Apprentice Preview...

Right, there hasn't been one of these for a while (busy, busy, busy etc.), but I shall attempt to provide a brief look ahead to tonight's Apprentice (BBC One, 9 o'clock).

As you may remember, last night saw accountant (but don't let that sway you) Edward- a sort of squashed Jamie Lester from last series, but with the approach to the head/facial hair ratio of South African opening batsman Hashim Amla, who talks exclusively in bullshit-based riddles (that's Edward, not Amla. I've never seen Hashim do a presser)- unceremoniously sacked for clearly not having seen any of the past 6 series of The Apprentice and putting himself up for the role of project manager... Or perhaps it was just because when teammate Vincent (a sort of poor man's George Lamb, if you can imagine such a thing...) asked whether the fruit he was holding was an orange, poor old Edward was unable to pass judgment to the affirmative or negative. Or effectively juice oranges. Or answer very simple questions without trotting out footballer-level cliches.

But at the end of the day, it's a game of two halves (probably) and tonight's second episode of the week sees the sorry fools take a step into new media and design a smartphone application. Being an appalling business tosser? There's an app for that... apparently...

From the brief sneak peak at the end of last night's offering, it looks promising, with one industry panelist effectively and almost certainly unwittingly summing up the entire Apprentice equation in one pithy, throwaway observation - "There's just a basic issue of taste here."

Apprentice Delayed...

Right, I haven't been able to see last night's Apprentice, thanks to the excellent Special Relationship last night and several hours spent on trains, so it will be postponed until tomorrow. Presumably we all know what happened anyway. It's almost unavoidable.

The Apprentice: Bread...

So another week another early morning phone call from Lord Sugar's office. Alex Tiggywinkle was first to the phone (Baggs was slightly slower to emerge from his hibernation) and summarily informed the others to get up to be ferried to the usual posh-ish location and informed that they would have to bake and sell bread/cakes/pastries... a bakery task, essentially. A bakery task.

A lot of cooking tasks this series, perhaps prepping all the candidates for the inevitable positions as pub chefs, baristas and bar staff. Lester and Melissa/Jenny Eclair/Lady Gaga showed huge interesting in the PM role and inexplicably the coiffured Melissa won out. Over on the other side, comedy surgeon/businessman Shibby (think Beaker meets Spence from Holby City) put himself up on the chopping block. They showed another classic Shibby VT at this point. I swear they give him a script and record it several times, going "can you be... even more twattish" after every take.

Melissa was looking increasingly like she'd lied about being a catering manager as she failed to pick out which bakery goods people liked. She continually crumbled under the pressure and eventually decided on 'mixed fruit jam croissants', under pressure from Full Metal Jacket who was blowing his top (not a surprise for anyone who read that news story I posted up last month). It was to the boardrooms, then, to pitch their baked goods. Cue the team sitting in silence unable to work out basic calculations.

When Shibby's team turned up to the same pitch, they were all business. Firing out cheap prices for massive orders and then high fiving each other outside the boardroom. All well and good until the three tasked with working in the bakery practically all had coronaries. "We're not making croissants!" "We are now!" Sandeesh was a leading dissenting voice, 'stirring' as the kids would no doubt say... the bastards. In the car, Paloma, so keen to press the hotel for another 500 bread roll orders and the croissants, was now bemoaning the situation... and blaming the bakery team for not telling them what they could make.

Over in the other team's bakery Full Metal Jacket was joking about their pitching team's ability (or rather lack thereof). He may have his real-world indiscretions, but I like Full Metal Jacket. He seems like a real person rather than the brash, arrogant automatons that flood every series. But then this was a week full of revelations, as the erinaceous Alex became a character full of pathos and I found myself rooting for him as he leapt to the rescue with some uncooked dough weights.

In Shibby's bakery, the revolution was in full swing, as the entire team ignored the hotel order. This threw a spanner in the works at Beaker's next pitch where had a bit of a teenage strop about a large order, muttering "you know, we're not supermen" into his ledger. Paloma reprimanded him, to which Beaker replied with the fairly valid point that they can't agree to orders they can't fulfill.

