Week Eleven - Interview with the Vampires

Ten weeks and fifteen candidates down and we're on to the interview round. I have written before about how much I dislike this round. I enjoy watching a bunch of disagreeable imbeciles spew business bollocks, trip over their own shoelaces, fall out over the most trivial things and sacrifice their dignity on the altar of their own hubris, the Interview round is something else entirely.

 No Laptop for you Solomon

Instead of watching the Apprenti fail dismally because of their own personal flaws, we watch four people even more obnoxious than them abuse them to their face without any recourse or means of escape. CV's that we're written to attract a BBC casting director six months ago are pored over like citizenship documents and lies and distortions that the program makers have known about since day 2 are flourished like major scandals.

Or at least that's usually how it goes. Whether because of a conscious effort to tone down the bullying or because this year's candidates are simply more credible than normal, the episode seems to lack the usual spark. We have a few exaggerated achievements, some small scale lying and a couple of business plans not up to scratch, but no-one proclaims themselves to be the son of a god, or the greatest human being to ever live. No-one introduces a business plan that would require their competitors to actively put themselves out of business or reveals that their business plan actually belongs to someone else. Consequently, the abuse is toned down as well. We only have one moment of real excitement, of which more below, the rest is depressingly pedestrian.

Plus the interviews are a pain in the arse to recap because the program-makers like to jump cut around the candidates and interviews so you lose all sense of time and any attempt at a sequential account collapses into an explanation of which candidate is with which interviewer at any given moment.

The interviewers vary year on year, presumably because there is only so much concentrated hatred the body can take. Only Claude Litner has been around for all ten years, which says a lot about him. This years interviewees include the aforementioned Claude Litner, Lord Siralan's formal global troubleshooter, whatever that means, though I like to think it includes leading bands of mercenaries in South America. Mike Soutar is another old hand whose line is more smug pedantry rather than outright abuse. Claudine Collins is a psychologist of some kind who is supposed to "expose the people behind the plans" or allow them to cry at length about their life story. Margaret Montford has been a fixture of these things since she quit full-time Apprentice watching, but she's absent this year possibly persuing opportunities with BBC4 and, instead, we have erstwhile Apprentice and self-proclaimed God of Thunder, Ricky Martin. Ricky's in recruitment, which justifies his inclusion, but the real question is will he sympathise with the Apprenti or take vicarious revenge for the indignities heaped on him two years earlier?

Mike Soutar's job appears to be trolling the Apprentii with the bits of dirt the production office have dug up. He starts small with the revelation that Daniel didn't win a salesman of the year award, he just had the best sales figures of the year. This is less a lie than an admin error. Slightly more fun is his digging out of Solomon's phone and making him pitch the ideas he claims to have noted down in the middle of the night. These include a weird concept for an internet-based breakfast delivery service and a singled-bed hire service for mid-afternoon naps, which Mike summarises as "online shopping" and "a hotel". Which, while technically true, is a bit like describing the Apprentice as a TV show and declaring the concept redundant as we have plenty of those.

Mike Soutar looking typically suave

Mike's best moment comes with Roisin. Her business plan is to produce a range of healthy ready meals using something called konjac root, which apparently has no taste and few calories but can fill you up. Roisin is treating this ingredient like the discovery of penicillin and is convinced that she will revolutionise the world. Mike pulls out a bag he got from a health food shop and dumps on the desk in front of her. But of course no-one has made a ready meal using it have they? Turns out they have, and Mike has one to show off. Roisin is left saying she "was not aware of that" as her business plan collapses around her.

But you can't get it as a ready meal...

...oh apparently you can

Claude Litner is an old hand at the interview round and his role has generally been to be as actively unpleasant and offensive as possible. I have previously compared him to Baron Greenback and the Goblin King. But Claude seems to be losing his edge somewhat. We have seen on "You're fired" a couple of times where as he comes across as perfectly reasonable, if a bit grumpy and his rudeness increasingly comes across as a comedy persona with no real bite. This year, he actually says to Daniel that if he keeps talking rubbish he "will have you". Is he actually planning to start a fight over the desk? By the time Mark gets into the room, he's given up and actually complements him on giving a good answer.

