Tag: BBC Apprentice

The Apprentice Episode 6 – Cereal Losers.

Although I was able to watch last week’s episode, time constraints meant that a blog update just wasn’t possible. And perhaps it was a good thing to give myself a rest from my own cynicism about this year’s candidates!

This week our merry bunch of halfwits find themselves without Onyeka, while probably all puzzling over the mystery of what Virdi is still doing there. And if no one is asking the question of what it is that Steve actually does, then it’s got to happen soon.

Tonight, the teams are at the Savoy to learn that their next challenge will be to design and market a new cereal aimed at kids. And for what feels like the umpteenth week in a row, Lord Sugar appears as some kind of cartoon.

Sam and Steve take on the project manager roles and before we know it, we’ve got our cereal ideas. Steve decides that their cereal will be based around superheroes – because if you ignore the million and one superheroes around at the moment, this one hasn’t been done before. Meanwhile, Sam’s team decide on the theme of the Arctic. And that’s not even an attempt at a joke. Their children’s cereal theme really will be based around the Arctic.

There follows a debate about whether or not Sam’s sub team should follow a STRONG RECOMMENMDATION about the fruit content in the recipe. They decide not to because they of course know best. But never mind, because I’m sure this won’t be a decision that will come back to haunt them.

There follows a strange moment where Virdi is caught on camera looking terrified by the mere image of a cartoon polar bear taking shape on the screen before him and for a while I wonder whether he’ll be able to have any effect on tonight’s result. And then I remember, it’s Virdi, so if there’s any dancing to be done he’ll find a way to get involved, but other than being scared of a drawing, that might be tonight’s high point.

Over on the other team, Tre and friends try to come to some important decisions about the character for their cereal by just saying ‘erm’ a lot, before in the end deciding that their superhero needs a cape. A superhero in a cape?Surely, that’ll never catch on.

Having watched both teams grapple with the demands of the target audience I’m left questioning why, year after year, no one on the show ever seems to understand what kids of a certain age might like. It’s up there with the Bermuda Triangle in terms of life’s great mysteries for me.

Later, I’m similarly confused when Maura announces to her team that their kid friendly character is just “an ordinary boy…who’s a polar bear”. Well, I suppose we all went to school with one of those.

The task continues with both teams trying to come up with an augmented reality game that will appeal to kids who have scanned the QR code on the cereal box. As someone who seems to be evermore unable to scan QR codes I’m in full on ‘Virdi meets cartoon polar bear mode’ and my wife has to slap me back to reality, pause the show and make me a hot chocolate in order for me to calm back down.

As expected, both tasks bring out the candidates not so inner idiots and it’s not long before we’re witnessing Noor failing to read words and move at the same time and Virdi deeming a cartoon polar bear as “absolutely amazing”. Well, he changed his tune!

At the taste test, no one seems to be able to taste the passion fruit in the Super Hoops. But is that just because no one’s ever been able to actually finish a passion fruit?

Before we know it, the teams are squaring up to face the industry experts and it’s time for more fun. From the facial expressions in the room it becomes clear that these cereals are not exactly taste sensations. Either that or several of the watching experts have walked through the same fart that Karen does every week. Dentist Paul starts his negotiation with frozen food giant Iceland by telling them that linking up with a cartoon polar bear would be a “match made in Heaven” and you think, he’s got a point…this might work. And then he follows this up by telling them that the cereal tastes bland – that’ll be what happens when you ignore a STRONG RECOMMENDATION – and as the air is sucked out of the room I’m left wondering why he even bothers asking if they’d like to buy some.

On the other side of the room meanwhile, while Phil pushes hard to get a deal out of a reluctant customer, Virdi’s contribution is to pull the kind of faces that suggest he’s mistakenly put on underwear that’s about four sizes too small. No wonder the client walks away.

And then I watch on, out of my business depth (which peaks at about 2mm, if you need to know), while Foluso secures an exclusivity deal with Iceland for 200,000 boxes of Super Hoops cereal. It means that they can’t sell to anyone else for 3 months, but is it a gamble worth taking? I haven’t a clue, but my smidgen of knowledge tells me that 200,000 is a shitload of cereal. And so, it’s over to Sam’s team to see if they can sell more.

It turns out that they can’t.

And so to the boardroom. where Lord Sugar, you’d expect, will have plenty of spontaneous cereal related gags lined up to test Karen and Tim’s acting ability. Instead though, he starts with another tried and tested favourite – making the candidates feel really uncomfortable. And even then, after some initial frost he thaws out quite quickly. A bit like Sam’s team’s Arctic cereal idea, really.