In Melissa's bakery, Full Metal Jacket was running the show to plaudits from Nick (something that very rarely happens) and to teary thanks from the team leader herself. Shibby, wearing a bright, stripy jumper delivered the news that they hadn't been able to fulfill the hotel order. As a surgeon one would hope that he was able to deliver bad news. Simply put, he wasn't. If he explained to me that my kidney transplant had not been a complete success in the same way that he told the hotel chef that he only had 16 bread rolls, it would have been Beaker who was in need of an organ donor.

Baggs was being mouthy again this week, in charge of Melissa's market stall. Melissa herself had an argument with Alex (who appeared slightly less sympathetic when he started bringing up his 11 A* GCSEs) before being reigned in by the ever effecient Stella. Eventually they managed to sell all their produce (albeit on the cheap), something that their opponents were seemingly incapable of.

In the boardroom it was of course revealed that Shibby's team had lost, leaving a dejected looking team including Surrey Investment Banker Bates. Bates has that imperious yet glassy-eyed and absent look about him, constantly swaying his head from side to side as if it was disconnected from his body. I'm not sure he even said a word in the boardroom before Shibby elected to bring back Paloma and Sandeesh.

"I think we were on different wavelengths" said Shibby. "We clearly were. I'm a businesswoman and you're a joke." Retorted Paloma, one of the first classic boardroom fight soundbites of the series. Shibby had a Downfall moment and over the course of the episode increasingly became a joke character, snorting with inappropriate laughter and generally losing the plot. However Sandeesh had effectively sabotaged the task from the inside and had just remained quiet. So, given Joy's firing last week, surely she would have to go. Sandeesh however flashed her enormous eyes at Lord Sugar and he gave her another chance. Shibby was predictably fired.

The Quiet One
Liz Locke. She's that one who hasn't really done anything yet. In fact you probably won't even recognise her from that name. That's why she's going to win.

The Apprentice: Life's A Beach...

We began in the house with the weary candidates being called to Heathrow's Terminal 5 where a big TV with SiralunsLordSugar's head on it (yes, it's already descended into some manner of Orwellian hell) - interestingly Lord Sugar had 'urgent business' to attend to (remembering what it was like when Amstrad actually made serviceable technology, perhaps?) - who instructed them to create some manner of beach equipment and then pitch it to three businesses. Stella was called up to the boys and promptly made Project Manager. Mussolini last week was quite an act to follow. Laura was made PM of the girls (and believe me, that's probably not the last time that you'll see those two letters in conjunction with the girls team this week...).

The surgeon's suggestion of some sort of 'massive hand on a stick' with which to apply suncream onto your own back received a deafening silence. Jamie Lester came up with the idea of a towel... but a towel that was also a pillow... and a fridge. All they needed was the name... And yes it was hedgeho- I mean, Alex, who was full of ideas. This was the man who was convinced that he'd invented the bendy bus and within seconds he began an altercation with Bates under which some of the incidental music from Curb Your Enthusiam was appropriately played. The erinaceous Mr. Epstein offered the name Cuuli (with umlauts). The next task was designing the prototype. Jamie Lester claimed that 'when I open my mouth, I'm not holding back', apparently he wasn't thinking either as he described his glorified towel to a bemused looking manufacturer (he went on in his VT to talk about being like a champagne bottle an for a moment, it was as though he was being played by Russell Tovey - watch it for yourselves and see).

Over with the girls, Paloma, who wouldn't look out of place as an all-action heroine in a dodgy 90s Sky TV drama, was attempting to conduct some manner of market research... and failing spectacularly. Mouthy Joanna offered a book rest. A classically misguided Apprentice invention. This resulted in a quick rush to design a prototype that not everyone in the team was entirely convinced by.

