Week Ten - Dessert Warfare

The setting for this week's task announcement is Tate Britain, justified on the ground that Sir Henry Tate made his money from sugar and the task involves designing a range of desserts. I'm not sure using these grandiose settings is a good idea seen as they tend to make Lord Siralan look even more tiny than he actually is. Lord Siralan has decided that because there was some "argie-bargie" in team Tenacity, he is going to move Daniel to team Summit and Sanjay to Tenacity. If he was so keen to avoid "argie-bargie" he should probably have separated Mark and Daniel a few weeks back. He also decides that Katie will lead team Tenacity, because she wants to open a restaurant, and Roisin will lead Summit because she plans to launch a range of ready meals.

Sanjay takes the opportunity of the move to immediately slag off Bianca for always covering her back. Personally, I would say Bianca's tendency to suddenly say something incredibly stupid like "you're our last hope" or "you can have exclusivity for the whole of Westminster" is her worst quality, but to each their own. Sanjay has an idea for cheesecakes themed around tea. Roisin suggests the name "Tea cakes" which would be great if it didn't already exist. How about theming the around oranges you could call them "Jaffa cakes".

Over at team Tenacity, Katie has decided to take charge of designing the product, while Mark and Sanjay handle the branding. This sounds sensible, more than one Project Manager has come unstuck because they let some idiot ruin the product. Unfortunately, it turns out Katie's business proposal is to set up a restaurant that only serves healthy food, not particularly compatible with designing a product made almost entirely out of sugar and fat.


Meanwhile, Roisin decides she should be in charge of branding and wants to take Bianca with her. Solomon argues that he should be on the branding team because he know nothing about food. Roisin thinks he doesn't know about branding either, but when he says he designed the board game box a few weeks back she caves. In the car, we discover that Solomon can't hear the difference between 'camomile' and 'caramel'. Probably best kept out of the kitchen.

Katie is keen to add unusual flavours to her range of trifles, unfortunately she turns out to be an aspiring restaurateur who has never eaten food before. A Michelin starred chef advises her not to go too weird. Katie takes this on board, before dumping a tablespoon of saffron, the world's most expensive ingredient, into the trifle.

 Not so much a hint as a Chinese burn

Sanjay is keen to use the word "trifle" in the name of the product, and suggests "a trifle nice" and "a trifle good" both of which sound dangerously accurate. They finally settle on "a trifle different" which is better, but combined with packaging the looks like someone has thrown up on a table cloth.

Over at Tenacity, Daniel is out of his comfort zone, having been taken for a tea tasting session and been confronted with oolong tea. Daniel, now treating everything as a conspiracy to make him look unsophisticated and stupid, claims that oolong doesn't taste like tea. He then does himself no favours by struggling to find a way to get egg into a mixer. The branding team are doing a better job, with a relatively subtle label and the name "tea pot". Why is this team so determined to use a name for something that already exists?

 Daniel is confused by tea...

...and struggles with a food mixer

The next day, the project managers decide who will be pitching. Katie decides to let everyone have a turn. Roisin decides to take the first pitch along with Bianca, and says Daniel can have a go at one of the later pitches, but if the first goes well she won't mess with the formula. Daniel says he's fine with that and then criticises Roisin behind her back. He thinks she's in love with Bianca. I'm not sure if it's love, she just likes her more than Daniel, which really isn't saying much.

Before the teams pitch to the retailers, they are sent to do some market research, by offering samples in super markets. As it's too late to do anything about any of this stuff, this is mostly so members of the public can criticise the team's products to their face. In fact, the feedback is mostly quite positive, though a few customers don't like the saffron trifle as it tastes savoury. A side effect of the research session is that Daniel and Solomon get stuck in traffic and won't make the first pitch. Roisin and Bianca are remarkably okay with this for some reason.

Roisin and Bianca some how manage to get through a pitch without Daniel or Solomon's help. But they are told that the tea is masked by the other strong flavours. Katie pitches solo and the representative of Asda have more or less the same reaction to her trifles as the public, two out of three are fine but the saffron is horrible. Karen Brady, somehow interprets this two out of three success as total failure and complains about Katie's weird ingredients.