 Claude in a characteristically cheerful mood

His only moment of real flare comes from Solomon. He lulls him into a false sense of security by telling him his CV was a pleasure to read. Apparently Solomon had declined to go down the usual route of claiming to be the son of a God and King of the Universe in favour of just listing his actual achievements. Okay, this is praiseworthy, but anyone finding pleasure in a half decent CV really needs to get out more. But the tables are turned when Claude looks at Solomon's business plan. It's only eight pages long and one of them is devoted to a page of multi-coloured logos that look like sail boats. Claude is outraged, in fact he bangs on about the sail boats so much it looks like it may be the boats specifically that are the problem. Was his family killed in a tragic boating accident? Claude throws Solomon out of the room, and he's in such a hurry to leave he almost heads out the window until Claude redirects him. It just shows that Claude's gone soft, a few years ago he would have let Solomon jump.

 Solomon is shocked to receive a compliment...

...and now we're back to normal

Claudine Collins was introduced last year and her job is to evaluate the candidate psychologically. This leads to Daniel treating it like a therapy session, complaining about the hot tub incident at length before going on about how much the Apprentice has made him a better person. When Bianca gets into the room she bangs on about her professionalism to the point where Claudine questions if she actually has a personality. She thinks she may be hiding behind a mask. Bianca doesn't respond to this very well, and ends up crying in the lift. One advantage of the ridiculously massive building is it gives the Apprenti plenty of time to reflect between floors.

 Claudine Collins...

 ...makes Bianca cry

Ricky "the Fitness" Martin, former Apprentice winner and self-proclaimed son of Odin, is very much a junior partner in all of this. He tries to score some points of Mark by claiming his CV is deceptive because it implies he was a Sales Manager for the entire time he worked for his last company, when he started as a consultant. He then makes him role-play a sales call, in which he feigns disinterest and then tells Mark that there are things he hasn't thought about. His best moment is really a hold over from Claudine, when Bianca bursts into tears mid-way through the interview. But then if her whole personality is just a mask, maybe she's just crying as a tactic?

 The Thunder God Thor

Mark and Ricky are basically the same but with different hair

Back in the boardroom, the interviewers and Lord Siralan are all very chummy, they seem to be the only ones who find his dismal puns even slightly amusing. Its fifty-fifty whether their simply a bunch of arse-kissers or if years of the business world have left their senses of humour as stunted and dessicated as Lord Siralan's.

 Boardroom levity

We really don't learn anything hear we didn't already know. Solomon has achieved quite a lot for his age, but is quite immature and his business plan is barely a suggestion. Roisin is a good candidate with a wildly over ambitious idea. Daniel is a bit of a chancer, but his idea to expand his pub quiz business into an events business is quite a good one, even if the plan to get customers to plan their own event via a website is a bit far-fetched. Bianca has hit on a really good idea for skin-toned tights, but there is some question over whether she understands the manufacturing side. Mark is a good candidate with a solid, even slightly boring business plan, but there's some question of whether he will crack under pressure.

The candidates are brought back in and Solomon is the first to be dispatched. He goes out smiling, thanking Karen and Nick, and keeps his dignity, of which he never had an ample supply, intact.

 Solomon goes out smiling

Roisin comes next. She falls into the same trap as James from last year, of refusing to modify her plan and insisting that it's so brilliant that the world will fall at her feet. The last straw seems to be her plan to blow through the initial £250,000 in three months and then go to the bank for half a million more. Lord Siralan seems to think of this as the business equivalent of an open relationship and he isn't into that sort of thing. It doesn't help that her experience of the industry consists of eating food, speaking to six people and her immediate family. Roisin is gone.

 And now Roisin is gone

With the ludicrous characters gone, and who would have thought that Roisin would turn out to be one of them, Lord Siralan sends the others out while he has a chat with Nick and Karen. Karen still doesn't like Mark, she thinks he'll collapse under pressure.