Thoughts then turned to advertising. The boys spent most of their evening persuading Stella to get into a bikini. What a surprise that the Complete Banker Bates turned out also to be a mild misogynist... In the surf shop, Full Metal Jacket demanded a top with tassles. The girls, meanwhile, continued their spate of wild arguments and Laura was averse to people talking, apparently, so averse, in fact, that she had to leave the room to be consoled by Joy.

The next morning, as the Cuuli was unveiled to widespread approval, the ladies' Bookeze was also unveiled to... well... this:
What appears to be a heady mixture of bemusement and disgust. The Bookeze: easy to assemble in a mere 8 pieces... oh and they glossed over the fact that you seemingly have to take the book out to turn the page.

The next stage was preparing the pitch, always a joyous moment for the Apprentice viewers - who will make an unbridled arse of themselves? To say Bates lacked natural charisma is an understatement comparable with 'that whole business from 1914 to 1918 was bit rum, wasn't it?'. Stella tried to break it to him that she wanted Lester to pitch while Full Metal Jacket's best attempts to let Bates down gently fell on ungrateful, borderline-teenage ears. Despite Bates sulking afterwards, this was somewhat of a Waterloo for Stella proving that she was capable of standing up to the male bravado and forcing her own feelings home. Bates interpreted this as 'piss-poor' and that 'it wouldn't damage my confidence at the end of the day anyway, because I don't really care what she thinks... and, just shut up, you're not my real Mum'... Alright, so I made that last bit up, but that's essentially where it was headed. As it happens however, Bates was still allowed to do the pitch anyway. Go figure.

Pitching for the girls was Jenni Eclair-alike Melissa. Joanna carried over last week's handbags and began taking jibes at the jargon-filled pitch. I would say that it would join the ranks of 'ideation' and other classic Apprentice lingo but it was so inpenetrable that I can't remember any of it.

The time for planning was over and the real pitches began. Hewer, holding his pen like a cigar and classic sour-faced expression plastered on, oversaw Bates' monotonous attempt to prove to Boots that the Cuuuuuli was more than just a towel. Which he couldn't... because it isn't...

In the car to the girls' first pitch, Joanna had a brief altercation with Joy, seemingly over the fact that the latter actually had some semblance of decorum and moral decency. Their mid-pitch assembly demo invariably resulted in disaster, with at least 1 of the 8 pieces being put in the wrong place/the wrong way up, etc. Any product where you have to insert the caveat 'you'll find it's slightly bendy' is almost certainly not worth investing in.

So, to the board room! Lord Sugar didn't have any urgent business to attend to this time and thankfully was available in person, not via TV link with Nick wearing a giant foam hand and pointing it at the unlucky candidate (although, in some ways I like that idea more). The Shug seemed impressed by the Cuuli itself, but less so by the name and immediately quizzed Epstein the hedgehog on the use of umlauts, raising the marvellous point about Germans nicking sunloungers with their towels first thing in the morning (we've all been there, right kids?)

We learnt that the girls had turned down an offer from Boots because they'd demanded exclusivity and consequently lost the task by failing to sell any units... at all... Madness. The catfighting began, Laura uttered the phrase 'I managed to the best of my ability', the best of her ability being what Bates would presumably describe as 'piss-poor'. Joanna turned on Joy and turned out to be a real bitch, pressganging Laura into bringing back the target the unfortunate Joy instead of the admittedly equally fairly blameless Sandeesh.

For Joy, it was a lack of get-up-and-go that proved her undoing. Ironically, she was made to get-up-and-go by SiralunLordSugar's finger of fate. Boom! On a serious note, Laura or Joanna definitely should have gone though...

The Quiet One: Stuart Baggs 'the brand' was very quiet this week, presumably realising that, while there are many words to end that sentence, 'brand' definitely isn't one of them... which they didn't... 'cause it is...

Next Week: Baking. Remember the 100 chickens? I imagine it'll be like that.

The Apprentice: Sausage Connoisseurs...

