Sweeping vistas of London's shiny,
phallic buildings. Vaguely imposing classical music. An angry gnome with a
pointy finger. The sound and smell-o-vision of a hundredweight of total and
utter bullshit. Yes, hurrah, deck out your sitting room in business bunting,
for The Apprentice is back!
It's the tenth series. We have been
watching idiots shouting at each other, running around and competing for the
chance to win a non-specific job in a backroom somewhere for £100k (and
latterly the chance to launch a business with LordSurAlanSugar) for a decade. This year, we're promised, there
will be 'differences'. The main one appears to be that, because of the World
Cup taking the usual Apprentice slot
on the schedule, it was filmed during the summer. So now the firees get to
leave in their Redundancy Cab in broad daylight. Yet, so far, perplexingly
still wearing enormous coats and vast scarves, which must've added to their
discomfort.
LordSurA also claimed that he
wanted to do things, 'a bit differently'. In episode one, this consisted of
just bringing in an extra four business botherers after the initial 16 had
awkwardly arranged themselves in the boardroom. After a year's worth of WWI
centenary programming, the phrase 'cannon fodder' was the one that sprang most
readily to mind.
Having TWENTY Apprentii means that
for the first four weeks, it's going to be nigh-on impossible to get to grips
with anyone's names except the PMs and whoever's self-elected to be the week's
Major Moron. There are, however, some distinguishing features, with a variety
of accents (there's a Canadian, a Colombian and an Australian called Mark
Wright. Because having one idiot called Mark Wright on TV wasn't thought to be
enough, apparently). There was also Enormously Tall Robert, who professed not
to 'give a shit' if people think his clothes are ridiculous. Which is a good
thing, as before week one was out, he'd paraded around in a blazer seemingly
nicked from Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins and had made me shriek when I caught
a glimpse of his sockless ankles and sand-coloured suede slip-ons. LordSurA, of
course, instantly dismissed him as, effectively, a 'Shoreditch Twat' and sacked
him for refusing to be PM in week two, when he had expressly told him he was
the man for the job. He wasn't even chosen by his PM for the final three in a
boardroom grilling; LSA just flipped him the firing finger with no warning. See
– cannon fodder.
So. Many. Differences. I can hardly
keep up!
Distinguishing themselves so far on
the girls' team are Roisin, a tallish blonde Irish woman who I think looks like
a cut-price Cameron Diaz; a blonde woman with a bob and 'serious' glasses who
looks like a cartoon (Jemma? She doesn't seem to have contributed anything, even, now, four episodes in);
a woman whose forehead would give Tyra Banks a run for her money (still haven't
worked out her name) and SARAH. Ah, Sarah. Brought in as one of the 'extras',
Sarah immediately put herself forward to be PM in week one, just so we could
get the full measure of how utterly appalling she is. When faced with selling
the most random assortment of stuff from previous Apprentice series (spuds, hot dog sausages, mad balloons, lemons,
flowers and T-shirts), Sarah spent ten minutes repeatedly suggesting that they
should 'chop up the lemons'.
I wanted one of the girls to stop
shouting, 'NOOOOOOO!' at her for just a second to say, 'Sarah, when have you
ever bought a slice of lemon?'
Unless you are selling them pre-sliced to a cocktail bar (they'd dry out, so you couldn't even do that). Sarah has watched too many box-sets of Mad Men. Her instruction to her team of
Business Wimmin was to wear really short skirts and pile on the make-up. Sarah
seems to think that the key to Apprentice
success is to channel an air hostess from the 1960s. I'd be marginally less
offended by this tactic if she were any good at applying her own make up. Learn
the art of blending, dear and stop putting on bronzer that looks like mud. She
looks like a mad tranny. She seems so moronic one can only assume she's a
plant, put there to wind everyone up. Job done so far. She was very lucky the
boys made the executive decision to leave all their 'added value, high mark-up' T-shirts at the printers', or she'd have definitely gone first.
Another difference? LSA finally telling one of the teams that
their team name is just too ludicrous to stomach. The girls came up with two
options, 'Summit' or 'Decadence'. Have they never watched this show before?
Surely, on day one, the main thing you come armed with (other than a CV that
requires a 2:1 in Disbelief Suspension) is a bunch of whizzy-sounding team
names that sit perilously on the fence of 'sounds like a business' and 'sounds
like a bunch of tossers'. Try for some Latin, maybe? Team Carpe Diem, perhaps –
don't think that’s ever been used. It would also be amusing to make LordSurA
say it every week: Car-paaay Deee-'em. But no, the girls decided on Decadence,
because, according to Sarah, it sounded 'more feminine and classy'. Christ, you
might as well have gone with Team Rosewater or Team LadyMary from Downton Abbey. Brilliantly, half of them
(including the girl who suggested it)
didn't actually know what it meant.
This resulted in possibly the Apprentice speech of the decade, as Nick,
channelling his Countdown alter-ego,
gave them a million etymological reasons for it being the worst name in
business history. He finished up by using the phrase 'moral turpitude'. Which,
given the girls didn't even know the meaning of decadence, is pretty awesome.
They should've gone with Moral Turpitude as the new team name. Or Shrieking
Harridans. They’ve in fact gone for ‘Tenacity’, which has led to one of the Guardian Liveblog commenters re-dubbing
the team The Tena City Ladies.
LordSurAlan has gone a bit schizo, task-wise, going from inventing 'wearable tech' (ooh, someone on the production team's seen a press release for Google Glass)
to flooding the market with Airwick Fresheners. Sorry, 'home fragrances' (ie
candles and reed diffusers). A woman who professed herself 'obsessed' with how
her house smelled headed up one team, despite the fact she'd openly admitted to
buying Glade Plug-ins. The fumes from those are probably the reason why she
decided (as per every other series) to ignore the 'market research' which said
to make the candles out of soy wax and on no account to faff about with
colouring them. Paraffin and custard-coloured candles shot off the production
line.
