Week Three - Piss Candle

For this week's task, Lord Siralan drags the Apprenti to the Royal Exchange, which, sadly, doesn't indicate that this task involves re-branding a member of the royal family or something, but that it has to do with luxury products. In this case, "designer home fragrance product," as Lord Siral elegantly puts it. He also says that the margins in the business are very good and the ingredients are cheap. So it's all about selling cheap tat at massively inflated prices to gullible idiots.

The teams have to make designer candles and reed defusers (no idea) and sell them to the trade and general public. The winners are the ones with the most profit at the end.

It's also time for a re-shuffle, so Steven, Daniel and Felipe are packed off to team Tenacity and Nurun, Lindsay, Bianca and Roisin are shoved into team Summit. Katie, who with her accent and glasses, looks like a deflated Sarah Millican, takes charge because she is obsessed with the smell of her own home. Or to put it in a way that sounds less perverse, buys a lot of this stuff. What was that about gullible morons?

 Sarah                                        Katie

Roisin takes charge of team Summit, because she's an accountant and this task is all about margins and figures. She says she likes the smell of fresh laundry and the beach. So wet towels?

The teams divide into a factory sub-team and a marketing sub-team. The latter go off to do some market research. The tenacity sub-team quickly discover that the market favours clean simple colours and if given the choice, they should use soy wax and not paraffin. Katie, meanwhile has decided to make bright yellow candles in paraffin wax. She decides to ignore the sub-teams research because she pretty much is the market for this kind of thing.

The Tenacity factory team then settle on green tea, lemon grass and aloe vera as a smell combination. They discuss names and reject Lemonise and Yellow Submarine, before settling on British Breeze because, as Nick Hewer points out, none of these fragrances are British.

Roisin, meanwhile, has stuck with the seaside theme and has come up with the name Beach Dreams. Oddly, in a room with a huge poster advertising fish and chips, which is both British and beachy. Have the teams missed a marketing opportunity here? Team Summit agrees on a plain white candle, in a square glass with a black box and a very simple blue and white striped design that actually looks reasonably high quality.

The Fish and Chips room

The marketing sub-teams are now sent to do some early day one pitching ahead of the heavy selling the following day. And Roisin undermines her luxury message by allowing them to sell at only £15 a candle. Katie thinks her team can get £35 for their bright yellow, ambiguously British product and tells Sarah to be quiet when she disagrees, or just because it's Sarah and telling her to be quiet is never a bad idea.

At the factory, Sanjay is doing the heavy maths and chemistry work while everyone else has a little snooze. Nurun and Lindsay pretty much admit that they can't count and are essentially useless. Karen Brady points out that Lord Siralan can't carry passengers which, given his ridiculously massive car seems a bit mean. Unfortunately, the candles look suspiciously like a glass of cold piss. But this is still the early stage, maybe they'll set nicely?

 

Piss Candles

Summit hold a meeting at a five start hotel with a massive man who has a normal-sized head or a normal-sized man with a tiny head. He seems to like the smell and will potential buy 25 candles and 25 reed defusers subject to the product not looking like piss.

Over at team Tenacity, Daniel is pitching to a country club. He is very keen to get them to buy 30 reed defusers, which seems a bit pointless as they only have 21 rooms. Daniel won't budge and is starting to sound a bit intense and creepy. Steven steps in and drops the quantity to 25 which leads to a quick deal, probably because the customers just want to get as far away from Daniel as possible. Outside, Daniel is angry at Steven for undermining his pitch, Steven thinks Daniel was being intimidating. Which is a mild way of saying 'positively unhinged'.

The next day team Summit's candle arrives and, fortunately, it no longer looks like piss having set bright yellow so that it now looks like a glass of custard. Katie says she would buy it, which. hopefully for her sake, says something about the market for this kind of thing. She wants to charge £30 a candle and won't go lower than £25. Meanwhile, Roisin plans to start selling her 'luxury' candle at £25 and go no lower than £15.

 Custard Candles

But this pricing policy goes completely out of the window as soon as they hit the street. Roisin flogs 40 reed defusers to the first gift shop they see for only £8.50 each. Meanwhile, James is leading the sub-team at a local market and is flogging candles for anything he can get, offering two for £10 in some cases. He also gets in trouble with Karen for trying to claim the candles have a recommended retail price of £45 when they haven't been recommended for retail anywhere at any price.

