The Apprentice (UK) 2012

Change in format has damaged the show: who doesn't believe Sugar has already chosen which business plan he's willing to invest in? Last series Tom should clearly have been thrown out time and time again, but obviously he was the only one who Sugar thought would actually do anything after the show had finished. Inexplicable non-sackee will emerge halfway through this series and go on to win.

'Killer whale of the sea world'

A recycling bin!
Great, except that the council delivered one to every house in the area for free (OK well it was paid for with taxpayer's money) not that long back.

These people are all terrible.

yup. not enjoying this series at all.

There's still too many of them. Hope that it picks up once they've got rid of the no-hopers.

The thing about the vegetable compactor is that it's crap, but so are most kitchen gadgets.

Argh. If it's about the number of orders why not sell it for £0.01 or cost price or whatever. Or design something small and cheap rather than larger and pricier. Obviously they must have some constraints that stop them doing this but we're never told and it makes it very pointless to watch...

otm. there must be have been something that would have stopped the sub-team from saying "scrubbing gloves are cheap as shit and they'll order twice as many on a lark".

Can't believe people aren't enjoying this series because everyone is terrible because it seems to me that the whole point of The Apprentice is that EVERYONE IS TERRIBLE.

I doubt it: They're daft enough to go with the 'cool looking' idea.. (xpost)

xpost there's usually someone to root for, or a comedy baddie to root against, but this is just a festival of unremitting awfulness.

Well, once the whittling down has happened, yes.

Coming up with a new condiment this week.

Levi Roots on the after match analysis show.

Today I learned that there was a contestant called Michael and that there's a contestant called Thomas. Seriously, too many contestants, so much irrelevant badly-explained ridiculous task bullshit.

Yeah I don't even remember seeing the Thomas guy before. The real surprise for me is that Nick 'Boris' Holzherr seems to be among the more competent of the contestants. That there are far too many of them at the moment is possibly why, and he'll look increasing incompetent as the series progresses.

Yes, he seems OK, but for an Apprentice-contestant value of OK, which is a pretty low bar to clear, tbh. My other half drew google-eyed Stephen in the sweep at work. I lolled.

So, Ricky 'not that one' Martin saved himself by sounding like someone that understands business, and Katie by being a fairly decent 'motivationer' Task manager, the result was easy to guess (the candidates back at the house pretty much had it sussed for once). Neither needed to stick any knives in, really.

Michael could have saved himself in the boardroom if he'd a) knocked that pleading to AlSug on the head, b) gone on the offensive against Ricky re: the factory sub-team not making enough jars of comedy salsa. Something like "I could have sold more to the trade if you'd made more jars in the first place."

"We can funk it up to be a funky bin"

Selling crap to hipsters, lovely...

"That well known saying you don't look a gift horse in the eye."

tonights episode in short form :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVvcD4Czx4Y

oh to be a fly on the wall of the homes of the folks that paid for that tat

I don't have a lot of sympathy for hipsters who either don't realise they can, or can't be bothered to, get this stuff from a charity shop.
Meanwhile, I can get behind hating Thomas for his smirking expressions in the boardroom.

no sympathy at all.

The expression on Jane's face is just 'duh'. She did talk herself out of the door a bit though.

The incorrect use of 'myself' instead of 'me' in this episode had me (myself) going fucking mental.

I like Gabrielle.

Gawd, next week's task. They've really gone for the 'lol stupid humiliating' this series.

yup.
i've heard that terry christian is on the panel for the bbc2 show.

This series is so full of irritating people already that the introduction of Nathan Barleys twatting around the shops was just too much for me to bear. Also, Union Jacks surely don't scream multicultural east end to anyone, do they?

Laura should have gone.

lovely wallpaper in the dead person's house.

but... a box on a ladder?

also, worst union jacks ever.

lovely wallpaper in the dead person's house.

I know!! It was so awesome

I still can't get over Jane in the boardroom the other week saying that doing well in the task was more important to her than her child weeping down the phone. Staggering.

It's just another point on the 'I will urinate on an unconscious pensioner to win this' reality TV axis.

"Let's get
cynical!
cynical!"
http://i3.ytimg.com/vi/vWz9VN40nCA/hqdefault.jpg

Devise your own fitness programme? Risible. And surely potentially dangerous when devised by know-nothings.

lol at Azhar and Adam arguing over who has creative direction of a highly camp exercise video

Ricky's rationalisation of his decision-making in the boardroom was perhaps one of the most OTM things anyone's said in there. Basically 'I delegated, but you can only work with the pishy blunt tools you're given, ffs'.

I basically quite like Ricky, Katie, Nick and maybe Jenna. The rest, meh.

^^^ Nick seems competent (still a Tory boy though), Katie obviously isn't the boo hiss baddie that she was set up as earlier, Ricky more level headed than he seemed at the beginning of the series.

I thought Stephen would come unstuck in the traditional 'pprentice "I do this as my day job I should be PM!" move, but he didn't, although more by luck than anything. The other team's programme seemed like it would do better in the long run, but the show isn't about coming up with real practical business ideas that would actually work for more than five minutes.

