Tonight, the Apprentice candidates were given a test of their entrepreneurial skills – £200 and a white van, and one day to make as much money as possible – just the way that Alan Sugar started in business. As with week one, they seemed to be competing with each other as to who could make the biggest mess of the whole task – hardly the supposed cream of British Business Talent. If this is it, I’m not surprised we’re loosing out to the Chinese!
The show kicks off with Sugar paying the candidates a surprise visit, and mixing the teams up. Troublesome Jadine gets swapped back into the girls team, with Katie the successful project manager from last week put into the boys team instead. Sugar then gives each team £200 in cash, tells them that he has arranged for them to work in the borough of Richmond the next day, and that they can do anything they like to make money. Interestingly both teams opt for service businesses, rather than the buying and selling that Sugar started out with. Sir Alan didn’t stipulate it had to be a service, but may have been a limitation imposed in the rules. Ultimately it all hinges on the choice of service and this is where it ultimately all falls down.
The boys opt for a door to door gardening business – which as the assistant in the equipment hire shop says is possibly not the best choice, as most people who have gardening work done would have a regular contractor. Plus his colleague points out that the somewhat overcast weather is not exactly great for gardening anyway. Having said that, gardening seems a positively good idea compared to the girls – who decide to organise a children’s face painting business, the problem being it’s actually a Tuesday, and in term time.
Contrary to the opinion of the equipment hire assistant, the boys team do pick up some odd gardening jobs – sweeping leaves, mowing lawns, tidying up and so on, certainly they do better than the girls who after managing to paint a few faces spent the rest of the day wandering aimlessly around looking for custom and bitching at each other – Jadine being the main source of much of the bitching it seems.
As part of the task, the teams are allowed to change business idea and provide a different service during the evening. On the boys team Katie and Paul who having been responsible for sales during the garden task and doing a minimum of actual gardening decide that a mobile DJ service in the local wine bars would be a good money spinner. The rest of the team disagree, correctly thinking that a wine bar wouldn’t employ an unknown DJ at short notice – and Katie and Paul are told not to bother, a decision they ignore. Having said that, it does give the two of them a chance to hit it off, and by the end of the afternoon they are walking arm in arm…
Over with the girls, things are going from bad to worse. Having failed to find any more faces to paint, in desperation they come up with a kiss-o-gram plan, something Sugar implies in the boardroom is barely distinguishable from prostitution! Having said that, the boys team goes through a similar issue, and in the end goes round pubs singing. At the end of the day, the boys have nearly doubled their money, whilst the girls have pulled together a minimal profit.
In the boardroom the knives come out. Most of the girls blame Jadine for being a disruptive influence, so it is no surprise when she ends up in the boardroom. Alongside her and Naomi the project manager, the third potential victim is Gerri, who again had been handed finding locations for the face painting in this task, and much as with the coffee locations in the first task, fails to come up with anything suitable. Having said that, in this case I think she was in a difficult position anyway as the choice of service was poor in the first place. However it all goes wrong for Gerri in the boardroom, rather than arguing that it was hopeless with such a poor idea, she seems to back down and not defend herself, so despite Sugar being increasingly concerned about the disruption caused by Jadine it is Gerri that goes, apparently for being a slow starter, and not having done much on the task. Having said that, I could have quite happily fired quite a few of them tonight, the whole task on both teams was a veritable disaster from start to finish, with both Nick and Margaret, usually quiet observers being shown getting increasingly aghast at what is going on, and in Nicks case we hear more from than we have for a long while. From the preview of next weeks show, it does seem that we’ll be hearing more from them too…
Next week it’s selling sweets (and it appears reducing small children to tears) in London Zoo… There has got to be some apparent talent come out sometime soon though – I wouldn’t employ any of them so far!