Heavens to Betsy, it’s advert week next week! Are we there already? My cup runneth over. I’m heading downstairs to the comments now but thanks for coming and I’ll see you here next Wednesday just afore 9pm.
And if you want some excellent pallet-cleansing telly now, go to Channel 4 where Grayson Perry is doing a brilliant thing that you absolutely have to watch.
I think the editing was a bit crass this week because usually I can’t guess. You heard me, editors. Wither subtlety, huh?
And no, Alan, calling Nurun a “lovely lady” doesn’t make this any better. You can tell when he’s all of a tizz about firing someone he thinks he oughtn’t. But gone, she is. The remaining 15 drink their cava and give each other sideways glances of mistrust. Nurun, you’re well out of it.
And the synths are swelling but in whose direction? It looked like James. Then it looked like Roisin. And then Nurun. And it’s.... Nurun.
And so the moving finger begins its journey...
Drive - tick. Energy - tick. Ambition - tick. There’s no doubt Roisin has been watching The Apprentice. But is that enough?
Alan singles out Nurun again. He didn’t like her last week. He doesn’t like her this week. If Nurun wins this whole thing, I will actually eat my hat. I’ll buy a hat and then eat it. She’s doing that “I’m the one you want, Lord Sugar,” rant that they all do just before the bullet.
Roisin is back with James (furious) and Nurun (hoping a vigorous head-shake will do it).
My waters are telling me that Nurun has been set up from the start of the episode.
James says he is hungry. Someone get him a sandwich.
“The rigour of the process has taken its toll on her,” says Alan like she didn’t quite make it through commando training. Yeah, it’s hard out there for a salesperson and Lindsay just couldn’t hack the wax. Tough old business, wax.
Well I didn’t see that coming. Mostly because I didn’t know there was someone called Lindsay in this competition. She’s gone and we never really knew her. Actually, quite impressed that she got this far without me ever having clocked her. Did she just hide in a wardrobe for the first few weeks?
Ooh, and she’s a swimming instructor so that works.
Oh my heck, Lindsay is literally grabbing the gun and putting it in her own mouth. She’s gone!
James is getting gobby as he feels the cold hand of judgement moving towards his shoulder. Roisin tells her team they sold the candles too cheap and then BOOM, Lindsay admits that she sold naff-all. And at this point, the others turn on her like Jaws just smelled a lifeguard.
For the next few minutes, we’re just watching an angry man wagging his finger at some enthusiastic yet dejected nodding people. I hope someone offers them neck physio after this process because the probability of whiplash at this point is high.
Here they come, the losers. It’s at this point the people who sold slightly less rubbish than the other team are made to account for themselves like a bunch of shoplifters. Sugar would make a spiffing magistrate.
Cut to smug TEAM TENACITY supping prosecco in a shallow puddle. The treats this year really aren’t a patch on previous years. Sit in some warm water and cheer for the cameras.
Meanwhile at The Bridge Cafe of Broken Hope, heads are bowed and some kind of Chariots of Fire music is swelling.
And the results are in. The team that stuck to the margins won. An while Katie actually cracks her face with grinning and eye-boggling, Roisin’s gang look like they just lit a scented candle and it smelled like an old sausage behind a radiator.
ARSENAL. Oh why do I even try to understand football rivalries? I don’t really care about football but I just thought I’d give it a go.
HANG ON, Alan has attempted an Aloe Vera pun. “More like Good bye, Sarah” he smarmed. If you have been affected by the puns in tonight’s episode, I will personally give you my phone number for counselling.
When Katie said to Alan that she buys scented candles, he totally glazed over like someone had tried to talk him through a crochet pattern of the Tottenham Hotspur team shield.
Alan thinks her Beach Dreams candle “looks quality”. It’s this kind of syntax that made him the man he is today.
Roisin says her pricing policy was to start high and then just take any spare change by the end of the day. I could have thought of that.
Roisin is already blinking a LOT. Blinking is fear. Don’t show him your fear, Roisin. I am suddenly consumed with visions of Roisin in the taxi of doom, picking her nails and trying not to cry.
“I’m so disappointed,” says Pamela or Ella (oh come on, there are still thousands to tell the difference between) as she frets over a box of unsold luxury room-scenting incendiary devices.
And so to the boardroom...
James is Mark Wright from TOWIE/Strictly isn’t he? Are they two humans or just one?
Jemma’s changed the wording to “fragrance products” now. Still no dice.
Hold the phone, Roisin has just interrupted a sale in the most gauche way imaginable. Karren’s face registers something between disgust and utter repulsion. Roisin - you’re on Karren’s list.
Roisin’s team return to the buyer at the posh hotel. He doesn’t like square candles but buys some anyway and is disappointed that the team have run out of diffusers. Oh dear, Roisin. Karren is cross with you for ignoring the prized margins.
Meanwhile at Greenwhich, her market stall people are doing well. Jemma is roaming the city trying to drum up interest in “scented products”. Why does this make me think of pant-liners?
If I am ever chugged or bothered in the street again, I am totally using the “I am off to look at Pierce Brosnan” excuse from now on. That woman was brilliant.
Meanwhile, Sarah is also blaming her tools like the bad workman she is while Nick noted her candles are selling elsewhere just not when she’s flogging them.
Without Nick and Karren, this show, or certainly this part of the show, would be totally confusing.
And what did I say last week about Nurun not being allowed to sell anything ever again? I warned them. If she goes tonight, they can’t say I didn’t warn them.
Everyone keeps saying the word “bewt-a-ful” to drive sales. And it’s working. Everyone in this scenario is getting exactly what they deserve.