Back in the boardroom Bianca turns out to have done her manufacturing research and it looks like her proposal is solid. Daniel is willing to drop his website plan and argues that he is the only one with experience running a business in the industry he wants to enter. Lord Siralan actually thinks that's a good point. In the end, Daniel's improvement over the past few weeks isn't enough to get him to the final, he gets a fired with regret and Lord Sirlan says he is a better person than he was eleven weeks ago. Daniel is magnanimous in defeat wishing the others good luck.

 Daniel falls at the final hurdle

Back in the cab, Mark says he can't wait to win. The trouble with Mark is it's hard to tell when he's joking.

 The finalists

Next Time: The candidate pick teams from the eight losing Apprenti who have nothing better to do with themselves than come back and suffer further humiliation. Daniel claims he's motivated by his hatred of Mark, so much for magnanimity. And will Mark choke in the final presentation, I think I can hear a cough, though it may be a death rattle.

Episode 11 - July 10th 2013 - Inquisition

It's time for the ritual humiliation in front of four obnoxious monsters task, or the Interview task. In this task we are invited to sympathise with the candidates by watching them be abused to their faces by people who are, somehow, even more annoying than they. The worst offender being Claude Littner, a bald, mutant cyborg like creature with no apparent lower body, whose role is ostensibly to critique the candidates business plan, but whose actually job is to spit bile at them across a desk. Every time at least one interview devolves into a barked exchange in which he insists 'x' which the candidate proclaims 'not x' over and over. Weirdly, he can be quite complimentary about them in the boardroom afterwards, which shows what a performance this all is.

 The Victims

Actually, the task seems to have been toned down somewhat this year. Only Claude is truly vile. Other than him we have Mike Soutar who comes across more as smug and creepy, like a sexual predator with a delusional sense of his personal charm, rather than aggressive. Then there's Margaret Mountford, whose mode is stern headmistress, more disappointed than angry. And finally the newly arrived Claudine Collins who wants to understand the candidates as people, which, disturbingly, leads more than one them to treat her like a therapist.

Claude Littner

Leah, having drifted through tasks thanks to luck more than judgement, actually comes across as the most competent candidate. Her business plan, to set up a chain of cosmetic (or aesthetic as she prefers to label them) surgery clinics, seems well thought through if slightly ethically suspect. She's also responsible for two of the best moments of the episode. Firstly, Mike Soutar invites her to critique his face and she does so with medical precision. It's as close as any candidate gets to insulting the interviewer. Then Claude attempts to argue her sums don't add up, at which point she reels off her entire first years figures, right down to the cleaner, from memory. The best Claude can come up with by way of response is that she talks fast.

 How could you improve on this face?

Leah, treating triumph and disaster just the same

Poor Francesca is stuck being labelled boring by comparison. Her business proposal is to set up a chain of dance studios, which is essentially a bigger version of her current company. Unfortunately, she hasn't had much luck growing her existing business and isn't on top of her figures. She has to admit that she pulled her £5 million turnover figure out of her arse. At least she gets the opportunity to complain to Claudine Collins about how some of the candidates, by which she means Luisa, are ruthless, manipulative, game-players.

 Francesca, caught out

Luisa, meanwhile, appears to have used her CV to settle old scores, slagging off her old boss as being an idiot. Her business plan is vague on the specifics. It has something to do with baking supplies, but it isn't clear if she means ingredients or equipment and her plan is apparently to set up a brand she can sell to retailers. She does know the industry, which is considered a plus, but its hard to shake the feeling that the interviewers find her about as annoying as the audience. We do get one moment of greatness from her when she makes an innocuous comparison between herself and Lord Siral and he reacts like Ayatollah Khomeini if she just announced she was the Prophet Muhammad.

 Er... yeah

Neil has generally been a strong candidate, apart from his habits of claiming credit for everything and acting like the Project Manager even when he isn't. But in front of Claudine Collins he admits that his deceased father wanted him to be a professional footballer, an ambition he failed to achieve. His insane over-confidence now comes across as a psychological defence from someone who can't face the possibility of failure and a need to impress a man who can't possibly acknowledge him. It's all a bit sad really.