Not that the low prices have helped Lindsay or Nuren. Nuren is wandering around half-heartedly trying to drum up some interest in the candles, but doesn't really seem to care if they are or not. Lindsay, on the other hand, has given up entirely and is hiding behind the stall. When questioned she just says that she doesn't have the knack for sales.

Over with team Tenacity and things are not going much better. Lauren is in charge and manages to get in an argument with Sarah, largely because Sarah doesn't like being given instructions of any kind. She claims Lauren is "so bossy", which suggests she doesn't quite understand how management works. The team stick to the high prices dictated by Kate, but still manage to make some sales. All except Sarah who can't make any and decides this is because the price is too high. She starts lobbying aggressively for price cuts. What was that about bossiness?

 Anyone for a candle?

On the corporate side it's a mixed experience for both teams. Team Tenacity get off to a bad start. They meet with their country-house client who refuses to take any defusers where the label isn't straight. The team then waste time rummaging through boxes trying to find 25 defusers with straight labels. Having wasted plenty of time, they then head to a nightclub to flog the rest, presumably because it's too dark to see if the labels are straight or not.

 Looking for straight labels

Team Summit make their appointment with the giant man at the hotel. He's surprisingly not disappointed by the candles, but can't buy any defusers because the team already flogged them to the gift shop and don't have any left. Roisin phones James to see if they can get more stock, but thanks to deep discounting the team are almost out. Roisin has one more appointment so gets James to pack up and bring their remaining stock. James exits at high speed, but can't stop himself from yelling "two for £10" on the way out.

Roisin almost manages to sell the two remaining defusers, but James vetoes it, saying he can get more. He then flogs the last of the team's candle stock and throws the defusers in for free without even being asked. James may have misunderstood the nature of the task. It's the customers, not the team, he's supposed to be swindling.

 Anyone want to buy a table for a fiver?

Back in the boardroom, Lord Siral warns everyone that he's not interested in anyone claiming they can't sell, because he thinks it's easy and anyone can do it. Is this a hint of possible targets for firing? team Summit thinks Roisin did a good job as project manager and Lord Siral likes their candle. He thinks team Tenacity's candle looks like a bowl of custard and Sarah moans about the high prices. We can probably guess where this is going.


And so it does. Summit have a profit of £1569.32, but Tenacity have £1584.09. Tenacity are sent off to a spa, which gives the opportunity to be covered in funny coloured gunk while wearing swimsuits before all getting into a Jacuzzi that isn't big enough for them.

Roisin tries to defend herself by pointing out that they only lost by £15, but Lord Siral is having none of that. Team Tenacity also have lots of srock left over and if this was a real business they would be much better off. Of course if this was a real business they wouldn't have had to do everything in two days and they wouldn't have had free access to a candle factory.


Lord Siral seems particularly annoyed with James for casually ignoring the pricing policy and selling the candles for whatever he could get, which he calls panic selling. Not that Roisin has much of a defence here given that she sold off all her reed defusers for £8.50 each. James, insanely, claims that if Lord Siral had been in the same position he would have done the same thing. It's a brave or foolish person who tries to tell Lord Siralan Sugar what he would do, especially when you're telling him he would do something actively stupid.

At this point it looks like James his doomed herself, but Lord Siral, surprisingly, throws him a lifeline by turning his attention to Nurun and Lindsay, the latter of which only sold £12 worth of stuff. She's going to need a damn good defence to get out of this. But instead she pretty much agrees that she's crap, that she disappointed herself and that she isn't the person she thought she was when she came into the process. The whole thing is so sad that James has a moment of genuine feeling and reaches over to touch her shoulder. Could we be on the verge of the first Apprentice quitting? Lord Siral can't have that, he accuses Lindsay of taking someone else's seat and she's fired. Though she does get a "with regret," which is very rare in week 3.

With Lindsay gone things are looking better for Nurun. One person has been fired for being lacklustre and crap, is Lord Siral really going to go for two? Nevertheless, Roisin brings back Nurun and James into the boardroom.