Yes ladies and gentlemen, last night saw the majestic return of The Apprentice and, as we hoped and predicted in last week's candidates preview, this series is blessed with an abundance of marauding bellends. Stuart Baggs, who we earmarked last week as a real card, opened the bidding at only 49 seconds in with 'everything I touch turns to sold', only to be quickly followed by surgeon and business owner (surely you can't do both without detriment to one or the other) Shibby Robati who claimed, much to his own glee, that his 'first word wasn't "mummy", it was "money"'. Surrey investment banker (if ever 3 words were harder to come back from) Chris Bates threw his hat into the ring by claiming he was an 'all-round exceptional human being' (or something equally twattish)... as if we wouldn't hate him already. In fact, many of the candidates' statements were so obtuse, hackneyed or genuinely stomach-turning, that it was as though they'd simply hired actors to play a parody of typical Apprentice candidate archetypes.

Astonishing opening gambits and we were yet to have the credits. When the strains of Prokofiev were finally over, we saw the candidates shoved into the board room at midnight and ordered to go to Smithfield and craft some sausages. It had all the ingredients for a classic first task - forcing the contestants to wear silly hats, a good chance of potentially fatal cock-ups and a wee bit of sales tagged on the end. First the teams had to pick a name, a simple task, one would imagine. The women decided on Apollo (named after the space missions rather than the Greek god, apparently) and the men argued over whether 'Fusion' was more cliched than 'Synergy', eventually deciding that it was and completely missing the fact that they are both equally cliched and mean exactly the same thing. Joanna accepted the title of project manager after Melissa shirked duty despite showing initial interest. For the boys 34 year old Dan Harris stepped up to the plate, banging the table and roaring. "It was like being back in the dressing room" said Karen Brady, providing you with all you need to know about what it's like to be a woman working at a football club run by Davids Gold and Sullivan.

The first step of the sausage task was buying the meat. Synergy, having decided to pursue a sausage with the minimum legal requirement of meat in it (surely that won't come back to bite them in the arse, will it...?), charged off seeking the cheapest price available. Apollo, meanwhile, attempted to create a gourmet sausage with a staggering 70% meat. Meat acquired, both teams moved into the kitchen, taking a crash course in sausage manufacturing (the entire episode was essentially one, long, strung-out innuendo) before forming a production line with varying degrees of success. Dan quickly turned into a sausage Mussolini, all yelling and arm-folding, Joanna managed to get a degree of consensus and harmony from Apollo.

In Synergy the 'characters' certainly came to the fore. "Who is doing the mincing?!" demanded Mussolini. Baggs carped on about something or other, Epstein (you'll remember from last week, that he was convinced he invented the bendy bus and had been sacked from Hagen Daazs) spent his time looking like a hedgehog and Jamie Lester (who looks like a composite of all the previously successful male candidates) branded Dan Mussolini "a nob". Among the quieter ones were Raleigh Addington (the only candidate approaching Bates in the appallingly posh stakes) and indeed last week's blog's pick Christopher 'Full Metal Jacket' Farrell of the hidden convictions.

Both teams struggled with the sausage skinning machine, something that never looks graceful or impressive at the best of times. Apollo's simply fired out quantities of minced meat seemingly at random, while Synergy's rusk-heavy mix came out resembling something between pet food pellets and a turd, blocking up the nozzle in the process. Eventually both teams managed to create enough processed cylinders of meat to flog to an unwitting London public.

This was where it counts. Graft and sales. Stuart Baggs (who has his own erinaceous quality, now that I think about it) came out of the blocks quickly, terrifying potential 'sausage connoisseurs' with a bizarre combination of sexual aggression and unyielding hounding. "It's 100% meat" he claimed. Right, so that's 100% 42% meat then...? Epstein manned the griddle, presumably resembling a hedgehog too much to be of any use in a high-pressure sales situation. Mussolini led a splinter group on door to door sausage-selling, less a trailblazing march into a gap into the market and more harranging innocent West London residents by buzzing and yelling "do you want some sausages?!" into a receiver.