Daniel and Solomon arrive in time for Summit's second pitch, to Waitrose. Roisin is very keen that they should say absolutely nothing unless it adds value to the presentation. Which is a not very subtle hint for the pair of them to keep their trap's shut. But Daniel hasn't gotten this far by understanding coded language and decides to start banging on about liking the cheesecake even though he isn't a tea drinker. He reckons Roisin's pitch is boring, she thinks he talks for the sake of it. Both statements are more or less true.

 Either a crack sales team or a sales team on crack

Roisin is pleased

Mark, meanwhile, is trying to manoeuvre himself ahead of Sanjay, pointing out to Katie, that Sanjay was brought into the boardroom because of his inability to sell. Katie tells Solomon that he can "lead" the pitch. Which sounds good, but is technically a demotion given he was going to be delivering the entire pitch solo. The reaction to the second pitch is more or less the same as the first. They don't like the branding or the amount of saffron.

Roisin has agreed that Solomon is allowed to talk in the next pitch as long as he keeps it snappy. Solomon agress, but it ends up being less snappy and more dribbly and gummy. Despite this, Tesco seem to like the pitch. Solomon thinks one of the panel winked at him. hard to tell if this is an endorsement of the product or Solomon himself.

Mark is supremely confident going in, but this is television and pride comes before an inevitable massive humiliation. In the Tesco presentation Mark chokes, pretty much literally. He develops a nervous cough that kicks in every half sentence. It's a good thing one of the panel offers him water or we might have our first Apprentice fatality. Ironically, Sanjay ends up covering for him while Mark coughs out an apology.

 Mark feels the hand of death

Back in the boardroom Lord Siralan notes the name and flavours of Team Summit's desserts and comments that they have made a chocolate teapot. This is uncharacteristically original for Lord Siralan, his writers must have been quick of the mark this week.

Lord Siralan is less than impressed by Roisin business speak about grazing consumers and when she tries to claim Solomon and Daniel were more of a hindrance than a help, Nick sticks up for Daniel. Apparently, the panel liked him.

Karen rats out Sanjay for slagging off Bianca behind her back. He also gets in trouble for glossing over (for which read lying about) their negative feedback. Lord Siralan thinks he should have mentioned it so they could pre-empt it in the pitch. Mark also owns up to choking, both figuratively and literally, for which he is entitled to some credit. Okay it is the first thing any other member of the team would have brought up, but that wouldn't have stopped James from trying to lie about it, so we can at least credit him with basic human intelligence which is a compliment in this process.

Summit win with 25,500 orders to Tenacity's 13,500. This is largely thanks to Tesco who thought their desserts were wonderful and ordered 20,000. This is Tesco whose CEO recently quit and whose share price is plummeting. It would be a bit strong to blame entirely on Summit's cheesecakes,  but I think we can see the link there. The team are sent off to a macaroon and martini party on James Bond's yacht. I can understand the martinis, but why macaroons? I'm not a big Bond fan, did he have a macaroon with a concealed laser, or one that unfolded into a portable helicopter or something?

Back with team Summit. Mark blames the product, Katie blames the branding and Sanjay blames the branding but claims it's all Mark's fault, though Karen contradicts that and dumps it back on him. There isn't a great deal to talk about here. The saffron trifle was horrible, but the other two were fine. The branding was a bit crap and they sold less than the other team but not so few that it's actively embarrassing.

Lord Siralan decides this is all about the business plan. Katie's plan to open a restaurant could be in trouble seen as she apparently has no sense of taste. This may not be a problem, however, as she only plans to serve healthy food. Lord Siralan dismisses her experience as a waitress by commenting that he has eaten at McDonalds, which is a bit like me dismissing his property company by saying I live in a house. In the end Lord Siralan decides Katie's business proposal is too small scale and he doesn't want to be a sole trader. Surprisingly, Katie is fired. But she gets a "with regret" and even a "good luck" from Karen, so that's nice.


Sanjay plans to set up a social networking website and to make money from advertising. He comes under heavy fire, not from Lord Siralan, but from Mark who thinks he can't possibly make any money from this. Sanjay claims to have five revenue streams, but he can't get past the first without Mark cutting him off. Mark reckons he can make £1 million in a year and challenges Sanjay to match it. Sanjay says he will make £1.1 million in five years. It doesn't really tax anyone's maths skills to work out that this is much worse. Lord Siralan has no confidence in Sanjay's website and so he's fired as well.