Lord Siralan thinks James has some potential but needs polish. Though he doesn't specify whether he should drink it or rub it over himself. Unfortunately one of James' unpolished elements is a total inability to shut up. He keeps interrupting and decides to compare himself to Lord Siral again. Because it worked so very well the first time

Nick believes that Roisin lacks command, given that James ignored her. But given that he's ignoring Lord Siral I'm not sure lack of command is the problem. But Lord Siral has moved onto Nurun who he thinks did badly as Project Manager last week, winning more because the other team were eevrn worse. He thinks she doesn't have the ability to expand her business. She tried to defend herself, but Lord Siral just looks bored.


Unfortunately, Nurun's quiet incompetence is less entertaining than James' loud incompetence and so Nurun is fired. Though James is given special instructions to shut up and listen, though even then he can't quite bring himself to not interrupt.

After the show is over, we discover on 'You're Fired' that Lindsay is a perfectly normal person who grew her swimming academy business from ten students to over three hundred, and that Nurun had an idea for a wedding planning business for asian weddings that sounded like it might actually work. All of which sadly demonstrates that forcing people to perform a series of insane tasks and shout justifications for why it went wrong across a table may not actually be the best way to choose a business partner.


NEXT TIME: The Apprenti try to launch and online video channel. Queue lots of green screen, violent chefs and Ella-Jade being called offensive.

Week Two - 15th October 2014 - iClothes

This weeks task sees the Apprenti dragged to Imperial College London. Will their task involve building a mercenary army to conquer a wave of foreign territory on behalf of Lord Siral's empire? Sadly not, there just here because the place is associated with engineering and technology. But it wouldn't be an Apprentice task if the link between location and task was that direct. So Lord Siralan throws a curve ball, the teams will have to develop wearable technology. Which, technically, could just mean putting your phone on your head.

Lord Siral has decided that 'No-socks' Robert is an innovative, fashion-minded, Shoreditch obsessive and that this would be a good task for him to PM. He doesn't want to dictate the project managers. Remember that statement, it may be important later.

After a quick opportunity to coo over a dress with lights on it, the teams get down to business. And Robert weasels out of being PM with lightning speed. Apparently he is only interested in high fashion and this is too mainstream. Because everyone is wearing clothes with LEDs all over them these days. Nick Hewer says that going against Lord Siralan is "brave," in a tone suggesting much in the way that 'the Charge of the Light Brigade' was brave. Solomon is briefly in the firing line, because he knows about technology, but then Scott jumps in having been to a conference on wearable tech only two weeks earlier. The boys are pursuaded and Scott gets the job.

Over at team no-name, the girls are having to come up with a new name, Decadence having been rejected in the previous week, possibly because it suggests over-indulgence and something that's long past its best. Jemma suggests Tenacity or Pursuit, but manages to pronounce pursuit like proscuito and so Tenacity wins out.

The girls then get down to the important business of getting out of being PM. Bianca reckons her hosiery business doesn't mean she knows anything about clothes. In the end Nurun gets bullied into it on the grounds that her market stall sold some scalfs along with various other bits of vaguely ethnic stuff.

Back with team Summit and project manager Scott, who has an unfortunate tendency to pull a face like he just smelled something unpleasant and whose management style consists of repeating the same word over and over again in an increasingly loud voice. "Guys, guys, guys, guys, guys, guys." After Scotts idea, for a jumper that monitors you health, is rejected he starts sulking and tells the team they have to come up with an idea without him. Solomon suggests leggings with lights on them. Though he sabotages it a bit by suggesting they would light up as you achieve your goals. How the leggings would know what your goals were or what progress you had made towards them is not explained. In the end, the team goes with Sanjay's idea for a t-shirt with a panel that can show photos from a phone.

The smell of success?

Armed with ideas for a jacket with colour changing lapels, a built in mobile phone charger and heater, team Tenacity divide in order to gather feedback from fashion professionals and the general public. The public, by which we mean one passer-by in a slightly mad yellow jacket, loves the colour changing lapels. Naturally, this is the idea the professionals hate and they prefer the mobile phone charger.

 Public support

Summit have divided into a fashion team and a technology team, with Scott leading the fashion team and no-one leading the technology team because Scott didn't put anyone in charge. For someone who didn't want to be PM and thinks this task is outside his area of expertise, Robert has a lot to say about t-shirts, jumpers and material.

Unfortunately, the tech team hit a snag. The photo t-shirt would take ages and has already been done. This neatly sums up the problem with this sort of task, that it is essentially impossible to come up with an idea that is good, achievable in a day and that does not already exist. The boys contact their team manager, but after listening to a lot of waffle from Robert about jumpers are told they need to come up with solutions not problems and left to sort it out.