Adam clearly heading for a huge blunder that completely sinks him. Tom is a sneering prick who will come unstuck when he's put in charge of something that actually matters. I can't tell if Laura really is argumentative or if she's just being edited to seem that way. Gabrielle, Jade, and Jenna are possibly the real argumentative elements. Azhar needs to pull something out of the bag to avoid his video performance being just an insubstantial flash in the pan.

Duane's brother is Simon from Blue!

can i just pop in here to say that me and my friends LOVE the apprentice uk??

(and hate the apprentice US?)

what episode are you on? NO SPOILERS FOR A SECOND PLEASE!

(i just watched 4)

Someone at my other half's work knows Laura. Gossip or character assassination sadly unforthcoming.

Comedy Scottish racism ahoy next week. I predict Laura will be fired for (1) somehow not being an expert in all things ever to do with Scotland or (2) going postal on everyone for assuming that living in Lanarkshire gives you instant insight into the whims of wee old touristy grannies on the Royal Mile.

This was episode 5.

I'm slowly starting to think Ricky is the most sane, normal and dare I say, professional person they've had on for a long while.

It's back? Cool

This is the second week in a row where the team that did the 'proper business process' implied in the task lost, and the team that did the barking mad stuff, won.

btw, where can you source Spacehoppers for £2 each?

we're predicting Ricky to be hired

Yeah, seems like the only conclusion. Especially after Claude sucking his cock so much.

@Lord_Sugar
Shame about Nick nice bloke his idea such long shot

‏@Lord_Sugar
Spaghetti cabonara on google

@Lord_Sugar
Chataux mon plonk will go down

THOR WINS

This "You're Fired" panel is the worst ever, surely?

panel chosen to make sure lord sugar was the funniest

Still failed.

I thought Nick's idea was pretty good and I couldn't believe how dismissive the interviewers and Sugar were. Claude & Sugar both said "who's got time for that?" - what, clicking a button on a browser? Although I doubt if either of those two have actually cooked themselves a meal for at least 20 years.

That question begged a proper answer. Why didn't he include some market research?

I expect Sugar has some existing interests in recruitment so that Ricky's plan can be easily implemented into a functioning back office and sales software set up. It also appeared that he had a few clients that he wanted to bring over, hopefully he previous employer(s) were all cool with that! Such a dull business idea. Easy choice though as it should make at least some money in the short term.

the interesting, possibly nonsensical, parts of the business plan (the ethical aspects) got waved away by sugar.

I don't know enough about Nick's business plan - but the delivery end seemed a problem. If you're just ordering one or two items for a recipe that you don't want in bulk, or that won't keep fresh that long, who's going to deliver them? He may have the main supermarkets interested, but they already charge for a full delivery. Who want's to pay a delivery charge for a few spices etc.

Jade's plan for a call centre that generates leads wasn't revolutionary. In my experiences these businesses are scaleable and use temporary staffing. Quite risky to talk about having the 'biggest' one. The operators I've had experience with have all been a bit shady, not a business people want to be associated with as typically they prey on the vulnerable.

I suspect that Sugar & Claude actually know fuck all about the internet either, really.

I think Claude knows enough to be confident the recipe idea isn't going to be bigger than google.

Was there actually an investment strategy behind the hedge fund idea? Or was the idea simply to use Sugar's name to draw in other investors?

Did Nick say it could be bigger than Google or Facebook or was that something Sugar/Claude said because that's all they know about the internet?

As I understand it Nick's idea was creating a button that would link recipe sites (like bbcgoodfood) to online grocery retailers (like Ocado). In principle an interesting idea. Who would use it? Well I know people who use both those sites so maybe them. I think the problems were probably in the details, it definitely had more scope to fail compared to Ricky's.

Yeah that's what I thought it was. A browser add-on, rather than the "web page" Sugar/Claude kept calling it.

Nick actually made that comparison himself. I'm all for dreaming big but no.

Ah did he? That was silly. He should've kept their expectations realistic by telling them it could be as big as last.fm. I'm sure they would've got that.

I couldn't get my head around the wine investment proposal. Was he asking for 250k in order to raise 25mil on which he would invest purely in wine? The question for me would be who is ready to invest now? 250k could be done in a couple of months of client entertainment with £0 at the end of it.

I still think this shift to business partners rather than actual apprentices is a disaster. It doesn't matter how well you do over 12 weeks of tasks - it all comes down to the one idea you had before you started, so it's basically become the world's longest episode of Dragon's Den. Although in this case (unlike inventor Tom) Ricky would have won the old format too - imo he's clearly the most impressive individual in terms of working with others, keeping his cool, learning from his mistakes, etc. But it still feels like an illogical process and I miss the old format of interviews in the penultimate episode then the big get-the-old-gang-back-together finale.

The wine investment thing works pretty much the same as how people invest in gold: you don't actually get to have any, but you 'sort of' own some until you sell it.

So, basically there were two excellent ideas, one fair to middling one, and one that the contestant had pretty much admitted she wouldn't propose if she'd had the time to re-submit "sweet things", etc.

And that AlSug was 'too old' to do the wine investment thing and all the learning involved. Maybe Branson would?