It feels like Sugar has lost heart this evening and there’s a feeling of just going through the motions, which when we hear the sales figures and get the result, you can kind of understand. While Steve’s lot sell the aforementioned 200,000 boxes of cereal, Sam’s team finish a distant second – and lose in a catastrophic manner – selling just over 7000.

It’s all too much for Lord Sugar, who almost explodes with cereal puns, calling Sam’s team ‘cereal losers’ and telling them that when they come back in to the boardroom some of them will be saying ‘Cheerios’. Later, he completes his hat-trick when he refers to the loser’s cereal as being more ‘All Bland’ than ‘All Bran’. It’s like he’s been willing himself not to go too early with the comedy until the point where he literally can’t wait any longer and simply has to blurt out some puns. Classic Sugar!

The candidates don’t laugh and instead just head to the cafe to bicker.

At this point in proceedings I’m beginning to feel sorry for Flo, who has pretty much been the only candidate I’ve had much time for so far in the series. She’s clearly capable and yet has found herself stuck on a team hampered by the incompetence of others. She must feel absolutely cursed.

In the end tonight, the only surprise is that Virdi and Phil are still here. Having lost on every task, their time must be almost up. Watching the episode tonight though, I can’t help feeling that there’d be no great loss in getting rid of most of them and just making up the shortfall with the polar bear and Mega Bella from tonight’s cereal boxes.

When we’re done tonight, Sam has been fired and leaves by telling Lord Sugar to remember to ‘pop round for a cuppa’. It’s a deserved firing, but that last bit puzzles me. I mean, imagine Sugar standing on your doorstep, inviting himself in and then make snide remarks about your biscuits and getting Karen to pull faces at your kids.

Back at the house with tonight’s ‘winners’, we end with the penny dropping for Phil. Apparently, ‘one slip up and we’re gone’. No shit, Sherlock.

Apprentice Week 3 – Virtual Escape Rooms.

I’ve never liked the idea of escape rooms. The challenge of getting out of a room that someone will eventually just let me out of anyway has no appeal to me. I don’t want to spend a shed load of money to then find that I’m way too stupid to figure out some puzzles. Coupled with the fact that if I went with my wife, we’d end up arguing to the point of possible divorce, tonight’s task doesn’t exactly excite me.

And then, I remember that Asif will be a project manager and I’m diving for the remote control!

Tonight Lord Sugar has sensed early that the boys are a dead loss and so he splits up the teams in the hope of adding at least a little bit of competition to the competition. I mean, we can’t all be satisfied to spend the entire series laughing at people who regard themselves as business gods, but make the decisions of toddlers, can we?

The first task for the newly formed teams is to decide on a name, but when Maura suggests what sounds like an Irish name, her team mates are stumped and get her to repeat it three times before rejecting it presumably because they still don’t know what she’s saying. And when so many people are so confused by just two syllables, then the writing is surely on the wall for tonight’s result.

On the other team, Flo seems to have decided that she actually is the team, which even after her excellent pitch last week, seems like a bit of an ask. Perhaps she’s a Flobot though?

As is often the way with creative tasks, these young titans of business just aren’t very creative and so the whole online escape room idea threatens to descend into even more chaos than usual. I’m forced to remind myself that in around 6 weeks time, some of these candidates will have morphed into genuinely credible business types before my very eyes, as is the case every year. For now though, it’s the usual festival of f***wittery.

In response to the brief that their game should be kept fairly simple, Asif’s team are genuinely discussing something that involves crash landing on a derelict ex-military island where there are not only rare animals, but inbred ones too. Thankfully, not enough eyes light up at that suggestion, but it is an indication that perhaps the BBC should be vetting the candidates with a bit more scrutiny in future.

This week, once again, it’s the editing that gives us our moments of genius as the silences that accompany a series of ever more bizarre suggestions taking the limelight away from the contestants themselves.

In the end, after one silence too many Asif’s game design team settle on a rare animal to inhabit their island. It’s a bear. Not even a rare one. Just a bear. And in fact there are three of them that because they’re computer generated, look like they might be line dancing. Escape that, gaming nerds!

Over on the other side Tre decides that the mayor character in their game needs to be young and handsome, so decides to cast himself in the role and proceeds to guide the computer bloke to find a face that’s as close to his own as he can! He then proceeds to double down on his Tre-ness by doing the voiceover as well.