The women focussed on flogging their 'gourmet' sausages to banker-y types and a restaurant with a good degree of success. Meanwhile the boys subteam brought their limp, rusk-filled excuse for a sausage to a female chef who displayed more business acumen than the entire team had for the rest of the episode and drove a hard bargain and we were whisked back to the boardroom for the fallout. Sometime the editing can be misleading, but it certainly seemed that the women had adopted the correct business strategy, whereas the blokes were a bunch of in-fighting neanderthals.

Mussolini screwed up his already slim chances immediately in a bizarre display of non-adherence to board room etiquette and was quickly informed to "sit in a conventional manner" by Lord Sugar. One of my favourite ever Sugar quotes, I think, up there even with "you've gone from anchor to wanker". Nick and Karen gave their verdicts and numbers and the boys had lost by £15. Much, much closer than anyone would have guessed. At the inquest, previously subdued Raleigh laid into Mussolini branding his behaviour 'shameful' with all the air of abused spouse. Mussolini correctly brought both hedgehogs back into the board room and, frankly, Siralun mi'Lud Sugar should have fired all three.

Epstein was reminded of his own failure by Sugar and quickly gave a hurt speech about 'tough times', still hard to accept from a man with such a degree of hedgeholio about him. Baggs dug himself into an enormous hole with a smattering of appalling trash-talk and sickening sycophancy but inevitably it was the slouchy Mussolini that faced the finger of doom.

The One You Won't Remember: Sandeesh (Nope? Me neither...)

Next Week: Beach Holiday Paraphernalia

The Apprentice: You're Nicked...

Right, excuse the awful title, this is basically about the brand spanking new series of extended, reality, job interview show The Apprentice which is focusing on business(wo)men who have lost out in the recession. From unemployed graduates to failed entrepreneurs, the new series boasts an extensiev array of downtrodden, desperate candidates. So, as victims of the cruel cycle of business, surely this year's collection of candidates will display a good deal more humility and quiet determination? Well no. It would appear that despite the numerous failings and setbacks, the new contestants are the usual bunch of appalling, arrogant arseholes.

A 21 year old telecoms entrepreneur introduces himselves as "Stuart Baggs - the brand", another, Christopher Farrell, conveniently hid a weapons conviction and the fact that he was currently on bail for alleged fraud, yet another draws comparisons between herself and a Lamborghini (expensive, flashy and ultimately pointless given the laws in this country, presumably). It's the usual ragtag bunch of crisp-suited egotists and delusional, Machiavellian capitalists, with the odd loveable idiot thrown in for good measure.

Actually let's go back to Farrell, an ex-Army sniper who claims that he carries over his 'killer instinct' into the world of business (and apparently his personal life given some of the allegations made by his former wife in the article). Should there be a backlash about his involvement in the show? After all, most successful businessmen are fraudsters. Just look at Madoff and Conrad Black and... oh, hang on...

As I was writing this article, my attention was drawn (by the excellent Tom Searle, no less) to this candidate. Not quite sure how he aims to prove that he originally invented the bendy bus (possibly in the same way that I, as a young man, wrote a sketch about Captain Oates that I later found out basically covered the same ground and one written by Lee and Herring when I was a mere slip of a lad). The factfile goes on: 'Sacked from his first job making ice-cream at Haagen Dazs,' (it doesn't say why but presumably they let you take home one tub to eat in front of the telly whilst weeping profusely) 'Alex later found his forte in telecommunications'. I'm not entirely convinced that telecommunications counts as a 'forte', regardless of the fact that at least 3 of the other candidates also list this (just before the bit where it says they're unemployed).

Essentially, it looks a cracker of a series. A genuine criminal, a brilliantly delusional 21 year old and an equally misguided man sacked by Haagen Dazs are just the tip of the iceberg. Roll on next Wednesday as the wisened finger of truth shatters its first, already largely recession-ruined, life.