Next week, they’re letting the pillocks loose on New York. It’s the “big New York special” announces the announcing lady, giving things a real sense of fun and glamour.
Just imagine it, the Big Apple. Video cameras. And our wallies totally disgracing the name of Britain to a whole new territory. I can’t wait!
Thanks for coming and I’ll see you down in the comments if anyone is hanging around. Well done team! This time, this place, next week.
The returning wazzocks are hugged and sit among their peers still wearing their suits but Daniel has loosened his tie to denote a bit of swagger.
Updated
Pamela is “still proud” of what she has achieved. What this is will become clear in the fullness of time. Won’t it? Back at the mansion, they’re all in t-shirts and kicking back with a Bud. Great guys, great times.
Alan keeps Lauren dangling just a little bit longer and lets her stay. Daniel is on a final warning and they’re back off to the house.
Pamela nods sadly as the axe swings and her head hits the table, corporate gore oozing from her.... I’m sorry I’ll stop this analogy. Too gory. Good bye, Pamela.
Daniel literally crosses himself. I hope he’s got his garlic.
She has committed the ultimate sin of not being passionate Lord Sugar. And there sits Pamela, thinking she’s safe. Is she?
Alan likes Daniel’s fire and this seems to override his bull-shittery. And here comes Lauren’s taxi.....
Lauren points the finger at Pamela. They join each other in a chorus of unharmonious whining and he silences them. And here comes the bullet.
This seems a bit of a quick turn-around. “You, my friend, are deluded,” says Alan as Daniel goes a bit pink and starts madly doggy-paddling for his life. He throws over to Pamela. She is asked why she’s only just stopped being a student. She says to get an education. You can’t argue with logic like that.
Alan has genuine affection for Daniel, it’s clear. He’s this year’s “you remind me of me when I was younger” candidate. There’s always one. And they don’t usually win. Here we go. Sugar is getting shirty with him.
Daniel, Pamela and Lauren process solemnly back into the chairs of ultimate judgement. And off Pam goes, chucking in an “aggressive” about Daniel and basically saying Lauren was a non-starter. Pamela is passively aggressively talking like she can’t hear anyone else. Daniel tells Sugar he doesn’t want to listen to the girls bicker. “I do,” says Alan.
Mark starts talking really REALLY fast trying to pre-empt everything and anything Sugar might say by saying it first. It doesn’t work. Then Daniel starts banging on about his sales credentials again. “I’m not accusing you of being a liar,” says Alan. “I’m accusing you of being a fantasist.” Mark looks confused. Isn’t that the same thing?
No surprises, Pam is bringing back Daniel and Lauren. Felipe also was near mute this episode. Do they just not turn their mics on some weeks?
I have only just noticed Katie. She has said literally NOTHING tonight. Oh no, there she goes. I thought she’d switched herself off and was just powering down this week.
Alan pulls up Pamela on ignoring the market research. This is Alan’s chance to display his feminist credentials. He’s loving this, isn’t he?
Pam tells Sugar that Daniel and Lauren sat on the fence. That fence is getting mighty crowded. Sitting on a fence is, you’d think, the least comfortable place to sit. And there’s always the danger of splinters.
Despite her thwacking great balls up, Bianca lives to fight another day and James boast wildly about their “massive victory”. Hey, at least I don’t have to eat my Monopoly now.
Back at the cafe of desolation, Dan and Pam are all up in each other’s faces and Lauren is also in the frame for extermination. Dan blames Pam for the awful concept and Pam blames Dan for writing exactly what she told him to. Good BYE, Pamela and take your outdated misogyny with you good DAY.
“From boardgames to the beautiful game,” grins Alan as he awards the winning team a kick about with David Seaman. And off Summit go. A pity he didn’t say, “After such a spunky performance, I’m giving you a kick-about with David Seaman.” Now THAT would have been funny.
Mark fingers Daniel and Lauren, because they looked slightly weak after Sugar’s initial volley. They are the two lame wildebeest who won’t be able to outrun Sugar’s lion if it comes to a chase.