On the other team, Maura struggles with her voiceover – as well as simply looking in the right direction – so that the end result is akin to me getting one of my Year 8 students to act out an airline safety briefing. Suffice to say, if somehow, someone had got me to have a look at this particular escape room, the intro would have me doing a swift about turn and heading for the nearest exit.

As ever, both teams make a mess of their logos. This is always the way and again begs the question about business types perhaps not being particularly creative. And Asif’s logo very much backs this up, given his obsession with adding a couple of arrows to both of the words. Someone suggests that it looks ‘a little like a supermarket logo’. Surely what they mean is that it looks a Lidl like a supermarket logo?

With both Escape Rooms complete – and frankly pretty shit – the teams go to pitch their ideas. Flo is quick to back herself, which after last week’s performance seems like a safe bet. So, it’s a shock when she dries up mid pitch and clearly doesn’t know what to say. It’s both compulsive viewing and a moment where you want the ground to just swallow her up. In the end, she just introduces the video for the escape room and passes it off in the boardroom later on as something that lasted a millisecond. It’s a shock after seeing her being so competent in negotiation last week though.

At the end of the pitch one of the investors declares that Flo’s escape room is ‘as fun as a wet fish’, proving that the game might be a bit of a failure, but not as much of a failure as a gamer having to come up with a slick one liner.

Meanwhile, with the other team, the experts declare that their game is a bit surreal. However, Asif has the perfect comeback – it isn’t surreal, it’s meant to be realistic. That’s the game where a military helicopter crash lands on a derelict military island (whatever that might be) and the pilot not only survives the helicopter crash, but has to get away from some line-dancing bears, before running across a rickety bridge and then having a dance on the deck of a conveniently located ship. Yep, you’re right Asif. That’s not in the least bit surreal.

Tonight I suddenly realise that there are several candidates that I don’t even know the name of. In fact, there’s at least one I have no recollection of whatsoever. Could we see a sacking next week just because someone has been hiding a bit? You heard it here first, folks!

Paul then gives such a convoluted explanation of their game that after the full 3 minutes of him rambling on about what the game entails, all we need is a cry of ‘Parklife’ and we’re done. Suffice to say though, there are a few puzzled faces in the panel of experts.

In the boardroom I realise that I’m spending far too long trying to work out Asif’s hair. I mean, what does he ask for when he sits down in the chair? At one point it looks like there’s a giant spider attached to the back of his head and there’s sections of hair heading to every compass point on the top of his head. By this point in proceedings his team have lost and despite making a profit, they’ve lost by a landslide too.

Asif proceeds to blame everyone else for the failure, but unless the twist is that Amina is sacked because she forgot how to speak in the pitch, then there’s only one decision to make.

And so it comes to pass that Asif is fired having lost control in the boardroom and seen the other three candidates simply turn on him. When he’s told he’s “a poor, poor manager” he tells us “I won’t be defeated”. Famous last words, my friend! Before we know it he’s getting into the black cab never to be seen again.

Back at the house, the surviving candidates are as full of themselves as ever, until Lord Sugar knocks at the door. I really want him to be trying to sell them something, but alas he’s just introducing next week’s task, which is the purchasing task over on one of the Channel Islands.

The candidates are delighted, with one declaring, “a treasure hunt on an island. What more could you want?” Ooh, I don’t know…some line dancing bears, maybe?

But there’s more. In the outro of tonight’s show we get a teaser for next week with Lord Sugar growling the line “pretty much the worst team I’ve ever had on this task” which makes me laugh uproariously.

They say that we love the underdog in the U.K., but I’m gradually coming round to the idea that we love an abject failure even more. I cannot wait for next Thursday!

The Apprentice – Episode 2: Cheesecakes

A familiar start this week, when a tired candidate is woken by the phone in the hall and stumbles down seemingly with no idea at all who could be calling at this time of the morning. It’s the lass that works for Lord Sugar…always her!

And then, aided by the magic of television and an audience that is quite happy to go along with the old lie that they’ve got just 20 minutes to get ready, the early morning darkness has given way to bright sunshine and the candidates are scrubbed up and leaving for work. Exactly how we all get ready for work, right?