Mark begs for a last chance to speak but doesn't get one. In the end Lord Siralan gives him "one last chance" with the kind of weariness that suggests Mark has only survived because he's tired out his firing finger.

 There's that hand of death again

Back at the house the consensus is that Katie will probably be back and possibly Mark as well. When Mark appears, alone, Roisin is in such a state of denial she actually checks the hall in case she's hiding.

 Yes, Katie really has gone

NEXT TIME: It's the attack of the hideous, bloated, dribbling, egomaniacal bullies. Or the interview round. Claude Litner is back and thinks someone is a bloody disgrace, possibly himself. There's no sign of Margaret Montford, but is that Ricky "the fitness" Martin?

Episode 10 - July 3rd 2013 - Sales smells

The Apprentice editors like to play with their audience. Careful flipping back and forth between the teams often creates an impression that one team is doing badly and another is doing well, when in fact the opposite is the case. Careful editing can create the illusion of parity where none exists and they like to keep us guessing up until the last minute, carefully hiding final results and achievements until we get to the boardroom.

Sometimes, it just doesn't work. Probably the most memorable example was back in series five, the cereal task, in which one team gave a master class in how to hang together and perfectly complete a task while the other was bullied by the serially obnoxious Phillip into creating Pants Man, the most irritating and nonsensical idea in Apprentice history. The editors tried to suggest that the winning team were falling out over a voice over, or that their advert wasn't quite as well shot, but ultimately they had to give in and let us watch one team be given a comprehensive spanking, the outcome never in doubt.

Watching a totally one sided drubbing can be entertaining, particularly if the losers are both obnoxious and arrogant. Sadly, this was not the case in Week 10 of this series.

Movie night at Apprentice palace

Lord Siral put in his series-ly home visit, this time in video format as he had an urgent business meeting. Don't put yourself out Lord Siral, there's only 250 grand at stake! The teams were put back to boys versus girls, given a starting budget of £150 and told to use it to buy up some stock to sell, before investing the profit in more stock. In other words, they had to 'smell what sells.' Or they could just count the number of items sold and determine it from that if their olfactory senses aren't up to much.

Previously, this task has been quite fun as Apprenti badly misjudge their market or insist on buying a jumble of everything. Not this time. Putting it simply, the girls spent their money sensibly, made some money, bought some more stock, sold some more and made a clear profit, while the boys bought the wrong items and didn't sell much of anything. I'd like to dress it up as more than that, but there really wasn't much more to it.

Okay, in slightly more detail, the girls chose Luisa as project manager, because she has retail experience, something she was willing to admit to. They decided to focus on fashion and Francesca, after asking some market stall holders who, presumably, had no idea she was planning to undercut them, suggested hats. The girls bought a large stock of hats and sold quite a lot. On the second day they were moved to a 'pop-up-mall' made of old storage containers (which made each 'shop' impossibly long and thin). They bought some, slightly more expensive but still fairly cheap, dresses. The dresses didn't sell very well, despite the team changing into them, which was their only blip. They ended with a comfortable £809.05.

 A long, thin clothes shop

The boys, lead by Myles (sort of), dithered all morning before deciding on mid range ceramics. This included a decent looking, wipe-clean, ceramic note pad and a, frankly, baffling ceramic rubber glove. Because they cost a lot to buy, the boys had hardly any to sell and mostly didn't. Jordan tried to diversify into greetings cards, but after a reasonably big sale to a newsagents, spent the rest of the day looking for another and ended up making very little money.

Pads...

...and Gloves

The next day, the boys moved to their shop, but with virtually no stock, ended up moving everything to the front and setting up a mini-market stall in an attempt to dispel the impression that they were planning to drag their customers into a deserted container and murder them. Jordan disappeared for most of the day buying candles, before returning with some that looked like it belonged in a medieval church or a Necromancer's lair.

