Week 7
This week we saw the teams re-shuffled. Unfortunately for Laura she was moved from Sterling to Phoenix, a move that she must have known would mean that she wasn’t going to win this week. Stephen Brady was shifted in the other direction in what must have been an attempt to add some stupidity to Sterling. It was a week that was set up for Adam to be fired.
Lord Sugar hinted that Jade would PM Phoenix, being the only candidate thus far not to have PMd a team and after a small debate in the Sterling ranks Nick was selected to lead a team for the first time since his successful stint in week 1. The task was simple, buy in bulk, mark up and flog from a market stall. It was made even simpler by Lord Sugar, advising the teams from the get go what to do and how easy it would be. Smell what sells was his mantra which was repeated throughout the task, if only a little less than the word strategy, which by the end of You’re Fired I would quite happily never hear again.
Jade had shown in the previous task whilst selling food, which does smell and she couldn’t sell very well, that selling items without a scent would be a little difficult, but this hardly mattered. The team took so long in deciding where they would sell their stock that they had barley any time to choose what to sell. They opted for a trolley full of shite. Fake tan, little mechanical bugs, hot water bottles and cheap, unofficial iPod docking speakers were their weapons of choice, which they divided up into two even piles and took out to sell to the Essex public.
Sterling meanwhile decided quickly where they were going to set up their markets. They, with even more time to select some stock, bought almost all of the same dung as Phoenix, with the exception of the mechanical bugs, swapping them for extendable mops and beard trimmers. They did though have a secret weapon in Jenna, though. The beauty industry eer guru stepped forward, fake tan in her strangely mittened hand and released her charm onto the Essex women, desperate to be a different, more bronze colour. Whilst Nick, Jenna and Gabrielle set up in a shopping complex to watch Jenna work her magic, Ricky and Stephen headed to an outdoor market to sell their mops. Desperate for his new duet to work Ricky slipped on his Minogueian radio mic, with the ease that highlights years of practice and started his new number one hit, “does anyone want to buy a mop”. When the song ended he and Stephen thought how the people in an Essex market would be the perfect audience to tryout their comedy double act in a routine named “I will no longer hurt my back whilst mopping with this new, wonderful, blue extendable mop”, real Monty Python stuff. Just as Morcambe and Wise struggled in sales, so did these two, so they dumped their stock and whizzed off back to the wholesaler to load up on more fake tan.
Over at the Phoenix pitch Adam finally looked as though he had found his calling. A market stall is clearly where you belong when you look like the amalgamation of a worm and an angry pimple. He used all of the patter of his youth ‘Rainy day prices’ for ‘Beautiful Women’ (both B-sides available on the latest Ricky Martin single) and was unfortunately a dab hand, shifting all of the stock he and Jade had taken to the market. This single act would save him from a firing, this and this alone, and in a week when Jade showed just how amazingly bad at running and organising a team she was, he would definitely be on the losing team. It seemed again he had wormed his way out of a firing, wormed, get it.
Now with half a day gone Ricky and Stephen had headed to the warehouse but had found themselves stuck in a massive traffic jam. Jenna had shifted all of the fake tan and with few beards about the place the other team were struggling to sell the remaining stock. Help was on hand in the shape of Gabrielle who ingeniously rebranded the beard trimmer to help Brazilian up the newly bronzed “Lovelies” of Essex. The rest of the stock was sold leaving them with nothing to sell in their busy market.
Jade and Adam, having proved their prowess were on their way to the other part of Phoenix. The sub-team consisting of Azhar, Tom and Laura had a simple message. The bugs were selling at an incredible rate and market up from 60p to £3 to boot. Tom insisted that they plough all of their money into the bugs, an act that would have won them the task, but Jade didn’t hear him over Azhar screeching the word strategy over and over. When Phoenix returned to the warehouse they bought the same amount of the same shit that they had bought earlier, despite having not shifted a fair amount of most of it.
Next was a race to the finish, both teams in the same late night market, Sterling laden with fake tan and hot water bottles, Phoenix with not enough bugs, the secret weapons of Jenna and Adam (bet you never thought I would write that) apiece.
Next, the boardroom. It was squeaky bum time for Nick with Lord Sugar bemoaning his decision to send Ricky and Steve to the warehouse without returning their unsold stock to the other sub-team, but as the numbers rolled in he was safe. Sterling had won it by a few quid, all down to their inflated price for some ropey fake tan and Jenna’s amazing ability to enthuse young and old ladies to chameleon up.
Jade looked as confused and defeated as she had done all day and all the way through the process come to mention it. She decided Azhar was joining the sack race with her but shrugged and apologised her way into also returning Tom. Behind his icy façade Tom must have been laughing. There was no way he was getting fired, this one had Jade written all over it. But somehow it didn’t. Shugs listened to the pleas of a frankly hopeless Jade and decided that Azhar had grumbled his way through the process far enough. He got the finger and Tom and Jade returned to the house.
Azhar was disappointed and to be honest quite rightly so. On you’re Fired the group around the table sympathetically explained that Jade had won it in the boardroom and that he had not thought out a boardroom strategy, get it... no still not funny. I, though, have to question this logic. What was her boardroom play, “I’m sorry Lord Sugar I made mistakes. I have brought Tom in her when I shouldn’t have, sorry Tom, you were excellent and you sold things and you shouldn’t be here. I got confused and wasn’t prepared. I was indecisive and got the whole thing wrong. I am quite a failure.” Ok I am paraphrasing but this was her approach and I have no idea how it worked.
Worked it did and she lives to fail another day.
And so to week 8, when hopefully this blog gets back to its earlier magic. The trauma of losing Bilyana is starting to get to me, with the anticipation of her cameo return in the final week is clouding my ability to write.
Goodbye for now Friends
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