Mark and Lauren are both on the receiving end of Alan’s warm-up shots. He says they’re not making an impression. They both try some variations on nodding and looking resolute.
Alan starts to read out sexist questions from the sexist game. Pamela tells Alan that it must be good because he’s laughing. Not with you though, Pam. At you.
James finally shuts up and Bianca starts to explain the Westminster cock-up. Alan takes great delight in being exasperated with her. “You’ve sold Mayfair and Park Lane for a fiver,” he scoffs while she nods and then switches to head-shaking hoping that indignation is better than pathetic capitulation.
Alan’s “board” gag is met with tumbleweed and at one point, Clint Eastwood walking slowly across the boardroom table. The wind howls. Everyone shuffles in their seats. More time passes. Finally a bell sadly tolls and he gets on with it.
And so to the boardroom. Twenty five minutes of the show still left to go. Has it ever occurred to you just how much of this show is spent looking at a roomful of regretful people just shaking their heads?
Pamela is already lining up her fall guys. Her gut is telling her that Lauren and Dan have cocked up even though she doesn’t know how or when. There’s nothing like optimism is there, Pam?
James is going positively green at his inability to flog tat to strangers, thanks to Bianca. If their team lose, my whole Monopoly bank is now on Bianca to go. The great big eejit.
Bianca’s sub-team flounder around the west end totally unable to sell their game because of those six exclusive boxes sitting on a shelf in a shop somewhere just outside of the main shopping drag in central London. Waterstones are flummoxed when they hear they can’t stock the game in the west end. Eventually Solomon cuts a clever deal involving the regions and online. I am suddenly impressed by Solomon and totally convinced he will win.
Mark says a lot of board games requires the player to be “a rocket surgeon”. That is already the clip You’re Fired are going to show when he’s inevitably flushed down the u-bend. Hey guys, it’s not rocket surgery.
Nick thinks Bianca is a lunk-head. Bianca has now realised that the whole of Westminster is now off-limites. “Who gave you authority?” barks James down the horizontal iPhone quivering in his hand.
Nevertheless, Karren is impressed with him. They can’t win can they?
Team GeoKnow are in posh Hampstead and one retailer agrees to an exclusive deal in her postcode. This is literally the only shop in NW3 where you can buy a mediocre geography game. Now the team start to use this exclusivity thing as a sales tool. Nick is unimpressed.
Mark things that mums and dads will want to play his sexist game after they’ve put the kids to bed. What, as a contraceptive?
Who are you firing at the moment?
The Relationship guru is rejected by another retailer. Pamela is livid and can already smell the faint sick smell in the back of that taxi. Here’s a Monopoly tenner that says Pamela is a gonner tonight.
James’ B-team flog 15 to a nice lady in a shop for £17. Sanjay seals the deal and is now the golden boys of tonight’s episode. If the sexist game wins out over the geography one I’ll eat my Monopoly set INCLUDING the metal game pieces. I will.
James and co stride purposefully into Toys R Us. Roisin immediately starts demonstrating enthusiastically and the execs are willing to buy some. Crumbs! But the negotiations go awry when James cuts off Roisin mid-barter. What a tool. She looks suitable ragey.
Daniel starts to squirm and distance himself from everything to do with everything. He’s putting Pamela firmly in the frame as a great big sexist. She can see what he’s doing but he is kind of right. Pamela is on the danger list.
Some enthusiastic school children really like GeoKnow but the gamers are finding Relationship Guru “a bit sexist”. No, really? “If someone got this out at a party,” says one of them gently, “I’d probably leave.” Ah.
Pamela’s game is called Relationship Guru. Lauren says “No” a lot when talking about it. No no no no. I am saying it too.
The other game is called GeoKnow. A terrible non-descript title. Well done everyone. They’re off to individual shops to try and sell them face-to-face. Then Sugar has “laid on” some clients to pitch to. I hate it when he says “laid on”.
And the games go into production. Look, there they are in the back of a van. One hundred and fifty games Daniel doesn’t like. Super.
Pamela, Katie and Daniel are putting the finishing touches to their really sexist game. “I don’t really like the game,” says Daniel the major architect of the game. Encouraging words.
