with him.
Roisin is absolutely furious and quietly but firmly tells Daniel to shut the f**k up or she’ll chin him. He can’t hear a word she’s saying. The girls are in one car, the boys in another like the members of One Direction, no longer even able to travel short distances together. It’s all going wrong.
Now Daniel and Solomon have caught up with the girls, Roisin reads them the riot act about not interrupting her pitch. Daniel interrupts her pitch. “It really did smack me round the face,” he says, hoping his testimony will sway the panel.
The second team pitches to Asda. Katie’s gang and their various trifles leaves the Asda bods a bit cold. Has Katie been into Asda lately? Not a lot of call for saffron-tinged custard in these parts, their eyes seem to be saying as they reach for their pitchforks.
Their pitch beginneth. The Tea Pot is their pudding. The three different puddings are all swimming in tea and Roisin says their main target audience are “the treat seekers”. New and incredible levels of bullshit reached tonight. Are you a treat seeker? I so am.
Solomon and Daniel got stuck in traffic and may now miss the first pitch. Roisin and Bianca piss themselves laughing that they’ll have to pitch without the boys. I bet they phoned a few mates and asked them to block the road for just this purpose.
Everyone bites their lips when it comes to fighting over the pitch. Daniel snarks about Roisin being in love with Bianca because she picked her for the pitch instead of him.
Now it’s off to meet the public so they can try the puddings. Sanjay is deflated by the public reaction. Everyone looks a bit iffy, even at the prospect of free pudding.
Day two, time for the pitches. The teams are having a “first peak at their puddings”. Miranda would mouth the word “rude” here. Katie’s gang love their trifles and would definitely pay three pounds for that. Apprentice contestants are, of course, the kind of people these over-priced products are aimed at. They see a spendy pudding as a mark of success. Check out my pudding, bitches. I’m golden.
Everyone is convinced they’ve smashed it. It’s like Angry Bake-Off but no one is flinging anything petulantly in the bin.
Solomon is suggesting that their cheesecakes could be mail order. Post someone YOU love a cheesecake. I can see this working as long as the recipients enjoy receiving a tepid, mangled mess of biscuit and cream cheese in a soggy box. Could take off.
Katie is lobbing in three kilos of saffron as the real chef warns her that she’s using all he has. This is saffron that costs four billion pounds a gram and only a tiny bit is needed. Saffrongate, bring it on. How much money did she just flush with her saffron flinging? Katie to go?
Sanjay is attempting a play on words and he’s not even wearing a hair net. He is calling their exotic confection *cough* A Trifle Different. He thinks he’s invented the wheel. Could not be more delighted for himself. I think he tried a self-high-five there when no one was looking.
Both teams must include three different flavours. Katie hopes strawberry and hibiscus will work. What even is hibiscus? I mean a plant obviously but does it taste of pudding?
Daniel expresses strong doubts about the heavy use of tea. “There’s pure tea in that,” he says sounding surprised. When I eat a cheesecake I prefer it to taste of sugar and cheese, shit-loads of creamy, globby cheese. And no tea.
Bianca and Daniel are tasting tea and yodelling oolong around their tongues. Daniel says he’s got no idea what he’s got in his mouth but it doesn’t taste like tea. Bianca does a marvelous job of bluffing full tea knowledge. Still no pudding getting made though.
Sanjay starts listing exotic flavours - hibiscus, palm oil, creosote - I’m not sure he’s really got his pudding head on. Blee. He suggests a name for their product which sounds like a sex aid - Sweet Pleasure. Mark shuts him down. Sensibly.
Roisin says her pudding must taste of tea and is muttering in the back of the people carrier - something about camomile. Urgh. Everyone knows herbal tea doesn’t taste of anything. It’s just fruit-stinking water.
So Roisin wants to launch a ready meal line with Alan. They’re finally starting to leak the intel on who wants to do what as the final approaches.
Meanwhile, Katie is emphasising to her team the down-to-earthness of the people they’re pitching to. She says the word “normal” like it’s a dirty word.
Roisin bagsies packaging and branding and gets Bianca on board too. Solomon is welching out of product development because he’s hopeless in the kitchen.
Daniel is being moved away from his team and Sanjay is swapping with him. Roisin is awarded the PM role for one team and Katie is heading up team “other”. I genuinely lose track of who is Summit and who is Tenalady.
It is a fabulous building. A scowling Nick and Karren greet their charges with frankly narrowed eyes. Darth Sugar is visibly puffed up by the majesty of his surroundings. Ah, I see, they’re at the Tate gallery because the task is linked to sugar. Very, very tenuously.
The teams must come up with a lovely pudding and then try to sell it to supermarkets.
Is it over? It’s over. So, week ten will see the bleary-eyed contestants shipping out to Tate Britain in London’s fashionable London. That’s not the big power station one. That’s Tate Modern. Tate Britain is where they keep all the proper art. I imagine that’s exactly how Sugar requested it. Not that modern guff, Nick. I want the proper old-fashioned one with paintings of ugly birds and that.
The recap includes Roisin’s jewel heist and Daniel’s uber-Jewing in a bid to get a bargain. I’m sticking my fingers in my ears til he’s finished firing Felipe.
OK, I’m holding it together but tonight’s blog will be stained with tears for the one decent man left in the competition until Sugar splatted him under-foot last week for absolutely no reason.
Right, the sparkly tree ident tells us it’s time for Alan and co. “I won’t be working, you will be working,” says Alan like the big capitalist git he is. I pay, you work. And get me a latte!
He’s like a Dickensian industrialist. He should be wearing a giant stove-pipe hat and eating small urchins for breakfast. They’re going to show Felipe crying in Times Square aren’t they? They did, they did show Felipe crying in Times Square. I’m too sad to go on.
Updated
That was a nice Christmas on BBC One trailer. I’ve seen nearly all of the Christmas TV now. Feel sorry for me. What am I going to do for the interminable minutes and hours spent with my family? I’ll have to actually talk to them.
Has anyone actually lined up or indeed LAID ON a nice spread of puddings to enjoy during tonight’s episode? I’ve had a mince pie but I’m full now so I’ll just enjoy it as it gently repeats on me for the next half an hour or so. Too much info?
Good evening, friends (fellow sufferers). And welcome to what can only be described as week 10 of The Flipping Apprentice. Last week, Alan dropped a clanger with his totally unjustified dismissal of Felipe. This blog tonight comes to you from my prime spot, chained to the railings of Alan’s house where I have been protesting all week. I’m watching his television through the window.
Not much to report so far but I think it’s sausages and mash for dinner. He’s just picking his nose at the moment.
Meet me back here just before 9pm as the final seven prepare to invent a new luxury pudding. I’m not even joking. Adopting the brace position now for Alan’s confectionery-based puns.
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