Extra security by the cash point, you can't trust Lord Siral
Lord Siral moves Neil to team Evolve because... meh and he immediately makes himself team leader because he's God or something. Alex is keen to lead team Morse because he hasn't had a chance yet, and possibly, because he's still recovering from his sojourn as a Dictator last week. On the plus side he didn't show up in camouflage and sun glasses. In the end, the team choose Kurt over him because even though he has all the charisma of a breeze block and talks like a deflating set of bag-pipes, he did go on a caravan holiday once. So experience trumps eyebrows and Alex already feels like the team has it in for him.
Alex is perfectly happy with their decision
The teams are split in two, numerically rather than bodily, unfortunately, with three members from each sent to choose cheap products to sell, while the rest are packed off to the Birmingham Caravan show to do some market research and pick a caravan to try and flog.
Miles is in charge of the Morse sub-team and has been joined by Natalie and Leah. Despite living in Monaco where caravans are, apparently, banned and hating them and everything they stand for, Myles believes that the key to securing good products to sell is to show enthusiasm for the product. He really goes for, waxing lyrical about the products brilliance to the extend that even one of the designers seems to think he's milking it. Nick Hewer claims he felt nauseous.
Speaking of Nick Hewer, watching him this series has been an education. He seems to be losing whatever enthusiasm he had left for the show. He's taken to hanging around the edges pulling faces, stealing snacks and prodding the scenery. Last week he actually started stroking a fibre-glass flamingo. I'm slightly concerned that one day in the boardroom he'll put his head down and quietly go to sleep.
Returning to the task in hand, Natalie and Leah don't seem to have gotten the memo about enthusiasm. Leah has the look of someone who just smelled something unsavoury, while Natalie just looks vacant. Instead of fawning over the designers like they've just arrived from Renaissance Italy, they get down to brass tacks and start pushing for discounts. To be fair, this makes sense, they need something to encourage impulse purchases, but Natalie blatantly pushes it to far in the face of a designer who insists that the product sells itself (which raises the question what they need the Apprenti for. Couldn't they just leave a box at the show and let the product sort itself out).
Enthusiasm
Actually it isn't easy to get enthusiastic about these products. They include an electric bike, a storage box that turns into a boat, a chair with a fold over roof, a flowerpot barbecue and a children's activity kit that would be quite nice if it didn't cost £103. In fact all of these items are too expensive for impulse buying. The bike costs £999. Not that this stops both teams going crazy for it. Unfortunately for Myles, team Evolve display more co-ordinated enthusiasm and they manage to snatch up both the bike and his second choice, the activity kit. Myles is stuck with the boat-box and the chair.
On their way to Birmingham, Kurt and Alex do some market research, by staring at cars pulling caravans and trying to get a look at the drivers. From this they decide that the market is old. Amazingly, this 'research' is pretty much confirmed at Birmingham, where they are joined by Nick Hewer. Hang on, he was with the sub-team a minute ago, either he has a teleporter or some cheeky editing has been used to make it look like everything happened in one day.
Nick beams in
Sure enough, Karen Brady has also made a very quick trip to Birmingham to join Neil and Jason. Neil thinks his job is to keep an eye on Jason. Jason spent two of the last three weeks locked up in a kitchen with Rebecca keeping a close eye on him. But with Rebecca gone he's been let out, though Neil is keeping him on a short leash. At one point he drags him away from talking to someone. Neil doesn't rate Jason and doesn't know how he's still in the process. He's not the only one, the team seem to treat Jason as a slightly slow relative they have to look after. It probably doesn't help that he packed his teddy bear earlier.
Jason packs his best friend
Both teams have to choose a caravan or camper to try and sell. The two front runners are a retro-looking trailer in the style of an old Volkswagen van and a small trailer that opens out into a tent. Both teams prefer the retro-trailer, but the sales figures for the tent-trailer are much better, even with the lower price tag. Neil decides to go for the tent-trailer because it sells better, but Alex pushes Kurt to go for the retro-trailer because... something. It looks nice, I think.
Retro trailer versus...
Tent trailer
Next day the teams divide again and, having been instrumental in choosing the retro-trailer, Alex thinks he should be selling it But Kurt thinks people won't be happy buying an expensive item from him because he's too young. Alex might be 22, but he looks about 40. But Kurt thinks his Internet business won't prepare him for face to face sales, even though he's been doing this for weeks. Myles has experience selling big items, even though he hates caravans, and Kurt wants to show off to Lord Siral, so Alex is relegated to boat and chair sales with Leah and Natalie.