The girls aren't doing much better. Unable to agree on the features they are rapidly developing a heated jacket with a phone charger and light up lapels. Nurun thinks this is too busy but can't decide what to get rid of and seems fed up with the whole process. Katie decides to take charge, which just leads to more arguments, and somehow solar panels get added to the shoulder pads. But the team do compromise, by replacing the colour-changing lapels with a series of lights that will flash. So that's massively reduced the complexity.

 Commanding

With no sub-manager, no direction from Scott and no ideas the Summit technology team has collapsed into chaos. In the end, James suggests a jumper with a camera in it and team run with it for want of a better idea. The jumper then quickly picks up a logo in the form of the word "On air" written in LEDs across the front to make it absolutely clear to everyone when they're being filmed.

The camera-jumper, now named Emoti-shirt despite having nothing to do with emotions and not being a shirt, arrives the next morning in a suspiciously massive bag which makes it look like a painting. The finished product is suprisingly decent-looking, apart from what appears to be a trail of Christmas tree lights emblazoned across the chest. Meanwhile, Team Tenacity's jacket has yet to even arrive, it being so complicated that there has been a delay.

 Quite big

Fortunately, Team Summit decide to have a massive argument to kill time. The sub-team complain that Scott avoided key decisions and left them without a sub-team leader. Scott, who seems to have smelled something even worse than usual, belittles the team for needing hand holding. When the sub-team complain that Robert was giving orders despite not wanting to be PM, he decides to re-write history and claims he was overwhelmed by Scott's enthusiasm, before, again, trying to explain the difference between high street and high fashion to a room full of men who only ever wear suits.

By the time this is all over, Tenacity's jacket has arrived and appears to have picked up massive solar-powered shoulder pads. Bianca is shocked to discover the solar panels have to go on the outside. Not to mention the conceptual flaw of a solar-powered heating jacket. After last week's performance, Sarah has been reduced to a mannequin while the others argue around her.

On the way to their first pitch with JD Sports, the rest of Team Summit make fun of Solomon for knowing how the camera works. The tune changes when they take a demonstration video and it comes out sideways. Scott claims this is a birds-eye view, which suggests he doesn't quite understand how birds work. When asked if they can rotate the image, Steven agrees and then turns the laptop on its side.

 Solutions not problems

But it's better than the teams other pitch. Daniel is confident that he can translate his market-trading skills into corporate pitching. Unfortunately, he seems to have taken the mantra 'the customer is always right' too much to heart and agrees with every criticism the customers make. 'Yes it looks a bit Christmassy', 'no, women wouldn't want people staring at the lights on their chest', 'yes I do have a face like a gorilla's arse'. When one customer raises the question of whether you could wear it in a night club because of issues with filming, Daniel says he wouldn't wear it in public. At this point James feels the need to step in and Daniel rapidly back tracks, claiming he wouldn't wear it in public at night.

 Very good point, I am a cretin

In the car on the way to the last pitch, Daniel denies that he ever said he wouldn't wear it in public. Pity no-one took a video of him saying it. Though, if they had, he would have had to have turned his head sideways to watch it. When asked by Scott how it went, Daniel claims the pitch was "absolutely outstanding". Then the rest of the team remind him that he said he wouldn't wear their own product. But apart from that, how was the pitch? "Poor," says Mark. Scott decides to take Daniel into the final pitch anyway, because... reasons. Then Scott demonstrates the jumper by dancing around like a bird looking for a worm and Robert claims 'privacy is history', a view supported by many journalists at the News of the World.

Not that Tenacity are doing much better. Ella-Jade struggles to find a coherent theme linking the jacket's features, largely because there isn't one. In the end she resorts to giggling and flicking her hair. Bianca loses control of limbs momentarily and knocks over a sign. Nurun puts in a painfully nervous performance, calling their product a drug before remembering it's a jacket and then losing her thread completely and mumbling "oh dear".

Trashing a sign

Back in the boardroom, Jemma is very keen to take the credit for the name 'Tenacity', possibly because it was the only thing she did all episode or in the series so far. Nurun claims she was coereced into being project manager, and Bianca is criticised for not taking the job given her business involves tights. At this point Bianca decides this was a technology task, which doesn't help much because Nurun isn't in the business of selling robo-scalves.