 The boys stall shop

 Jordan's super candles

With sales slow, the boys decided to gamble on investing their profit in a single big ticket item and hoping to grab a last minute sale. Jordan returned with an odd looking designer vase retailing at £199. Myles and Neil, who were evidently expecting more for their money than what looked like a model of a bundle of toilet rolls, gave up and sent Jordan off to sell it. Despite some interest from a boutique in the last few minutes, no sale was made and the team lost the task with £550.26 of profit and assets.

High-end candles

There wasn't even much to say in the boardroom about this. Myles got in trouble for dithering and not understanding the market, while Jordan got it in the neck for picking the vase. Jordan wasn't willing to concede this, continuing to insist that the vase was a good buy. He still doesn't get that disagreeing with Lord Siral is not a good way to get him onside. Neil was the only who came out of the task looking at all good, having made the bulk of the sales, but he so good at claiming credit for everything that I don't think he needs any from me.

 What, what, what...

What the hell is this?

With the task abandoned as essentially boring, Lord Siral moved to the more fruitful topic of the boys business plans.

Tense situation

Myles plan is some kind of online business, doing marketing for high-end events, which is pretty much the same as the job he's already doing, but online in some way. Neil's plan is some kind of online business. He wants to set up an online estate agency. He's been researching this for years, apparently, and his main competitor made £80 million last year. Which means its either a market with a lot of money to be made, or one dominated by a hugely successful competitor.

Jordan's plan is some kind of online business. You may be detecting a pattern emerging here. Jordan has some plan that involves enabling users to make games for tablets and mobile phones. He starts to explain that tech people are not business people, but Lord Siral scoffs because he knows all about computers and games, what with the enormous success of the Amstrad X-Box.

 Not the time to be smug

But Jordan has another revelation, apparently there is another person involved in this deal, in the form of his invisible tech-savy partner. This would be a very good time to explain that this person is in no way Lord Siral's problem and that Jordan will take care of him. But no, Jordan is expecting, in the increasingly unlikely event of his victory, that there will be a further round of negotiations. When this annoys and confuses Lord Siral, he petulantly asks if he should throw over his existing partner. No, Jordan, I think you should gather your things and head for the door. Lord Siral already didn't like him, now he figuratively thrown shit all over the board room and he still thinks he's going to win.

 Try not to puke Jordan

Lord Siral sums up. He thinks Neil didn't a decent job of selling and his business plan doesn't entirely suck so he's safe, he has some kind of unspecified bad feeling about Myles, but he has no idea what Jordan is talking about. Jordan does his best to resist vomiting all over the table and, just about, succeeds. The writing isn't so much on the wall, as broadcast in twenty foot neon lights and yet, amazingly, Lord Siral wants to think about this some more, and Myles is fired for having starey eyes or something. What is going on? Has Lord Siral mistaken Jordan's business plan for some kind of word puzzle and now he's heard it he wants a chance to work out the answer? Or maybe Lord Siral just wants to stretch Jordan's torture over another week? Speaking of which...

Next Time: It's the interview week in which the candidates are abused to their faces by an agent from the Matrix, a mutant frog in a tight shirt and Margaret Mountford. One of the candidates is accused of being a parasite by Claude Litner, takes one to know one I suppose.

Episode 10 - May 23rd 2012 - Discounts

It's Ricky's turn to answer the phone this time and he does so in a tight black shorts and vest combo which makes it look as if he's just stepped out of the ring. Maybe this is why the other male Apprenti seems so out of it? Ricky beats the crap out of them before bed each night?

 Please Ricky, don't hit me again!

Lord Siralan has only given instructions to meet him "in the City". He may be hoping they just get lost, or perhaps this is this weeks task? First one to actually find Lord Siralan wins. Actually, it seems we have something slightly new. The teams will be working for a daily discount website and their job is to rustle up deals to put on the site. The site will host the best deals and the teams whose deals make the most money wins. Its essentially a variant of the scavenger hunt combined with selling to the trade in that it involves lots of running around and begging for discounts with very little leverage. On  the plus side, there's real money at stake as actual customers will be buying actual products.

First up the teams meet with the manager of the site, which I think he says is called Quinoa, though I can't find it online. Apparently this site specialises in Luxury goods, so no cheap tat. This claim is slightly undermined by the fact that they appear to be meeting him in a back alley somewhere. I am slightly concerned that if the teams do badly they may find themselves conducting a meeting with him, two of his "boys" and some baseball bats.