Claudine Collins probes Neil

  Staring into the void

Unfortunately, his online estates agency business turns out to be completely bonkers. The initial plan, to set up a web portal from which users can attempt to sell their own house, probably has a market, if not as massive a one as Neil thinks. But he destroys it by claiming that other Estate Agencies will also advertise there, suggesting they essentially undercut themselves. Neil's mad ambition now extends to the belief that enemies will kill themselves in the face of his awesome might. Soutar tries to offer him an out by asking what he would do if Lord Siral like him, but not his plan. But Neil stampedes in the wrong direction by insisting that he would somehow convince Lord Siral that it was a good idea in the face of good-sense, logic and the laws of physics. Amazingly, the only thing Neil believes in more than himself is his crazy business proposal.

Mike is in no way happy to criticise Neil's business plan

Still, if Neil's experience is a surprise, it's nothing compared to Jordan. He seems to start out well with Margaret, a bit smug but reasonably eloquent. Claudine Collins draws blood when she notes that his claims about his time as President of the Oxford University Entrepreneurs society may have been exaggerated, but candidates have survived worse than this. Mike Soutar tests his claim to be able to solve a Rubik's cube in three minutes. He fails, but if that's the worst he can do it isn't much. The real shock comes from Claude. Turns out Jordan's silent partner is actually the owner of an existing online games company. Jordan doesn't have a stake, but still wants Lord Siral to invest, and is only willing to offer 15.39% of the company he doesn't own. What's more, the silent partner is only the co-founder of the company along with a mysterious third person about whom we learn nothing. Claude declares Jordan to be a parasite and throws him out of the room. To his credit, Jordan doesn't thank him for his time, to his shame he doesn't flip the table or punch Claude in the face.

 Margaret Mountford eyes up Jordan...

...and is less than impressed

Back in the boardroom the Inquisitors are all obsequious smiles and ares-kissing in front of Lord Siral. They're also the only people in the country who find his laboured puns amusing in anything other than an ironic way (his best, in response to Luissa's baking plan is to say he's not going to spend hundreds and thousands on hundreds and thousands). The conclusions are essentially that Jordan is a non-starter, he's a facilitator not an entrepreneur and his business plan isn't even his own. Neil is a good candidate with a hopelessly misguided faith in a terrible idea. Francesca has a good idea, but little evidence of solid business skills. Luisa knows her market but could be a nightmare to work with. And Leah is probably the most credible, but there's something a bit ethically dodgy about her plan. Lord Siral actually uses the word 'moral' which doesn't trip of his tongue easily.

All friends here

With the Inquisitors dismissed, the Apprenti return. Though only briefly in Jordan's case, as Lord Siral dispatches him immediately. Apparently this shows how serious the process is. Though I would argue the opposite, given Jordan has made it to week 11 even though his plan was a non-starter and he's kept more credible candidates out of the final.

Bye bye Jordan

Next goes Neil, who proves to be not only incapable of taking a hint, but not capable of taking a straight up statement of fact. The only thing he cares about more than his father's approval and Lord Siral's money is the stupid business plan. In the face of reason, common-sense and Lord Siral actually telling him to drop the idea if he wants to stay in he still defends it, slowly collapsing emotionally and yet, somehow, incapable of changing course. This is the tragedy to Jordan's farce, even Lord Siral appears to be wiping away a tear as Neil exists.

 Neil tries not to tear up

...and so does Lord Siral!

With her business acumen no longer in dispute, Leah is tested heavily on her ethical standards. When Lord Siral pushes her to see if there is anyone she would refuse to treat, for a moment I, and I think Leah, thought he was setting her up. "What, refuse to take someones money, what kind of business person are you?" But in the end, it seems having some ethical scruples are considered a good thing and she is allowed to progress to the final.

That leaves Francesca and Luisa. Luisa is a nightmare, but Francesca is dull. The outcome is pretty much inevitable and the finalists are Leah and Luisa. Somehow, despite a terrible performance for the first three weeks, we have ended up with an all women final. It really shows the value of these tasks in picking a winner.

 Finalists celebrate

Next Time: The Final and the finalists get to pick teams from the eliminated candidates who, with no stake in the process, can just pull faces at the camera. And at least one candidate has some kind of major disaster, that will probably turn out to be a lot less serious than the preview suggests.