This week, we’re making mini cheesecakes and while the boys go with experienced pie maker and ‘Supreme Pie Champion 2020’ Phil as their team leader, the girls plump for Foluso because no one else was willing to step up. Actually, that’s a lie. Maura said she’d “made cheesecakes before” but surprisingly, no one viewed that as a serious bid for office. It did make me think that perhaps I could have PM’d this task though. I too have “made cheesecakes before” – you know those ones you get in boxes – and have a high propensity for bullshit (which I’m aware makes me at least 50% eligible to PM any task, ever). If only I’d thought to take my business experience of three years working in a call centre and applied.

I always find the group meetings pretty funny. It genuinely amazes me the amount of truly awful ideas one table of people can have and tonight it’s a real surprise that no one suggests something like an offal cheesecake. However, once the decisions are made, Paul B rallies the troops with a cry of “Any hiccups, let’s not cry about spilt milk!” And I thought you just had to hold your breath…

Tonight we hear the first pitching klaxon when Flo assures the girls that she’ll do the pitch as she does them all the time to massive clients, so everything will be fine. This type of thing usually ensures that there’ll be a stuttering disaster and the longest few minutes of someone’s life, followed by the very same person declaring that they thought it all went well. This time though, the klaxon is a red herring and Flo follows through on all of her promises, leaving us all probably rather impressed, while also a little disappointed at the same time.

In the kitchen with the girls, the expected chaos ensues. But it’s not this that catches my attention. No, what grabs me is their inability to say the word kilogrammes. It seems that tonight, we’re only able to refer to KGs. Weird.

The boys go to pitch their idea to the smoothies company Innocent, who are extremely well know for their mission of charging the country ludicrous amounts of money so that they can have all their fruit and veg in liquid form. Fine by me. This is not a mission that the boys are on board with, however and instead the mantra appears to be ‘WHATEVER THEY SAY ABOUT FRUIT, VEG AND HEALTHY EATING, JUST KEEP INSISTING ON CHOCOLATE’! Surprisingly, the Innocent representatives don’t feel that they want to pay £8 a cheesecake for something that sticks two fingers up to their mission statement. The boys meekly drop their price and offer some vague fruit based dessert instead. Later, Lord Sugar misses a trick by failing to label it “Not a very smoothie move”.

Amazingly, there’s a moment of business synergy tonight between the teams. Sadly, it comes during deliberations about flavours for the cheesecakes as both spend far too much time discussing popping candy as an ingredient for their high end cheesecakes. It’s sadder still when neither team goes with the idea.

As the episode goes on, I’m finding myself more and more fascinated by the boys. They actually seem to be making a decent fist of their cheesecake business and yet they still manage to add a healthy dollop of incompetence to their ingredients. Every few minutes brings something that leaves me asking ‘WHAT?’ of the telly.

First, they spend far too long discussing making a more efficient system before being unable to come up with an efficient system. Then they decide that they need a cover story about the crumbling bases of their cheesecakes, but all they can manage is “Give them a spoon and tell them it’s a dessert”. I mean, it kind of is a dessert, guys.

After last week’s corporate away day task descended into 90s rave territory, the theme surfaces again when one of the boys rallies the troops with a cry of ‘let’s make some noise’ and suddenly I’m thinking of glo sticks and bucket hats. And finally, there’s even more befuddlement when one of them tells the Innocent people that the cheesecake contains a fruit they might not have heard of.

In the boardroom, there seems to be no obvious winner tonight and yet, when the result is announced it’s the girls who get their just desserts (see what I did there?) with another landslide win. And it’s well deserved too with Flo in particular flagging herself up as one to watch with her impressive negotiating skills.

Meanwhile, the boys are left to face another heavy defeat, even though they didn’t really put in a bad performance. Yes, there was the usual halfwittery along the way, but they actually made a profit, which in a profit task is the name of the game.

It’s no surprise when Paul B is called back into the boardroom by project manager Phil and Asif pretty much talks himself back there too when he just sits there and tells a few half truths while grassing up anyone who he happens to even glance at. He even swerves Lord Sugar’s question about what he did on the task by ignoring it, flipping it round and just asking his fellow team members what it was that they did. He may well have out sugared Lord Sugar and I’m amazed when he’s allowed off the hook.

In the end, it’s Paul B that goes. And while this Pie man fails on the cooking task, he leaves as an Apprentice legend (in my eyes at least). For there is none of the usual fawning of ‘Thank you for the opportunity Lord Sugar”. Instead, Paul just shrugs his shoulders, smiles and tells Lord Sugar, “Fair enough, mate” before taking his wheelie suitcase off towards a waiting black cab. Well done, sir!