 The Boss

Next up is choosing project managers. After his rash promise last week, Stephen is in charge of Stirling. He starts off keen, but pretty quickly slumps into panic. His plan is to try and get multiple deals from each location they visit in order to boost their chance of success. He gets things moving pretty quickly, but there's more than a faint whiff of desperation about things. With only three people in the team, he decides to send Ricky off by himself and keep Gabrielle with him. He thinks that Gabrielle is creative but doesn't really understand business. This would be horrible condescending, but Gabrielle's attempts at handling the figures haven't exactly been impressive, see week two and the splash screen. That said, Stephen trying to give business advice to anyone is a bit like Lord Siralan getting work as therapist.

Over at Phoenix, Jade has been put in charge because she effectively does this stuff for her day job. True to form,  the team haven't gotten moving yet. But there may be some logic in this as Jade thinks quantity over quality is the key to the task. She only wants good quality deals that will be certain to get on the site. With that in mind, she and Nick head off to a luxury spa and Tom and Adam are dispatched to a hotel somewhere. Don't let them anywhere near the mini-bar or we'll never see them again.

Stephen and Gabrielle quickly manage to wrangle a deal for £100 off tooth whitening from a dentist. But Ricky isn't happy as Stephen has planned to pack him off to a Spa in Tring which is an hour each way. Stephen is confident that he will make enough from this one trip to justify it, but Ricky is clearly worried about Stephen and Gabrielle grabbing the bulk of the deals. But Stephen is insistent-ish. To be honest Stephen never sounds very certain about anything. Gabrielle tries to help with a few impromptu negotiating tips, but Ricky is clearly not in the mood and tells her not to tell him how to suck eggs. Has there ever been an egg sucking task? I'm sure Ricky would win hands down.

Before his excursion to Tring, Ricky arrives at a High End Restaurant. He is keen to get down to business, but the Manager won't let him get a word in edgeways. No business until he shows him the restaurant, and the view, and has him try some scallops, and looks at the table cloth, and is introduced to the Manager's elderly mother, and arm wrestles a bear and travels through time to the 1640s in order to prevent the assassination of Oliver Cromwell, and painted a fence. Some of those things may not have happened, but by the time it's all over Ricky probably thinks they have. Eventually the sit down to business, only for the Manager to state flat out that he won't give any discounts at all, ever. This raises the question of why he agreed to take the meeting and what on Earth he thought Ricky was there for. Maybe he just wanted to get on TV.

 "I will waste your time and give you nothing and give you a look of disdain as I do so."

Ricky tries to put a positive spin on this, which is hell of a feat. Apparently he has learned something from this. Presumably not to let Restaurant Managers even start talking. But he's even less keen to go to Tring. he phones Stephen who still thinks Tring is the way to go. But he changes his mind about five minutes later and relents. Ricky heads off in search of some less chatty Restaurant Managers.

Meanwhile, Jade and Nick have reached their spa. Everyone seems very friendly and welcoming until discounts are mentioned and it looks like everyone has just thrown up in their mouths. Jade is looking at a package that normally costs £200. They definitely don't want to give 50% off and Jade is just as determined that that is what they will give. Sheer persistence seems to win through and they eventually relent, possibly just wanting to get her out of the office. Jade seems enormously happy, the Spa management look a bit like people who have just fallen for a bad email scam.

Adam and Tom are having less success at their Hotel. They want to get 50% off dinner, but the management won't budge on 35%. Adam starts desperately trying to get them to throw in free tea and coffee. In fact he's so determined that I'm starting to wonder if he trying to make a deal or just desperate for a drink. In the end the management gives in. Free tea and coffee for everyone. Tom doesn't look very happy, but then he never does.

Stephen is now so stressed that he seems incapable of making decisions by himself. Gabrielle suggests a visit to a fish spa and Stephen goes along with it, taking advice from the woman who thought Union Jacks were very in. I'm starting to understand Gabrielle, her sense of the Zeitgheist is about two years behind everyone else. Stephen is given a sample spa treatment. I'm surprised the fish could be persuaded to go anywhere near his feet. They manage to get a couple of deals, but Karen Brady is clearly unimpressed. In fact, Karen's facial expressions have been drifting from dis-interest, through disapproval, to outright contempt. By the end of the show she makes it to out and out loathing.

