Next week they have to design a board game which we can all agree is a vital skill for anyone about to launch a new business venture. Good GRIEF. No it’s fine, we’re on board right?
I’ll be here next week. Because how could I not be? Will you come too? I hope you do. I’m now diving south to the comments.
Thank you so SO much for coming. Come back now, y’hear?
Yes, it is actually going to be...OH, it’s Jemma. Jemma is fired. Jemma says thank you. Jemma goes and sits on the sofa outside in an utterly impassive way.
In the back of the taxi she continues to denigrate herself even though she seems like a much nicer, lest boastful person than all of the other contestants. Back at the house, Daniel comes under unusually heavy fire from the others who basically tell him to stop lying.
Guys. GUYS. It’s just an entertainment show, yeah?
Oh the dance must end but with WHO?
I can’t call it. But only because they all seem so incredibly weak. But if I had to put a pound on it, I’d say Sanjay. Because meh.
Bianca and Jemma both admit that they didn’t see all this shit coming. They don’t flounder or flap. They just agree that they should have been less rubbish than they were. This is the Apprentice version of playing dead and hoping the gunman will move on.
Sanjay has started nodding madly like that guy in Star Wars just before Darth Vader remotely squeezes the air and throttles his neck from afar. Sanjay is panicking.
He’s warming up his firing finger. I imagine he does that dance routine from Tiffany’s I Think We’re Alone Now. Do you remember it? Really good work out for any index fingers you have.
As soon as Sanjay nabbed Bianca and Jemma I think we all said the same name out loud in our front rooms. Am I right? Someone start making a headstone for Jemma.
UNLESS they want at least ONE character to hang on in there. Of the two women, I can remember more about Jemma. Probably because Bianca has been less irritating all told.
Jemma fights for her life while Alan reads disparaging things from her resume. She basically says in her resume that she always comes second. Is this some genius attempt to undermine the whole Apprentice model? Or is she just really thick?
And back in the boardroom, Sanjay is taking both barrels while his team pretend to be statues. If we stay still, he won’t see us, they think.
“When are you going to stop?” Alan asks one of them. And so say all of us.
Bianca feels that Sanjay is trying to leverage blame “on myself”. She should be fired for not saying “me”.
Meanwhile at Anish Kapoor’s big red Olympic tower, James is having “a f*cking treat as he dangles off a rope over east London. No champagne, no smoked salmon. Just dangling.
So £830 and a few pence for Summit and £1037 and some pence for Tenacity in profit. So Tenacity mince off into the sunset as the winners. Alan’s laid on a trip to Stratford clearly having spunked the budget on Iceland last week. Jeez, I’d be gutted to get that prize.
P. Uddin says “Blenheim Palace was HUGE” in a way that suggests she understood nothing of the place at all.
And here come the numbers.....
Felipe admits he didn’t sell a coach out. Katie digs the dirt on Daniel and tells Alan he (Daniel) sold absolutely none. Katie is doing that thing where she tries to support Daniel while brutally stabbing him under the kidneys.
Bianca - who again I haven’t really noticed - says something vaguely sensible and is immediately drowned out by the stubbly idiots.
James is using “guys” a lot like a weapon. Every “guys” is designed to maim and bruise.
Tabard blindness is replaced by grey/blue blindness. Have you ever seen another TV show with such a limited palate? In the boardroom it’s like your TV is broken and only some of the colours work.
And so to the boardroom. Alan says it’s been an “interesting task” in a way that almost acknowledges this task has nothing to do with anything apart from our entertainment.
“Welcome back to Victoria station,” says one man who doesn’t fully understand the grimness of that place. No matter what they do to it, Victoria, in the shadow of Buckingham Palace, remains a gutter.
Pamela (puddin) gets in one more dig about how anything that went wrong was definitely someone else’s fault while James asks his punters to tip generously because they’ve working their (and I have tup cap this up) BALLS off. He really shouldn’t shout the word balls at people.
Felipe’s hat is really making me warm to him a lot. I can’t explain it. I think, despite the early third-personing in episode one, he may be the only decent person in this thing. Felipe to win.
Back in Kent (that’s KENT), Sanjay and his pilgrims are lost and their next venue shuts in a minute. Oh super. Take them to the pub, Sanjay. Do it. And make up an entirely fabricated tale about how Poundland was once the site of a plague hospital or some balls like that.
No seriously, I was a wench at Warwick castle. Shall we just spend the rest of the liveblog talking about that?
NO. Because James just had to apologise to everyone on his coach about the toilet which is apparently in the kind of state you’d expect to find an authentic toilet used by Henry VIII. Ew.
James and his crew have missed a trick with the post-tour picnic. They haven’t even provided chicken legs or fake mead. Poor show. I was once genuinely a “wench” at Warwick Castle where all of these things were standard. If I was on James’ tour I would feel incredibly cheated.
Jemma makes a really fractious and irritable tour guide. Always a good quality in someone there to essentially entertain and inform. Her descent into the tale of Ann’s beheading was pure Partridge. She has to get some kind of award for that.