Lord Siral is deeply unimpressed that Robert wimped out of being project manager and also wonders why Solomon didn't step up given that it was a technology task. He doesn't much like the camera-jumper either, saying "it brings a whole new meaning to 'I saw you coming.'" Is that a joke? I'm not sure, it sounds like it's meant to be, but I can't figure out what the funny bit is. The candidates offer a few nervous giggles. The problem with a Lord Sugar joke is no-one know how much to laugh. Too little suggests you don't think it's funny and too much could be taking the piss.

In the end, nobody much like either product. The website Firebox took a punt on 250 of the jackets and that's it. Tenacity a duly sent off on a jetpack ride. This is in no way a joke.

 Yes, this is really happening

It turns out that when Lord Siral said he didn't want to dictate the project manager, he actually meant he did. It's tricky this business speak. Robert is thus immediately fired for "bottling it". In the car Robert is unrepentant, claiming that just because you can drive a canoe doesn't mean you can drive a £250,000 luxury yacht. Fair enough Robert, but were you really expecting to win claiming that only thing you can do is ride a canoe?

With Robert gone, Scott tries to pin the blame on Solomon for wimping out of being PM and Daniel for his crappy pitch. The rest of the team, and particularly James, blame Daniel, but also Scott for the lack of direction and the fact that all his sub-team actually did was design a grey jumper. Solomon defends himself by pointing out his idea for the light up leggings.

Lord Siral thinks that Solomon wasn't forceful enough and that Daniel can't sell to the trade. But in the end he fires Scott because he sulked when they didn't like his idea and Lord Siral thinks this is just another kind of hiding.

Back at the house, everyone is surprised to see Daniel. Daniel asks if James is happy to see him back, before pulling a face that suggests he is planning to make James his bitch

Next Time: The teams sell home fragrance products. Queue more frantic running, Sarah thinks Lauren is so bossy and Steven thinks Daniel is intimidating people. Possibly James.

Week One - October 14th 2014 - Ten years of tat

It's been ten years since the Apprentice began. We know this because the narrator keeps telling us. After ten years Lord Siralan Sugar is looking a bit weary and confused, like he can't quite remember what he's supposed to be doing.

 What?

With this being the first episode, we're treated to some obligatory business bollocks from the candidates up front. Ella Jade claims "the future belongs to people who believe in the beauty of their dreams," whatever that means. Steven says "my idea will make Lord Sugar a fortune and change the world. That's not arrogant because it's all true." Good to see your arrogance is backed up by concrete fact. James says "I would give myself a 9/10 for attractiveness." But, as anyone who seen Kung Fu Panda knows, there is no charge for attractiveness.

My favourite is probably Scott's "everyone sees a friend in me, but they don't see me coming at them from behind." A statement that manages to sound like a euphemism and proclaims that he is a lying, deceiving back stabber at the same time. Exactly the sort of person you would want to do business with.

 A gratuitous shot of the Shard, they'll be a lot of these

Having dragged 16 candidate in the boardroom, Lord Siral promises to do things differently this year and brings in 4 more. Which comes as a shock to no-one except the candidates themselves, given they've been all over the BBC website, assorted newspapers and magazines for weeks. But there will only be 12 shows. So, Lord Siral, claims he may choose to fire more than one candidate a week. I think he's confusing the words may and must, unless he's planning to have four candidates left over to use as draft-excluders.

The first task is a bog standard sales task. But Lord Siral has given the Apprenti all the products from the week one sales tasks from the last ten years, from lemons, to cleaning products, to coffee to T-shirts. Will all the tasks be a mashup of previous years tasks? I want to see one where they have to design a beer powered exercise app that protects parents from bathwater or sell caravans at a wedding fair.

The candidati are divided into boys and girls, because we're doing things differently this series. Why not divide them by height, or alphabetically or rock/paper/scissors or something? But they do have to choose a project manager straight away. The boys decide that the sales people should concentrate on selling and appoint Felipe, a lawyer, to be manager. The girls decide to go the opposite way and make Sarah a project manager because she can apparently sell ice to the Eskimos, a statement backed up by no evidence at all.

On the way to their temporary apprentice house, we hear the project manager's strategies. Felipe's is apparently to talk about himself in the third person. Apparently "Felipe is a dreamer who believes everything is possible." At this point I'm not sure if the small columbian man on the screen is actually Felipe, or just his representative and the real Felipe is hiding in a basement somewhere communicating all his ideas through an earpiece.

