This is going to a be a lightning-quick tour of last week's events, because I just haven't had the time. Also, I'm doing this from memory, rather than watching it all again.
So they get hauled to a bus station at the skrake of dawn, and told that this week's task is to organise bus tours of London. Heh. Some of them look like they've never been on a bus in their lives, nor spoken with anyone who's been on a bus, but they smile gamely as the teams are swapped again. On one side we have Liz (the leader), Stella and Stuart, and on the other, Jamie, Chris and Joanna (with either Jamie or Joanna as leader, I forget which). Clearly Lord Shugagh is liking his New Plan to always put his 2 least favourite people on opposing teams, so that he's pretty much guaranteed to be able to fire one of them, and surely we'll be saying farewell to the Baggs or Mediocre Chris tonight, no?
Step 1 is to plan the tours, a process which both teams spend a good 30 seconds on. Liz's lot decide tourists are gagging for a Cockney Tour, while Jamie and co opt for 'Ghosts and Ghouls'. There's some kind of deal to be made with a tourist centre; whichever team gives the better offer gets to sell their tickets through the tourist place, thus guaranteeing more sales, you'd think. Baggs goes in and offers them 25% of the price of all the tickets they sell; they point out that generally it would be around 35%, so they'll wait to see what the other team offers. Chris goes in and basically offers them everything he owns, including various internal organs, and they hastily agree. Just in time, as it happens, since Joanna, on getting wind of the deal, heads straight down there to explain how it was all a mistake and really they didn't mean to offer so much and is there any chance Chris could have at least one kidney back, and Tourist Centre girl laughs at her.
Up to this point, Joanna and Jamie had been busily engaged in the most polite argument I've come across, which went something like:
Joanna: moan moan honk honk moan
Jamie: You're annoying me, shut up
Joanna: Jamie! I have never been spoken to like that by a man, you're scaring me!
Meanwhile Stella swots up on her apples and pears, while Liz and Stuart are researching possible locations for their Cockney tour. Too late, they realise that their chosen area of London is, essentially, a building site. Fortunately, there's a jellied eels seller, with a quaint-looking stall, so, clearly, he's going to be the highlight. Liz asks him to 'up the cockney' a bit, and a customer nearly decks her.
And so to the day of the tours, which can apparently only take place if our Young Hopefuls are dressed like failed extras from an Easyjet ad. Each team splits the responsibilities: 2 people to sell tickets, and 1 to lead the tour. First the ticket sellers: Stuart and Liz on one team, and Joanna and Chris on the other. Joanna and Chris have the advantage that the tourist place are selling for them, but Baggs is not to be outdone, and stands right outside the door telling everyone how crap the other team's tour is, until the tourist centre girl comes out and tells him what he's doing is illegal. He tells her to call the police, which, unfortunately, she does not. Baggs skulks off to tag Joanna instead. Every time she sells a ticket, he runs up to the customer and yells 'Their tour is rubbish, our tour is 4 quid cheaper than theirs and theirs is rubbish and ours is 4 quid cheaper!'. Eventually this leads to a mediocre face-off with Chris, who tells Stuart to f-off. Stuart tells Chris to punch him, which, unfortunately, he does not. That's twice in 2 minutes the nation's hopes have been dashed.
On the buses, things are going equally well. Jamie is leading his lot around places where Sweeny Todd murdered people, describing the deaths in such grisly detail that several people are close to collapsing. He informs them that 'the Thames is the second biggest river in London', but, quite properly, does not follow up with the name of the actual biggest, because no one would want to know that. He also imparts the information that Big Ben is '12 diameters wide', causing a young swotty student-looking type to visibly quiver. However, things take off a bit when he leads the upper deck in a reasonably energetic rendition of 'London's Burning'.
Cut to Stella, who's on a bus with 8 people who are politely, if impassively, observing her singing 'Knees Up Mother Brown'. She manages to get lost on the way to the jellied eel man, miss Downing Street and the Cenotaph, and end up trying to pass off a random piece of graffitti as 'a Banksy, maybe'. To which the woman next to her replies 'no it isn't'.
Back in the boardroom, it's a hard one to call - it looks like Chris-Joanna-Jamie may have had more passengers, but then they've promised Nick's soul to the tourist place and that might cost them. Some too-ing and fro-ing about how Baggs charged too much (£35 a ticket or something insane) and Chris was a bit dim in the tourist place, and eventually it's announced: Chris-Jamie-Joanna have won! Hurrah! Baggs to leave!
And then there's some kind of glitch in the matrix, because when Liz, Stella and Baggs get called back in, something odd happens. Liz and Stella defend themselves in the usual way "I'm dead good, me", and Baggs comes off with some tripe "Hiring me will be a gamble, but I sold yo-yos in school and my parents only ever gave me a tenner and nothing else ever" and somehow, for reasons we will never know, Liz gets fired.
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Yes. Liz.
One can only assume that they figure that since Baggs got this far, they might as well milk it and throw him into the interview round, which happens this week. And you have to admit it'll be unmissable.
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