Someone please buy a copy and post a Tumblr of it. I don’t want to waste my precious cash but I’m happy for one of you to, in the common interest.
There we have it. Writing and selling a children’s book should take no longer than a day. Don’t let the so called publishing professionals tell you otherwise.
See you back here in a week for more of the same. I’ll be at @jnraeside in the meantime if you need any knock-off copies of Snottydink.
And then there were 13. This is almost an Agatha Christie dinner party. Bring on the murders.
Next week, the baker’s dozen of dolts are given a new challenge involving bushes as far as I can see. No specifics but one of them definitely gets fired and possibly more than one.
I’m told by a reliable source than anyone wanting a copy of Snottydink should get themselves down to Gosh Comics in Berwick Street where the remainder of knockdown copies languish, buyer-less. You know how much they paid for them, so don’t offer a penny more than £2.50.
Charleine is just raising a toast to herself which is charming. It’s clear everyone likes her.
And so, five weeks in, Alan says he’s struggling here. They try to give every firing the added potential of an extra dismissal. Literally every week now. They used to save that for once or twice a series. Observe the self-awareness enveloping The Apprentice and dragging it to its inevitable death.
He blew their house down...
The final up-sum sees the usual dithering as Alan teases like mad. Brett gets an early swerve because he likes the gobby buggers.
He tells Nat she’s immature and then he tells Sam he’s disastrously so.
The final finger of doom lands squarely on the brow of... Natalie. She’s fired.
Three little pigs, one will be eaten
Sam has prepared a speech and goes for it. Brett starts swearing pretty quickly and repeats the word “factual” like David Brent might. I do not like Brett. This probably means Natalie is going because I so often back the wrong horse.
Brett flounders as Alan asks him why nobody likes him. Natalie flounders as Alan points out she’s shit at selling. And Sam just gets the question, “Why shouldn’t I fire you?” Only a mad man would fire Sam. He’ll fire Sam, won’t he?
Sam now seems to be assuming the Pellerau mantle. It’s all down to his business plan. Alan will already know what it is but if it’s even close to the bendy nail file, his bottom is going nowhere this week. Sugar reveres the clever. Albeit grudgingly.
When really REALLY pushed he picks on Brett. I’ve just realised I have, in my haste, probably been confusing Brett and Richard. They probably don’t even look alike but in my brain they are one.
Sam is pinned down. Who are you bringing back, Sam. He’s so SO reasonable but eventually settles on Natalie and I don’t know.
He'll huff and he'll puff...
In the boardroom, the blame game begins. Sam is far too polite and even when someone is telling him he’s shit, he appreciates their point of view, like Peter Andre with the Strictly judges.
Natalie is like one of those women from a flu medication advert. Don’t use your virus as an excuse, you WIMP. Take some pills and go to work, you loser or everyone will hate you. This is the world we live in now.
All I can hear is arguing suits. Then Alan reminds them that Charing Cross is “notorious for books”. I’m rolling that one round my brain and sucking it like a boiled sweet. Oh, those naughty books in notorious Charing Cross. The scrapes they get into.
At the sad cafe (Holly Hunter back on the keys, just out of shot), Shakespeare’s, I mean Sam’s team quietly contemplate their failure. Same can’t figure it out. Elle looks at the floor like she’s hoping it will eat her whole. And then the piano stops. It’s time to face the big bad wolf.
How on EARTH did that chippy, mean spirited clown and her team win? Char is now, of course, all fine with Richard and doesn’t hold a grudge. I hope Richard makes it his evil business to crush her corporate ambitions in his mighty, greedy fist.
The result...
£690.10 for Versatile
£587.25 for Connexus
Somehow, Charleine’s team won in the eleventh hour by flogging that cut-price boxful to the man who wouldn’t pay more than two quid. That was Charleine’s dad, wasn’t it?
Alan points out to Char that Richard can sell and she cocked up by putting her personal loathing for him first. If everyone did that on this show, no one would ever speak to each other and there would just be a series of awkward two-handers, like a Beckett play.
Richard reiterates the fact that Charleine would only accept his ideas when glove puppeted via David. And Mergim sold books to the focus group which is an Apprentice first.
Natalie blames her ill health for her lack of pitching success.