Jade and Nick have a meeting with chef Marcus Wareing, a man who makes Lord Siralan look tolerant and accommodating. He seems receptive to their ideas, but is not impressed with their inability to give him any real figures. He has to give them five minutes to sort out their sums. I would expect this of Jade, but thought Nick was more competent. Ricky, meanwhile, is busy touring every restaurant in London, all of whom seemed determined to force feed him scallops. Has there been some kind of Biblical plague? Or is just that no-one order scallops and so whenever a visitor shows up they use him as a chance to offload them? But Ricky is having some success. In fact one restaurant is so keen they ask him how many deals they should offer. Poor Ricky doesn't have a clue and ends up pulling the number 100 pretty much out of his arse.

Adam and Tom seem to be a bit lost. Tom is clearly worried that he isn't contributing anything to the task and is so desperate he ends up calling Jade for help, not that it gets him very far. In fact, all the teams have now reached the part of the day where they are just running around frantically looking for last minute deals from anywhere. Gabrielle and Stephen are hanging out at some kind of indoor putting green. Karen Brady now looks like she will have be restrained by security from actually killing Stephen. Finally, after much frantic dashing about, Adam and Tom manage to secure a two for one deal on scented candles. Not much compared to spas and restaurants, but probably an improvement over fish nibbling your feet. The task over the teams drop off their deals with the website and await their fate.

Back in the boardroom the Apprenti are forced to justify themselves. Ricky scores immediate points for getting multiple deals from one restaurant. Stephen is practically crawling out of his chair and across the table to claim credit for this. Lord Siralan seems genuinely impressed by this. He is less impressed by team Phoenix, Jade gets credit for high quality deals, but Tom and Adam's candles don't impress, even with free tea and coffee. In the end, the website didn't go with any of Adam and Tom's deals, but Jade and Nick's restaurant deal netted £6000 and their spa deal £8000. On Stirling's side, Ricky also managed to net the lion's share with £6000 for his restaurant deals which totally sold out. Stephen and Gabrielle were less successful, their fish feet spa deal was dumped and their golf deal only attracted seven punters.

Phoenix are victorious. Tom doesn't look very happy though, he's realised that his contribution to the team's victory was effectively nothing. Adam either hasn't twigged or doesn't care. The team are packed off for afternoon tea. But not just any afternoon tea. As the menu reveals, this is the most expensive afternoon tea in the country. When you think about it, that's not a very impressive boast. Bridges cafe could claim that, all they have to do is raise the price of tea to £501 a pot.

In the boardroom, Ricky is blaming Stephen who he thinks panicked and lost the plot. Ricky is feeling fairly secure, after all, if it hadn't been for him, they wouldn't have made any money at all. But he still gets in trouble for only suggesting 100 offers to the restaurant and for taking too long at his first, entirely pointless, meeting. Ricky tries to counter by claiming he's learning, which is good for him, but not so great for Lord Siralan.

But it's Stephen and Gabrielle who are really in the firing line. Stephen thinks Gabrielle is out of her depth. She argues that she's a more rounded candidate than Stephen and has demonstrated skills, such as sales, that she didn't know she had. Stephen attempts his usual tactic of interrupting her every five second, but even Ricky has had enough of this by now and calls him out for being condescending.

But it isn't enough to save Gabrielle, possibly because her voice has now gotten so shrill that it's at a frequency Lord Siralan can't even hear. He has decided that Gabrielle is a nice girl but has gone as far as she can. He does give her a "with regret" but it only barely compensates for the level of condescension. But, Stephen's reprieve is short-lived. He promised to win and he didn't, so he's out as well. Lord Siralan tries to threaten Ricky with a  triple firing. Nice try Lord Siral, but we know you need five for next week's task and the special episode next week is called the final five, not the final four. Even Lord Siralan must bow to the rules of scheduling.

So we have our double firing, but it was pretty anticlimactic. To be honest, it would have been better to keep all six to keep the teams balanced for next week. Speaking of which...

NEXT TIME The teams try to take a product from concept through to production all in a day. Success at this task just means something that won't actually kill the user.