I do like the fact that, after 11 series, The Apprentice team understand there’s no need to fix an un-broken format. I fight it every year but I think this bunch of dunces will draw me in as they do every year. Will you join me for the next 700 weeks? Don’t leave me hanging.
In reality TV, when someone is evicted/fired, it’s always like they’ve died. In this instance, Dan was too good for this world. He’s better off out of it.
There are 17 of them left and I’m wondering how I will ever learn their names and if I can cope with this much BLUE on the screen at one time. Seriously, either I get rose-tinted glasses for the rest of the series or I become accustomed to this incessant assault on my retinas.
AND he spouted the usual half-arsed “Thank you for the opportunity...” I’d have respected him more if he’d flicked Alan the Vs and kicked over a chair.
The result
The clock ticks and the moving finger attached to Alan is about to make its first kill. April’s food blog, Brett’s cheffing or Dan’s detachment from reality?
It’s Dan. Oh balls.
I have a nasty feeling that Dan is going and he is, so far, the only person who I vaguely sympathise with. He’s like the entry level candidate for people who watch this ironically. Which is most of us.
April tries to defend the dizzying cost of her salad. Nine pounds, April. How far will her impenetrable confidence take her? I fear, quite far. Meanwhile, Brett is taking a lot of heat for the size of the fishcakes.
I love it when grown adults are forced to defend the size of their fishcakes. We are all going to die and these people are expending valuable oxygen arguing about fish and potato portions.
So Brett, Dan and April are in the actual firing line. Who would you jettison?
Joseph, who wound his neck in after the initial “I’m sexy and I know it” nonsense, has popped up again. What he actually says has no content but at least he’s trying. Alan says Joseph sold pretty well. Dan admits he sold zip-all. Suddenly the crosshairs are on his forehead. But despite his lack of sales experience, let’s all remember Tom Pellerau for a moment. A veritable ideas fountain who couldn’t sell for toffee. He went on to win.
I’ll be surprised if April doesn’t try to pile the blame on Ruth because she clearly hates her.
Instead, Dan gets the first flurry of cannon fire from April. Vana has obviously decided to join April in attacking Brett. Alan says he can’t believe the size of the fishcakes. Learn from this. Never again will I make my fishcakes larger than the requisite size.
Wait, there’s someoene called Jenny in this? That is literally the first time I’ve been aware of any Jenny. Where was she???
Selina is relief personified. April is at def con one. She will not go down for this and throws interference at Brett immediately. Blame the cook.
Versatile made about £200. The other team made about a quid. Oh no. Hey, at least they didn’t LOSE any money. Versatile’s prize is to make their own sushi with the chef from Nobu. Selina’s lot embrace while April endures the terrible smell under her nose. She did not see this coming.
April makes sure everyone knows that Brett did the cooking for their team. He obfuscates wildly saying that despite his former career as a chef, it really isn’t his area of expertise.
He also coughs willingly about his team arriving too late for the lunchtime rush. April stays silent about the fact she forced her team to make overpriced, poncy crud.
Charleine explains at great length why they bought the cheap fish and turned it into saleable mulch. Breadcrumbs are very forgiving aren’t they?
Admissions are made about the cool box and the mass poisoning. Dan is unfairly lambasted for his Suga Babes idea. The more I think about it, the more I can what he was going for. I hope Dan’s parents are OK though. I’m a bit worried about their pension.
First boardroom, first blood
The hand on the frosted glass heralds the first boardroom blitz. I wonder which team has won. Versatile or MutyaKeishaSiobhan? Scott gets the first “myself” in when “me” would do perfectly well. Give that man an estate agent’s board with his own stupid face on it.
The teams are having one last fire sale. All the squid you can eat for a pound. Take the Tupperware, people. Own the Tupperware. Gosh, I hope they didn’t poison or kill too many people with their rotten seafood.
“No longer fit for human consumption” is, coincidentally, one of the criteria for Apprentice candidates. When the rest of the world refuses to engage with you because you’re an infuriating dollop, why not try your luck on The Apprentice?
Dear god, what is in that box? Is it alive? The calimari has gone rogue and mutated into a living organism which could, if left in the sun, take over London.
Ruth tries to impart her knowledge to the other less-accomplished sellers but they don’t get it. They don’t understand her genius.
Mergim tries to persuade shop keepers that fish products are a “once in a lifetime opportunity”. Claude points out that the restaurant in question is vegetarian. Not pescatarian. Super.
Ruth, although she’s “slightly creepy” according to Karren, is my favourite so far. She’s compelling and gets results. Karren admits that she’s learning from watching her. Go Ruth.
Elle hits the nail on the head when she notices that it isn’t lunchtime anymore. Why are full-up people not buying our NINE POUND tuna salads, they head-scratch. Oh April, can you feel the crosshairs burning into your forehead? Sweating much?
Now for the selling. In their respective vans, the candidates begin to flog their fishy victuals to the lunchy hoards. April’s lot are still in the kitchen, scratching their arses. The fish finger merchants are doing a roaring trade while their poncier rivals have up-sized their fishcakes and descended into chaos. I was wrong, April’s confidence was misplaced and she is missing the lunch rush. The punters are already full off fishy breadcrumbs, love. You’ve blown it.