But the main event will be Charleine trying to defend her management style. Why wouldn’t she speak to Richard? Go on, Char. Talk your way out of this one.
To the boardroom
One of you will not be living happily ever after OH GOD, Alan doesn’t even let them sit down before he starts in on the puns. I pity his gag writer. Imagine the life he or she must lead. Waking up each morning, knowing it’s your job to make Sugar sound “almost witty but not”.
Karrrren articulates the business world’s natural mistrust of the arts when she accuses Sam of “trying to write the sequel to King Lear”. I don’t think Sam’s story bore any resemblance to the tale of the senile old man, losing his wits and the loyalty of his offspring but fine. She knows best.
Sam’s team make for Charing Cross, an area of London that almost exclusively sells antique and specialist books. Priceless antiques not bright yellow notepads with childish scrawl on them.
The final rush montage is always embarrassing. Char tries to offload a bunch at the Rainforest Cafe in the west end and they actually bite. My jaw is on the floor.
Selina flogs her surplus to a man for under two quid and Sam says it’s like selling your child for a pittance. Your child that you spent about an hour conceiving before you gave birth to it. Sure.
Char and team flog 25 books to the other bookseller. Joseph tries to push them higher but they are resolute. Richard carps, quite rightly, about being kept out of the big pitches and she pretends not to hear him again.
Natalie has another go at selling and her next victim, in trendy Hackney, talks all businessy and she loses her cool. While she tries to gather herself, the bookseller changes her mind and tells them to go away and go away now. I admire that book seller enormously.
Natalie tries to flog Snottydink to an independent seller. Just as she’s about to tell Nat to do one, Scott swings in and wins the vendor over. She buys after all. That won’t go unnoticed in the boardroom. Well done, Scott.
Sam’s first pitch sort of impresses the first publishers on their list and they agree to buy 50 books at an immediately reduced price, no bartering. Selina admits she’s not the best at adding up and she may have cocked that one up.
Char and team bulldoze into Waterstones flagship and she starts embarrassing herself immediately while Tolkein and Steinbeck and Henry James look on from the shelves. She’s showing the first signs of her confidence slipping down the u-bend. Waterstones tell her no thank you. BYE.
Snottydink, or whatever it’s called, leaves the children in the first nursery test group non-plussed. Some of their adult carers are also like, “What does rife mean?” Producers probably grabbed them on the way out and asked them to apply for next year’s show.
Natalie should be pitching for Sam’s team but she’s got a cough and doesn’t trust herself not to barf up a lung during her spiel.
Everyone into the people carriers for close-quarters bitching and side-eye. Best bit of every episode.
Vana casts doubt on Char’s pitching abilities but she absolutely cannot cede control now. But she does let Richard have half an inch. Of what, it isn’t clear.
It is the next morning and the wallies open the boxes containing their first ever books. Charleine seems unaware that her rhymes don’t. She’s convinced, fully, that she has nailed literature.
Charleine, not intimidated at ALL by Sam’s degree, says she hopes they’ve been “Shakespeare” on the other side. Word to the wise, Char. Shakespeare didn’t go to university. BOOM.
“Make it sound like the wind is saying it,” says Richard to David as he tries to narrate the story with two directors in his ear. Charleine is trying to direct the voice session down the phone, undermining Richard. She is going to take so much flack for this in the boardroom.
Her leaving gift on You’re Fired will be a t-shirt which reads CAN I SPEAK TO DAVID?
Sam’s script is in draft number 4,000 and Selina is getting twitchy about the lack of it in the recording studio. She takes charge quite impressively as she directs the boys in the recording booth. She has no time to waste with making this good. Just get it done.
I hope all publishing professionals are taking note here. These guys are getting shit done, not mandying about with allegory and symbolism. Burn all the books. Any old tosh can churn this stuff out.
Who just delivered the priceless line about “getting tossed”? That will come back to haunt her in her You’re Fired interview, no question.
Charleine now has a total NO RICHARD policy and he is taking it in good part despite the fact that she is a blinkered twazzock and he is actually trying to do his job. She climbs up David’s butt and literally pretends she can’t hear Richard. She is perfect for this task in that she is acting like a 3-5 year old.
Karrren is not impressed with Sam’s process and gets quite narked about the time he’s taking to write the story. As if THAT’S the important thing. I mean what colour will the book be? What’s the price point?