This is probably a good thing for Alex, because things don't go well for the sub-team. Myles is a decent salesperson, but, as Nick Hewer points out, he hasn't understood that a lot of the people here just want to talk about caravans. He spend something like ten minutes listening to a potential customer ramble before discovering they aren't a potential customer after all. Kurt, on the other hand, is entirely out of his depth, standing around staring at the trailer and occasionally making dull observations to passers by like an old man leaning over his garden wall. Nick Hewer, meanwhile, has been assaulted by a teddy bear.
Over at team Evolve, Neil is having a similar hard time. It turns out Jason's bumbling posho personality is ideally suited to selling to old ladies. Once again, the Boris Johnson comparison is apt. Because he comes across as harmless and friendly, it doesn't feel like he's trying to sell something and you end up feeling guilty saying no to him. Jason grabs the first sale of the day, cue comical celebration, and Neil is forced to up his game.
Yes!
Not that things are going much better for the Evolve sub-team who are having trouble convincing people of the merits of an electric bikes or activity kits. Over at team Morse, Alex, Natalie and Leah seem to be having an easier time of it, though they are hampered slightly by Natalie's confusion about the purpose of the plank of wood in the middle. She's convinced its a picnic table and is repeatedly frustrated by Alex's and Leah's attempts to sit on it. To be fair, this is the same person who couldn't tell the difference between a cow, a horse and a dog a few weeks ago. I'm starting to think she might not be the a few wheels short of a trailer.
Natalie figures out how a boat works
With time drawing on and still no sales, Kurt and Myles resort to desperate measures and call Leah over to act as "eye-candy", not that they tell her that. She does seem to be attracting more attention, but not quite enough and in the end no sales are made.
"Eye-candy"
Back in the boardroom, Evolve, unsurprisingly, slaughter Morse on trailer sales but, surprisingly, also confidently beat them on accessory sales as well. And I thought Alex was doing so well. They are packed off for cycling lessons with Chris Hoy, which sounds like a good idea, but is actually a great opportunity to demonstrate your lack of expertise in cycling to one of the best cyclists in the world. But before they go, Lord Siral calls back Jason. A petrified Jason creeps back in only to be congratulated for his sales prowess, Lord Siral having forgotten to do it earlier. Jason creeps out of the room backwards, perhaps out of respect or perhaps to hide the brown stain on the back of his trousers.
Please don't kill me!
Kurt decides to pin the blame on Alex, he was the one who pushed for the retro-trailer. Alex does himself no favours by claiming this was the right choice and justifying it by claiming that he couldn't see the trailer tent selling when the number indicate it did. Alex is still put out by the fact that he didn't get to sell the trailers. But Nick Hewer claims he hid away by the accessories because he could see thing going wrong. I'm not sure this is a fair comment given that the only person on either team to change sales positions was Leah and that was at Myles and Kurt's request. Nick is clearly feeling slightly sadistic and points out that Myles and Kurt described Leah as "eye candy" in a voice so creepy it's as if they called her over to pimp her out.
Kurt brings Alex and Natalie back into the boardroom. Natalie thinks this is tactical, because he knows that Lord Siral said she would be fired if she came back into the boardroom again. She also insists that she's not crying but angry, presumably those were tears of rage streaming down her face. She also claims that she would have been good at selling trailers because she works in recruitment. She later claims on 'Your Fired' that she meant she's used to advising people to make big decisions, but it still sounds like a couple more wheels have fallen off her trailer.
Kurt's defence is pretty weak. Essentially if he hadn't made the mistake of listening to Alex, then all of his other mistakes wouldn't have mattered. He is duly shown the door. But Lord Siralan isn't finished yet and in a 'shock' move Natalie is booted out after him. Given that there has been a double-firing in all but two series (once because they lost a candidate before it started and once because someone dropped out in week two), the program-makers really can't expect us to be surprised can they. It's time for a new gimmick, firing the top half of one candidate and the bottom half of another maybe, or forcing the bottom two to fight for a place?
Next Time: The teams set up dating websites, one team attempts a coup and Alex puts in the creepiest performance since the child catcher.
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