“It’s hard to fly like an eagle when you’re surrounded by turkeys,” says Mark with a smug grin. I think it’s more “waddling like a duck” Mark, but whatever.
Meanwhile, Bianca is tearing a strip off James in the ergonomic kitchen. She’s putting him right off his pasta. They hate each other. If they were characters in Daniel’s dating game, they’d be a married couple already.
The dating game shoot looks absolutely awful. Massive pair of lips, sulky woman, balloon. Print it. It’s a winner.
(It’s not.)
Bianca, this is very early in the episode to get so tetchy that you’re keep snippily repeating yourself. Take a chill pill. You’re putting the cheesy boardgame family posing for the box shot on edge.
Roisin thinks it’s a bit rum that James hasn’t accompanied the design team as big decisions are made about what colour it should be.
Daniel reads out some sample questions so utterly stuck in the last century it’s embarrassing. He clearly lives in a dreadful sitcom where the women eye-roll and the men are hapless sexists. Has he met Dapper Laughs (RIP)?
The market research involves speaking to die-hard board game geeks. They think Pamela’s relationship idea sounds sleazy. Pamela decides they should completely ignore the market research. If you have “obviously shoots self in foot” on your bingo card, throw your dice again.
Pamela likes the idea of a dating board game. She’s PM-ing for the other team.
As they al head off in their people carriers, Pamela insists the game needs to be both tasteful and funny. Hmmmm. Bianca is basically pitching Risk like she just thought of it.
So the tenuous Battle Ships connection is pretty weak but it does look good on camera. Mark wriggles his way out of PM-ing with a forthright, “I don’t have a family.” Poor orphan Mark.
Over at the other team’s table, James boldly decides that he should stick his neck out rather than winding it in. Solomon’s idea is something to do with acting out emotions? Like emotions? Roisin is saying something about singing a French song. Her game is surrealist. Lauren thinks board games are SO last century.
It’s at this point I want the ship to haul anchor and take the contestants to actual war. Let’s see how well they can flog tat in a combat situation.
I’ve stood there and “done a Titanic”. What of it?
James, who isn’t covered in glory by any means, just said in response to someone else talking about dead wood, “dead trees more like”. Make like a TREE and LEAVE, James.
The teams head to HMS Belfast in a sarcastically acute opportunity to juxtapose Apprentice candidates with people who actually go to war. Nice one.
James stayed in by the skin of his perfectly whitened teeth last week so watch him like a hawk this week. Like a hawk, do you hear me? One foot wrong and he’s out. OUT.
I’m sorry, after a while this blog goes to your head.
I had completely forgotten the coach tours. I expect everyone who went on one of them has too. All except for the sing-song. Oh Sanjay, the sing-song. What were you thinking?
Aren’t you glad there aren’t 20 wazzocks to follow anymore? They were all interchangeable in those days but now I know them all intimately.
(I still can’t remember any of their names without looking at a chart.)
Game players! Well done, continuity lady. Even I didn’t think of that and my mind overflows with cheap puns.
Looking at the list of remaining candidates, who do we think is cut out to PM a board game challenge? Surely it’s pub quiz magnate Daniel.
Catching the last few seconds of Waterloo Road as per. Was that Neil Pearson? So that’s where all the 90s actor go who used to be in other things but unaccountably disappeared. They went to Waterloo Road.
I’m blowing on my dice in preparation. Who is going to be banker?
Do not pass GO. Do not collect £250,000. Who will hear those inevitable words tonight as we roll the dice (yes, I said roll the dice) for board game week?
The remaining contestants (I’ve decided to call them that rather than candidates as this show becomes more and more like The Generation Game) are challenged to make two new board games to release in time for Christmas. I’m expecting both teams to think up some awful corporate-themed nonsense called something like Business Bastard, all about getting ahead and treading on your rivals.
Basically the 1980s as a board game where all the contestants must stick on huge velcro shoulder pads and play with real wads of fifties.
Join me here just before 9pm as Team Tenacity goes up against what’s left of Team Summit.