Spending time on the story, I ask you.
Sam’s team are moving towards a mythical creature called The Snotty Dink. Let’s all switch off now and go to the pub. The Snotty Dink.
They’ve cracked this kids’ book lark. I don’t know why any of you “authors” sit there slaving for months over your ideas, editing and re-writing. The Snotty Dink, ladies and gents. Start the bidding war.
April punches up the story with Joseph, Charleine and Vana. Char is SO convinced her experience as a tired parent who sits and reads these things to her own family, make her bullet proof and guaranteed to win.
Her focus group team feed back to Char that - “Can you stop talking please, Richard,” she barks, refusing to speak to anyone but David. Grrrrrreat people management Charleine.
Charleine can’t understand the concept of rhyming and Vana looks close to suicide. I’m warming to Vana.
Sam’s team like dragons. “I like dragons,” a few of them shout.
Back at Charleine’s table, she puts Richard in his place because he won’t shut up. Cleverly, Charleine says, she also sends David as her mole to keep an eye on Richard. I love a character who, Iago-like, does audience asides clarifying their motives. I also like that Charleine just described herself as clever.
Charleine tells her team, and she will brook no interruption, that she knows this shit and must and SHALL be in charge. They must make up a story for 3 to 5 year olds.
I already sense that Charleine will not stop for breath til the boardroom. The ideas coming in when there are tiny gaps for oxygen intake, are to do with bees who “collect honey” from flowers. Do bees just buy honey as a ready meal now? Don’t they even need ingredients? You know, like NECTAR.
The London Library is also the place where esteemed British writers sat and chewed the end of their pens as they came up with era-defining works.
Alan tells the teams that by tomorrow they will be pitching two children’s books to a series of publishers. So they have today to write them. Seriously, they have less than 24 hours to think up, structure and write a book. Oh goodie.
Sam has a degree in English Lit and grabs the PM role immediately. But probably because he knows Alan expects having moved him to the other team. He starts talking turkey and Selina is all ears. As in she’s wearing a pair of massive ears.
It’s almost sarcastic, isn’t it? Making them stand in front of all those books.
A new dawn
It is 6am and Lord Sugar would like the twits to meet him at the London Library, another lovely quiet London place of interest ruined by the very presence of such dimness.
The girls think this task will be “creating something”. Little do they know it’s to “create” havoc in the world of publishing.
None of us needed a reminder of the execrable pet week. I only want to remember it as the week that Ruth (too good for this blue-bleach world) escaped to freedom, like a lovely dove.
“You haven’t used any of your skills. Any of your knowledge,” curses Alan in the recap as he coats off his minions again. Which of their skills precisely will they employing this evening when they WRITE MEG AND MOG?
Sorry, I did warn you about the crossness. I might type all of this in upper case. Or try meditation.
Oh joy! I’ve just been informed that Chris Packham’s Autumn Watch ruse this series was sneaking all the Bond film titles into his pieces to camera. God, I love him.
Right, to business. Enough owls, it’s time for the toughest challenge yet on The Apprentice. The chumps are going to write and market two children’s books. I cannot, literally CANNOT believe I’m typing this.
I warn you now, tonight’s episode is going to make me crosser than usual. This could go one of two ways, but for all our sakes I’m hoping it’s the second way. The one where I rage impotently at the TV types who think “writing a book” can be filed under the same heading as “selling salmon” or “stealing manure from a field”, but in an amusing way.
Look at the funny lady with steam coming out of her ears, you’ll say. Is she OK? Should we call someone? No, it’s fine. She’s just a bit ticked off. Let’s leave her to it.
Are you sitting comfortably, boys and girls? Then I’ll begin. Tonight the remaining 400 candidates will be trying their hands at yet another useful business skill. They are going to become children’s authors.
That’s right, the hard-headed money-seeking missiles are going to create works of imaginative beauty. By committee. The designer of this week’s task should be fired into space on a rocket and then made to go to bed with no dinner.
If you follow any authors or publishing folk on Twitter, look forward to their contributions and comments this evening. I expect they’ll welcome their new brethren with open arms. Of course you can write a kids’ book (and record the accompanying audio book) in a couple of hours. Nay bother.
Join me here at 9pm for a bedtime story guaranteed to give you nightmares.
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