The other team's product and
packaging were better, but their approach to business was 'set a price then
panic', plumping for a very literal 'slash and burn' method of throwing all
their diffusers at a nifty gifty store for £8 a go, when they had a firm sale
lined up with a poncey members club for literally three times that if they'd
only hung on for a few hours.
I was disappointed that there
wasn't a cedarwood/sandalwood epic cock-up, which I was fully expecting. Custard
Candles Inc won the day, by less than the RRP of one of the candles. The theme for this series seems to be winning
by the narrowest of margins, or 'who can fail least?' Poor Swimming Lindsay got
as close as one can on the Apprentice
to a resignation - what on earth was she doing there in the first place? She
looked like she'd got to week 3 and thought, 'was this really the show I was supposed to apply
for? I think there's been a huge admin error.' Credit to her for basically
giving a massive shrug and going, 'yeah, I was properly hopeless' rather than
the usual, 'I am the one you want, LordSurAlan - I've got drive, I've got
ambition [I've got delusions of being something other than just 'adequate at my
job'], giving it 110%' pitch, which was what Nurun went for. Which went as well
as that usually does.
We'll leave aside what on earth was
the point of this week's task (trying to make viral videos on YouTube, which made
me want to construct a huge neon sign depicting the phrase, 'OH, THE HUMANITY',
to stick over the revolving door at the front of Broadcasting House.) Both
teams' concept was utterly unintelligible. One team had two identical brunette
women in it whom I had literally never seen before. (And a camera person who
looked as though they were wearing an ironic '118 118' ginger wig 'n' headband
combo. No-one seemed to comment on this.)
It didn't matter what the task was.
They could've been competitive sheep shearing or trying to flog burgers made
out of pigeons to Belgians. The entire point of the episode, was to have THE
MOST EPIC FIRING IN APPRENTICE
HISTORY. The three boardroom burnouts were team leader Ella Jade (business
idea: a TV production company. Because the world of business definitely needs another one of those).
She'd failed utterly to make a convincing mini telly programme. And seemed
never to have seen anything on YouTube, despite the fact that that's how half
of us now consume TV. (I wanted to bamboozle her by shouting 'NETFLIX!!' in her
face till she begged me to stop and tell her what it was.) Canadian Steven,
whose chief talent was speaking the English language as though he were
simultaneously translating it from a Cantonese business manual written in the
late '80s. Why they allowed him to do a pitch to a bemused team from Buzzfeed
is anyone's idea; he couldn't even manage it in the taxi on the way over. (Business
idea: something to do with care homes). And, oh glory be, SARAH. Sarah, whose
previous career included being a PA and a hypnotist (presumably not at the same
time, but who knows) had been so annoying that they'd given her the entirely
made-up job of 'timings'.
This led, somehow, to it being her
fault that the sub-team had neglected to give their video either a name or any
kind of description before uploading it. Seriously, do these people live in
caves somewhere, like troglodytes? How have they seemingly never seen a YouTube
video and what's on it? How did they expect anyone to find their god-awful
offerings?
The Eye of Sauron (sorry, SurAlan),
fell first on Steven, who went down in a screaming hissy fit audible only to
bats of denials and begging to be next week's PM (you are being fired, you delusional idiot. There is no next week for you. Also, it would have
taken you all of the two allotted days to decide on a sub-team leader, never
mind actually get anything done).
By this time, I was thinking, 'can’t
you fire all of them? They're all abysmal.'
Sarah, what’s your business plan,
then? 'I want to start up a really unique dating site'. OH. MY. GOD. Is it
called WearAShortSkirt.com, or SurrenderedWives.co.uk or
FuckFeminismINeedaHusband.net? Dating websites was even a task a couple of
series back, and I’m still getting flashbacks. LordSurAlan, with his wearable
tech and his determination to surf the online zeitgeist, is working hard at
appearing MODERN, and thus having none of Mad
Men (or Mad for Men) Sarah. Deciding that she is clearly another
lawsuit-in-waiting, he boots her. Which leaves Ella Jade with nowhere to hide. Will
she be allowed to go home to change into her sweatpants and laugh it up with
relief? No, she will not. She's still begging to be given another chance, even
as LordSurAlan is getting RSI from pointing his firing finger so many times in
one episode. He has to basically fire her four times. He nearly has to instruct
Karren and Nick to grab an arm and a leg each to haul her out, while she hangs
on to the boardroom table. It's actually awful. Especially as for once the
winning team have got a decent prize, lolling around in volcanic springs in
Iceland (actual country, not cut-price shopping emporium; which, given the
first week's prize was a trip in the London Eye, was worth celebrating).
So far, I think Solomon is my
favourite - non-shouty, and appears to have an actual brain, as well as
luxuriant hair. I still can't believe that all of these people have a business
that they want to launch. James, for example, who looks like a TOWIE escapee
and who is billed as being a 'multiple business owner' (does that mean he runs
a Costco?) What's his big idea? Wouldn't it be less humiliating to just go on Dragon's Den? At least then you only
have a panel of people telling you you're a moron for what amounts to ten
minutes on TV, rather than twelve weeks.
Anyway, I'll carry on watching;
partly out of habit, and partly because, with the winter nights drawing in, the
fires of rage stoked by the contestants' weekly idiocy are keeping me warm,
thus reducing my heating bills. Perhaps that's the business idea I should pitch
for next year? Hook yourself up to a Hatewatch Generator for all your energy
needs. You can start watching this year's X-Factor
if things get really bad and snow threatens before Christmas.