Roisin is placing a lot of importance on Nurun selling individual units to passing people at Greenwich Market. Am I imagining this or are they seriously setting up Nurun for a fall, narratively speaking?
Ella is trying to talk her way out Wonky Lable Gate as they’ll inevitably be calling it tomorrow. They tried to sell smelly stuff to a posh members’ club with the label not on straight. As things stand, the world has stopped turning and the government are getting involved.
Ah good, Sarah is already chastising Lauren for being “bossy”. Not very sisterly, Sarah. And could you at least wait til something’s gone wrong?
Roisin is already discounting her stock and they haven’t even started selling them yet. That’s it, Roisin, pump your team full of confidence and send them off with defeat already clanging in their ears.
Roisin is delighted with the deckchair packaging of Beach Dreams. The other guys sniff yellow candles and scowl at each other but Katie assures them she would buy one. With respect, Katie, on this evidence you would buy a supermarket value candle with a bow on it, sprayed with Febreeze for £40.
This is great, Steven, who so puffed out his feathers in ep 1 and then disappeared last week, is cresting again. “I saved that pitch,” he crowed to the others. They will kill him and barbecue him at the weekend if he stays.
Daniel flogs British Breeze candles to Home House members’ club in London by continually calling the, “Guys.” And they actually go for it. Guys, GUYS, I would really like you all to give me a fiver. Come on guys. (Is this working?)
Karren verbally collars Nurun and Linday as weak links. Poor them. Whatever they do now, they’re dead in the water. Karren seems like the one person in this whole thing who really knows what she’s on about. Bye bye, Nurun and Lindsay. Your clocks are ticking.
I hope one of you is, right at this moment, making a Vine of Lindsay’s extended yawn just then. Oh god, her gaping yap seemed to say, smelly candles. How did I get here?
Katie is discussing prices with her team. She reckons £25 to £30. Roisin is thinking around £15. Who is on the right track? What does one pay for scented candles nowadays? Katie is now convinced that £35 for something you burn is fine. Katie is losing the plot.
Lauren just suggested, as a name for their scent, Lemonise or Lemon Eyes? Did I hear that right? Yeah, Lauren doesn’t get to name anything for the rest of the series.
Who just suggested Smells from the Surf? He’s fired immediately surely?
Katie reminds her team that cheap ingredients are best to increase their margins. I’m picturing several hundred people itching madly as they bathe in Katie’s cheap and nasty bath bubbles.
At 10.45am the teams head off. So it’s taken them 5 hours to get to this point. That’s immediately worrying.
Also worrying, the music person has chosen Three Little Girls From School Are We by Gilbert & Sullivan as the underscore music for this first section. What was their thinking here? Seriously. Someone tell me.
Is anyone else having fond memories of Dubai and OUD?
Katie has just bravely admitted to her team that she regularly buys scented products of ALL KINDS. She is obsessed with nice smells. Roisin, meanwhile, is suggesting the smell of the sea as a big seller. “We can all smell,” says someone defensively. Good point. Except for people who can’t.
Does anyone here own a scented candle? I don’t mean you got it as a present in Secret Santa. I mean, did you go into a shop and buy one?
My eyes are firmly fixed on Daniel this week. I just have a feeling that, despite his enormous ego, scented candles won’t be his thing. I also think being moved to TEAM TENACITY (sounds like an absorbant pad) might not be his thing either.
The Royal Exchange is one of London’s most beautiful interiors but I must say, the martini is over-priced. That’s just worth noting as you take in the impressive stonework.
This week, Shoogs has them called at 5.45am. These arbitrary early calls are almost the best bit. The needless torture of airport starts which inevitably leave all concerned bewildered and unable to find their trousers. They probably do this in spy training to disorientate the participants. Then throw in a smoke grenade.
A quick recap of last week reminds us all of the folly involved in both accepting and abdicating from the Project Manager role. Damned if you do... I’m still a bit sad that Robert went because I think his dandy stylings had further to go. Seriously, that bow-tie on You’re Fired. Delicious!
The opening montage is now just a series of Alan’s dreadful hackneyed similes, puns and other sundry wordplay. I love it more than I love this piece of chocolate I just ate.
OK, let’s play a quick round of who will go tonight? Punt your thoughts below.
Right, pop to the loo now and light a scented candle if you have one. (Please do not leave naked flames unattended. Much like an Apprentice contestant OK I’ll stop already.)
While you’re all filing in, I must tell you about the interview I did this week with a French broadsheet about The Apprentice. They are, apparently, fascinated by Alan and his finger-pointing antics. At one point, the incredibly articulate French journalist asked me about the boardroom segment of each episode. “But what is funny about the boardroom?” he asked, genuinely puzzled. “To me it is, [he gropes for the right words]... psychological violence?” And from now on, that is what I will call it. God, you have to love the French, right?
Updated
Oh, for smell-o-vision, for tonight the emphatic business autons charge headlong into the world of home fragrance. Scented candles, people. Which is appropriate because I’ve always thought an Apprentice candidate is basically the human equivalent of a scented candle: they burn brightly but do nothing else of any actual use. And they’re only slightly preferable to the smell of farts. (Although not in all cases. I’d rather smell a fart than listen to Katie Hopkins, for example.)
I’m busily preparing my wax/wick/stink puns in the workshop as we speak, so join me here at just before 9pm for another rollicking hour of hazardous fun. I’m assuming Nick and Karen will be wielding fire extinguishers this week as a precaution.
While you wait, consider these wise words from comedy writer Graham Linehan. I couldn’t agree more.
May have said this before, but a toilet flush just before Sir Alan comes through that glass door would really make this show #apprentice
— Graham Linehan (@Glinner) October 14, 2014