Sarah's plan is to make everyone like her. She goes about this by telling the girls that they will do better at selling because "females" look nicer and insisting they all where short skirts and lots of make up. Interesting, we've had comedy 1970s sexist candidates before, but they've usually been men.

Felipe does the all important cereal inventory

The first task, after Robert has finished complaining about the lack of show curtains and wardrobe space, is to come up with team names. The boys suggest "Dynamic" and "Viper" before Daniel suggests "Summit." With his accent this sounds pretty much like he's trying to say "something" prompting obvious jokes. Well I'm not going to be obvious. I'm just going to enjoy the thought of the candidates stranded miles from anywhere in a freezing cold location where no-one can hear or see them. But the team decide to go with it and Daniel reckons this is evidence that everyone will listen to him. He says there's no I in team, but there are five in "Individual brilliance." This is true, but there are also five I's in "irritating shit-stick." Make of that what you will.

The girls decide to call themselves "Decadence." Nurun suggests it. She doesn't really know what it means, but she likes that it sounds a bit like decade. If you're going down that route why not team Decapod or Decathalon or Decoration? Or just call them team Decade and have done with it?

Next morning, and I mean morning Felipe is dragged out of bed at 4.30 to answer the phone in his pyjamas,  the team are packed off to Leadenhall market to pick up their stuff and brainstorm.

Both teams quickly hit on the idea of adding value to their products. Sarah thinks they can do this by cutting the lemons into slices, making lots of tiny, thin lemons. The rest of the team thinks is a terrible idea. What about selling coffee? But Sarah doesn't think the team has understood, what if they cut the lemons into small slices? No. We could print something on the t-shirts. But guys, what if we take a knife and slice the lemons? NO!

Team Summit also want to print on the t-shirts, but like the idea of selling gourmet hot dogs instead of coffee. Felipe divides the team based on sales and management experience. He puts Chiles Cartwright, presumably the result of a merger between Giles Cartwright and Charles Cartwright, in charge of a sub-team. At team Decadence, Sarah is finding all this management stuff too confusing an divides the team down the middle across the table.

Roison and her sub team are sent to print t-shirts, but don't know what to print on them. They settle on #London, because that's pretty much what a slogan is these days, a word with a hashtag in front of it.

Meanwhile, Sarah's team have set up their coffee stall, though there seems to be some disagreement over the division of labour, with Sarah taking a lot of orders, but not making any coffee because she has to manage the whole team. She admits that this will annoy some people, but that's the way it goes. So much for making everyone like her.

But there is soon a crisis demanding Sarah's attention. She gets a phone call from Roisin saying the team didn't bring any "seed capital" to the printer. After figuring out that that means money, the team have to rush across London to pick up some cash so they can pay the printer. But it does give them the chance to stop at a restaurant on route and sell some potatoes, leading to the faintly comic sight of two women in skirts and high heels trying to drag a back of potatoes across London.

 Running in heels with potatoes

At least team Decadence are selling something. Thanks to Robert, a "creative" candidate who owns a collection of stupid jackets and who doesn't believe in socks, they have decided their hot dogs must be gourmet. This has lead to the hot dog sub-team being trapped in an organic supermarket until midday arguing about ingredients.

 Socks are for the weak

Chiles sub-team isn't doing much better. They seem to be doing a lot of running, and dropping a sponge in the process, but not actually getting anywhere. When they eventually make it to the printers they spend over an hour deciding on a design before settling on "buy this T-shirt," which actually manages to beat team Decadence for sheer creative bankruptcy.

 Dropping the sponge

With time to kill before the t-shirts are ready, Steven thinks they should sell the potatoes at a nearby shop apparently famous for its mash potato. Given that Steven thinks that his business idea will change the world, he may have a slightly dubious relationship with facts. But I like him because he sounds like a cross between a dance choreographer and a few good men, and because he disagrees with the rest of the team about everything. Chiles decides to make a "fundamental" decision to ignore Steven and try to flog balloons to a party firm, pausing only to pick up the sponge they dropped earlier.

