The Apprentice week 1

The Apprentice Blog Week 1

So here it is, after nine months and twelve juniors, The Apprentice has returned. A new draft of sixteen of the countries brightest business hopefuls have descended on the capital in a bid to persuade Lord Sugar that they have what it takes to go into business with him.

The first episode aired last night, and was relatively typical for what we have started to expect from the first night. The teams are split in two, boys vs girls and charged first off with devising team names and electing the weeks project manager. Before this of course, as it’s the first week we see more of the obligatory VTs. This is the point at which the sixteen anonymous candidates show the viewing public how fierce and complete and annoying they are, before they largely prove that they are in fact none of what they professed to be. This always highlighted in selecting the week 1 PM, the sharp-suited, voiced, fearless VT stars fade in the wake of the silence which fills the room.

The boys took this tactic. They quickly and unanimously deciding on the name proudly thrust forward by thirty three year old, national sales manager Steven Brady, a man who has the look of a slightly squeezed Graeme Swann. The name the agreed on? Team Phoenix, which basically means they are unanimous in their belief that at some point they will stuff it up and have to start again the week later. On hearing the name Lord Sugar looked momentarily perplexed before moving on, is a name that important in a process where people will be switching teams weekly, and to be fair it services take-away businesses well enough the length and breadth of the country. After a driving shriek of silence twenty five year old Nick Holzherr reluctantly put himself forward as PM. Team Phoenix were up and running.

The girls seemed a little more dynamic. They quickly settled on the name Sterling, which is to be honest a pretty good name, it has connotations of money, pureness, authenticity and excellence, well done Jenna Whittingham for dreaming up such a err sterling name. A PM was a simple choice. The purpose of this week’s task was to take a blank product, print something on it and sell it off for a profit. Step forward twenty nine year old architect Gabrielle Omar, who has, as it so happens, just started a printing company. Lord Sugar seemed impressed, if you have someone with expertise use them.

Then ensued twenty minutes or so of fresh entrepreneurial genius or as it is otherwise know eight people hiding and eight people sharpening their knives. Here we got our first glimpse of our candidates proper. The lads all seemed quite nice, they worked pretty well together and the only dissent shown was when Steven tried to hijack the pricing strategy before he had even bowled a ball. The situation was decisively dealt with by Holzherr, who affirmed his position as PM and let the matter drop. Brady had a point though fifteen pounds was astronomical for a small teddy in a misprinted t-shirt. After this though everything worked relatively well, the only drawback coming from a Del Boyesque move to shift some shoddy merchandise. Of the boys two candidates stood out for me. Duane Bryan, the twenty nine year old company director from Manchester who describes himself as ‘a whole new breed of winner’ he struck me as having the right amount of drive and ability, and the right amount of likeability. Second Ricky Martin, his VT was Apprentice VT gold. Every cliché in the book is woven into that video, a string of number ones like, ‘The reflection of perfection’, ‘other people look at me and they want to be me’, ‘the only thing that scares me is myself’ and of course ‘Livin’ la vida loca’. Despite his VT he actually seemed like quite a decent character, so don’t worry Stuart Baggs, you haven’t been out wollied yet.

The girls got off to a lightning fast start. Twenty nine year old business development manager Jade Nash’s creative skills gave us their characters to be printed. They were a set of hand-drawn animals that they aimed at the baby and toddler market, that is despite the fact that the animals looked to be deciding on the most painless suicide. The team then separated to concentrate on different areas to attempt to sell in. At this point the wheels came off. Relations between the firey twenty eight year old Jane McEvoy, whose eyes could make me do literally anything she wanted and twenty five year old Bulgarian Bilyana Apostolova, who can only be described as the most beautiful women to ever grace the boardroom, the anti-Karen Brady if you will, broke down. Throughout the task they both kept their weapons concealed, but you could certainly see them sharpening them and keeping them at an easy reach. The roving team, which included Jane and Bilyana, simply failed in their task of selling. Bilyana took the initiative and managed to shift some stock, but this simply resulted in the other girls crowing about how unfair it was that she was taking all of the sales. Now I realise that I am not one off the list of candidates, but surely the better option would have been to go and find some customers yourself rather than gripe and whine about someone else getting all of the sales? It was at this point the highlight of the episode Katie Wright, the eerm something year old, something from somewhere comes out of hiding to utter the perfectly timed, ‘you don’t want to be behaving like animals at the zoo’, whist unbeknownst, behind her a lama positions itself for a crap. More on Katie later. The group then squabbled their way to the ‘nearest’ set of shops to offload their entire stock, bar the one jigsaw Bilyana sold before being told she was doing it wrong. They even managed to fail this, at one point forcing one shop owner to batten down the hatches and retreat to a small dark room where she would never have to encounter humans again, before being told off by the shop owner’s dad and being forced to apologise.

But the real drama happened in the boardroom, come on I’m allowed at least one Apprentice cliché of my own. The girls lost. The boys received a prize that some may say was a little bit girly, but this is the first time in a while that the boys have won week one and they all seemed happy enough.  In the Bridge Cafe the girls started for their weapons, keeping their ears to the ground for any whimpering suggestion of weakness that they could leap onto quicker that Karen Brady chimes in. Gabrielle showed a little of this weakness, or the warm side of her clearly civilized manner, by apologising for the situation that they were in, but she was already in the boardroom so this got overlooked. The peripheral characters momentarily got involved with Maria O’Connor, twenty year old Restaurateur wading in like an extra from Gavin and Stacey, rapier drawn and pointed at Bilyana who defended herself with the admission that she was shouting now. The shouting was apparent and from every direction, until a sharp off camera ‘Shuddup’ came from an unidentified source, most likely Katie from where ever she had hidden.

On the day Gabrielle brought Katie and Bilyana back into the boardroom. Katie because she was finally found still slowly feeding single sheet of paper after single sheet of paper into a printer. Bilyana because she was set up as a patsy by all of the others. Gabrielle showed her feisty side, arguing a good case and keeping herself in the competition. Katie was again missing except for one impassioned ‘I can prove myself if you give me another chance’ speech usually kept for at least week four and it seemed that she was done for. Lord Sugar was a ‘Katie, I’m sorry, but you’re fired’ away from dismissing Katie and Bilyana chimed in, snatching defeat from Katie and cementing her place in history as series eight’s first ‘casualty of the boardroom’.

It was unfair, and it was probably the wrong choice, but Bilyana, despite all of her abundant positives didn’t have the social intelligence to simply keep quite. If she had done, she would have been in the running for next week and the programme would have been that little bit better looking.

Oh well week one is down and we move on. My favourite to win is either Duane or Jane. Katie is a goner unless she takes onboard what she clearly knew was a bullet dodged. It seems a good bunch so far, I will see you next week.

Andrew D. Clark