James - in a plastic crown - is still singing. And everyone on the coach is willing it to crash and burst into flames. This “history” tour is really reminding me of Leah from last series, talking about a Tudor corporate day which would be “really majestic”. James, you are really majestic.
Anyone who says this blog is making me lose my grip on reality is totally out of order and I will fight them.
I am already achieving a state of tabard blindness. All I can see is tabards. It’s like a tabard is watching The Apprentice like that bit in Being John Malkovich and all the tabard can see is other tabards.
James has just told his punters - sorry did we get that the coach tours have started now? - anyway James pointed out a coffee shop on the left and then started a sing-a-long of One Man Went to Mow which exactly no one joined in with.
In weather, a yellow warning is basically “get the sandbags because your bureau will be doing the backstroke by morning”.
Daniel’s team are on their way. His team are dressed in yellow. A LOT of yellow. Isn’t that a warning in nature? This tabard spells danger. DANGER.
Pamela Uddin (who I have just been told is P Uddin - pudding!) is the voice of doom in tonight’s episode. Every time something happens, she roars her disapproval like Cassandra. Oh it’s ALL going to be awful. Assuming she thinks that saying this out loud will somehow exonerate her in the boardroom.
After a while, this programme just blurs into tailoring, numbers and furrowed brows in the back of taxis. When do we get to the bit where they dress up? I want them to dress up as Henry VIII and if this doesn’t happen I am literally flouncing out.
So essentially they’re galloping around tourist attractions trying to get entry tickets on the cheap to re-sell them to gullible tourists for much, much more.
This is descending into that Fry & Laurie sketch about the best goddam leisure facility in Uttoxeter. Yes, it’s dog eat dog out there in the bloody world of coach tours.
Daniel is trying to flog tour tickets to a bunch of unconvinced people who I assume have been locked in that room until they submit to his sales patter and buy a bloody ticket.
Back in Canterbury, Jemma and team try to tie up their Kent Tour. Careful how you say that, Jemma. That’s KENT.
The juxtaposition of Apprentice candidates with the rich tapestry of history is actually quite hard to look at isn’t it? There they are, with their polyester and angry sales technique, in Henry VIII’s bed chamber, being all modern and offensively so.
Katie, who I always notice every episode (I don’t think this is a good thing) is getting shirty/sarky with someone already.
James is trying to play hard ball with the nice lady from Hever Castle. She is gently and firmly telling him to back the eff off before she orders his execution, Henry VIII style.
Over at Hever Castle - the former home of Ann Boleyn - Karren is still in Aviators and shaking her head while James and Jemma try and literally steal the tickets from the manager there. She says she’d rather they didn’t steal them.
This bit is quite boring isn’t it? Twits in taxis literally saying numbers as the countryside rushes past them. They don’t notice it.
Pamela and her sub-team strut around Blenheim Palace in pointy shoes, wrecking the ancient carpets.
Mark negotiates with an ancient pile and nails its ass for buttons. Go Mark.
Daniel is taking the wheel *ahem* of coach tour while one of the other stubble people tries to make a bid for PM and no one pays any attention.
The stubble man (who IS he?) suggest a price of £100. Daniel agrees it should be £99.50. Because that 50p means HE’S in charge.
Continuing his generous streak, Alan has “laid on” some coaches. Stop it, Alan. You’re spoiling them.
Karren and Nick look like the men in black. I wish they DID have zappy memory erasing devices to make me forget Fat Daddy.
FAT DADDY. *rocks in a corner*
I told you they’d be meeting in a glamorous location. Does anyone else suddenly inexplicably want a pasty?
And it’s another ludicrously early start. 5.30am sees the candidates blundering in the dark, burning themselves on hair straighteners and squinting at themselves in bathroom mirrors.
I fully support the ludicrously early calls. He’s close to breaking them now. They all start the day like new parents. GOOD.
So who are the characters left now, after The Night of the Long Fingers last week? I’m struggling to get a handle on any of the remaining personalities. In the recap, James is the Joey, clowning around and being daft in a hat.
We are reminded of Fat Daddy which no one should have to live through again. Counselling is still available for anyone affected by Fat Daddy. Counselling is still available for anyone affected by the mass-firing of three candidates.
It is begun. Join us now at a motorway services on the M25. Seems fitting somehow. I don’t know why. You get in the queue for Costa, I’m just going to the lav.
Fasten your seatbelts because tonight the contestants are taking us on a coach trip into the very mouth of hell itself. Dressed in stupid outfits, teams Summit and Tenacity (if I gave birth to twins I would call them that) are tasked with running two separate coach tours to historic buildings.
I’m still reeling from last week when Alan mistook his firing finger for an automatic weapon and just kept on firing as he waved his arm from left-to-right dismissing all in its path.
I think it’s safe to say it’ll be a more vanilla week in the boardroom as no reality show producer would put us through that two weeks in a row. It’s week five - do you actually like any of them yet? I liked Stephen (gone) and Chiles (also gone) but I couldn’t really say any of the remaining men-with-stubble or women-with-one-hand-on-hip (look at their pictures on the Apprentice website - every single woman is doing that pose) stand out for me.
See you here at 9pm for amateur mic feedback, bored tourists and some major league BS all round.