...and picking it up again

At the balloon pitch, Mark emphasises the importance of letting him speak and that no-one should interrupt him. A statement not so much asking for trouble as setting up a TV talent show with 20 million viewers scouting for trouble. Surprisingly, it isn't Steven, but James, who can't stop putting his oar in. In the end Chiles decides to apologise on behalf of his pet Northerner.

Decadence coffee has packed up for the day and Sarah has decided to try and sell cleaning products to a zoo. Why a zoo? Possibly because she just wanted to take a trip there. Though this does lead to the odd image of five business women in skirts and heels trying to sell a bucket of cleaning gear to two zoo employees next to a penguin enclosure like they're some kind of very odd exhibit. Sarah reckons the zoo is getting a bargain as she's knocked down the price of the cleaning products from a random figure of £300 to a still random but lesser amount of £250. She's not sure if the products are eco-friendly, but thinks they shouldn't be given to the penguins. I don't think Sarah understand how zoos work. The animals are not employees and, generally, aren't expected to do any cleaning.

 The outcome of a brilliant pitch

Having spent all day waiting for the T-shirts to be printed, neither team has any time to actually sell them. Decadence tries to recoup some of their losses by selling them back to the printer for £60, when they paid £150 to get them printed. Ella-Jade protests "We were going to sell them for £10 each." "But you didn't though," observes the printer.

But its better than team Summit, who have given up on the T-shirts completely in order to sell potatoes to a restaurant. James calls them "paris mipers" and Steven thinks they're less a potato than an experience (and that they "shine in the glistening sun." Is that a good thing?), but they still get £75 for them. They then charge into another restaurant and offer to clean the windows, looking like a cross between a cub scout pack and a protection racket.

 "Let us clean your windows mate. You wouldn't want them to get 'dirty' if you know what I mean."

The rest of team Summit have set up an off flower and lemon stall. Daniel seems to be doing well and Scott tries to follow his lead, though he seems to have missed the subtle distinction between cheeky flirting and just plain creepy. Meanwhile, team Decadence round off the day by flogging potatoes and, unsliced, lemons to a restaurant.

Don't make eye contact

Back in the boardroom Lord Siral makes the obvious joke about Team Summit's name, but the team agrees that Felipe was a good project manager. Team Decadence put the collective boot into Sarah and Lord Siral decides their team name is unacceptable after Nick says it implies decay, decline and moral turpitude. Given the name was going to be rejected, they could at least have really gone for it and called themselves 'Team Communism', 'Team Occupy' or 'Team Alan Sugar is a tedious old git'.

After ten years, we all know how this series works. Whichever team gets the most criticism before the result is announced is bound to have won and so it proves to be, the girls win £753.50 to £696.70. The girls are sent to the London Eye to recreate the first Apprentice team treat from ten years ago. Sarah has at least enough sense to not try to claim any credit and Ella-Jade says they should learn from their mistakes, presumably by not letting Sarah do anything ever again.

Back at the boardroom, Filipe has decided to blame everything on Steven because no-one likes him and Chiles said it was his fault. Lord Siral concedes that Steven is an irritant, but thinks Summit's failure was down to wasting time over hot dogs and leaving the t-shirts at the printers. He also warns Felipe that he will frown upon a decision to bring someone back for the wrong reasons. So Felipe brings back Chiles because he left the t-shirts at the printers and Robert because he doesn't have socks, and insisted on adding pointless extras to the hot dogs.

 An irritant

Lord Siral thinks Fillipe didn't manage and Robert is arty-farty. But Karen says Chiles didn't sell anything. Robert claims that the hot dog task was delegated to him, so it's basically still Fillipe's fault. Fillipe still thinks he was an excellent manager. Its early in the process and he is still finding the strengths and weaknesses of the team and the T-shirts are all Chiles fault. Lord Siral is fed up of talking about t-shirts and hot dogs, so maybe he shouldn't have asked the teams to sell them?

Chiles is fired because Lord Siral decides the T-shirts were his fault, but lets Robert and Felipe off because their jointly responsible for the t-shirts.

Steven, meanwhile, is managing to complain about being interrupted back at the house and everyone is convinced that Chiles is coming back. So they had that wrong. Filipe reckons that boardroom is the worst experience you will every have. Personally, if being moaned at by a grumpy old hedgehog from behind a glass table is the worst experience of my life I'll consider myself very lucky.

NEXT TIME: The teams design dresses with lights on them, everyone shouts at Scott and someone is a complete and utter shambles