Someone, no idea who, just said that his team must “keep the continuity of the fish cake”. I think it’s Brett. OK, Brett, I’ve noticed you. Good job. Carry on. Continuity of the fish cake is actually the name of my autobiography.
The fish fingers look golden and crunchy and invite me in. Apprentice candidates have cooked something I would eat. Shocking.
Sam (I think that’s Sam) just described himself as a wordsmith. Immediately fire him out of a cannon. That is expressly not allowed.
Right, so Vana is an American. She is 100% committed to mayonnaise. Do we have mayonnaise? We 100% need mayonnaise.
April thinks she can sell tuna salad for nine pounds. Nine pounds. Only other Apprentice candidates would be stupid enough to pay that.
As is usual with The Apprentice, the business hopefuls are proving their worth buy donning hairnets and gutting fish. Because this demonstrates their... what does it demonstrate? Their willingness to smell of fish?
Is that Selina with the impressive power bun? She is driving a hard fishy bargain. I like her style.
Meanwhile, April’s sunny outlook seems to be focusing her team as she marches them off to turn their catch into dollar. “Let’s make magic happen,” she beams, slightly over-egging the pudding. The fish pudding.
We are watching people buy fish. “Charleine, I’m going to make you fish finger team leader,” is my favourite line of the series so far. But it’s early days. April is already showing frustration with the yapping pup that is Ruth. But there’s more to bizniz than just being resolute and certain. Particularly when you’ve just been stung for cod.
Within seconds, the first team meetings descend into constant, indecipherable jabbering. No one can hear anyone else. Selina’s team is screwed. April is much more authoritarian and starts barking orders about fish cakes and tuna salad. Her food outlet sounds super dull. Ruth’s lobster sounds a lot more swinging but April is resolute.
The other lot are going with fish finger sandwiches which everyone knows are a license to print money. In a cruel twist, the chumps are dragged out of bed at 2.30am to go and buy their fish. Needless clothed in yellow coats (can’t shift the thoughts of Sue Pollard here) one team heads to Billingsgate as their blue-clad rivals race them there.
April is the one who boasts that her biggest USP being that she is tall. Tall. Give her the cash now. She’s won.
And so begins the mass avoidance of becoming the first project manager. Selina accidentally talks herself into the job and admits “I’m in hell”. We all are, Selina. No reason why you should get to watch from the sidelines.
Scott dubs his lot Team Versatile. Dan the parent bankrupter seriously wants to call his team the Sugar Babes. If the others go with Mutya Keisha Siobhan, this could actually work.
Joseph the “godfather of business” is being set up as the early front-runner for ‘biggest chump’. His Gomez Adams moustache will entertain me for weeks to come. Dan just admitted that he nearly bankrupted his elderly parents. Not the best opening gambit, Dan.
Before getting knee-deep in fish, the 18 check out their new home in Bloomsbury. That’s a bit of London famous for it’s “set”, all brilliant minds who left their mark on the world. This is the producers taking the piss isn’t it?
Richard and his clouds are given short shrift and a swiftly deployed “bollocks” from Lord S. I’m in agreement with him for once.
He tells the 18 hopefuls that he’s sending them to the “famous London fish market” to buy a load of fish. They look suitably thrilled. Instead of dividing them into girls v boys, he mixes things up instantly, clearly pleased to have turned the world on its head. Which way is up? What is my name even?
Joseph gets a ribbing about his lady-killing. His hair is stupid. Charleine immediately tries to pitch her business before finishing the word “hello”.
It's just got a whole lot tougher
Enter Claude Littner, the man who can curdle milk by silently disapproving of it. Karren magnanimously says the candidates can still call her Karren despite her recent investiture as the new Queen of England or something.
The groomed, quaking business bots file into the boardroom for the first time to find Karren and Sugar waiting for them. Are they saving Claude for the big reveal?
Nice to see a collapsing trestle table in that montage there. First hit on the Apprentice bingo card is that.
Was that an American accent just then? Crumbs, I suppose now Trump has switched his ambitions to the White House, US business hopefuls have to cross the pond to make tits of themselves now.
I have, of course, got a print-out of the 18 candidates but there’s no way on earth I’ll be able to keep up with who is who in this opening episode.
The twits are already launching into their nonsense speak, boasting of veins coursing with business blood and brick walls and oak trees. I’m already lost in polyester tailoring and skyscraping stupidity. So good to be back.
Are we all set then? I can’t link to the comment for some reason but WELL DONE to the person who dubbed this The Great British Snake Off down there. Applauding you.
Bring on the twits
I’ve been practising writing Karren with two Rs for days now. This can mean only one thing: Lord Sugar and his lackies are back to put 18 (18!) new candidates through weeks and weeks of ritual humiliation and corporate bullying so that one of them can win £250k to fund their business venture.
Joining Alan and Karrren (I think it looks better with three) is scourge of the overly confident interviewee, Claude Littner who takes over from Nick Hewer as watchdog/attack dog depending on his mood.
Join me here from just before 9pm as Prokofiev’s Dance of the Knobheads strikes up and the be-suited lemmings form an orderly queue at the top of the cliff. Can’t wait.
