The Apprentice 2010: The Interview Week

I'm the sort of person who gets asked for help by people trying to fill in job applications.  I'm not sure why, as it's something I'm resoundingly hopeless at (I have this awful fear of accidentally telling lies and then ending up out of my depth in a job, and therefore refuse to put down anything beyond "I'm fairly smart and quite like reading").  I'm also, I think, not that great at interviews, although I have, several times, been offered a job on the strength of the 15 minutes of blushing, sweating and stammering which filled the time until I could flee.  I sometimes worry about the job offers I receive.  Most of the time, I wouldn't employ me, based on my interview performance.

Anyway, this is all by way of introduction to this week's episode, for herein we see our 5 remaining candidates (Jo, Jamie, Stella, Chris and Hairbaggs) being forced to sweat it out and tell the actual truth about their abilities (so far, in order, we have seen the ability to flog 10000 packets of honk-flavoured crisps to a single German guy, an impressive knowledge of facts about mass-murderers, being Quite Good at taking charge of a team of boys, lots of mediocre, and a not-entirely-dreadful Terminator impersonation).

We start off with shots of them all in bed (different beds, it's not Big Brother), and a quick glimpse of Hairbaggs' tootsies.  They're all getting nervous, but the cars will be here in half an hour to take them to Viglen, or Vigilen, or Vilgen, or something.  They all have a good laugh at Jamie's tie, and off we go.  While they're in the cars, we hear more about why they should all get the job, and the music switches, appropriately, to something a bit more doom-and-gloom.

They reach Viglen and stand half way up the stairs, awaiting Lord Shugagh's arrival in the elevator (I think the elevator must be like the one in Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, which can go anywhere, because no matter where they are, he always seems to arrive by elevator), while Nick and Karren watch from above.

The 4 people who have been charged with whittling us down from 5 to 2 are Claude (Grumpy Cop), Alan (Bad Cop), Bordan (not a cop) and the Blessed Margaret Mountford.  Please pause for a small bow of the head.

Obviously the one we've been waiting to see is Hairbaggs (and I think it's fair to say that the producers are as keen on a train wreck as the next person, given that they let him get this far), but the others throw up a few gems as well.

Jamie
Sitting in front of Mount Margaretford, Jamie dares to smirk slightly.  She flicks through his CV and starts reading extracts:

"The question asked 'What's the most interesting thing about you?' and you put 'I owned a porche and a house and a big load of stuff* before the age of 25, and I have a third nipple'..." (Jamie laughs) "...and then two pages further on 'What's the worst lie you've ever told?' - 'That I have a third nipple'."  By the end, she's distinctly snarling, and yet Jamie goes on smirking.
Margaret: "  Is that supposed to be funny? Think of a word that applies to that"
Jamie (suddenly serious): "Stupid"
Margaret: "Puerile"

(* slight paraphrase)

He tells the sob story about how his parents didn't push him, and that's why he got pants grades at GCSE.
Bordan interrogates him about his playing fast-and-lose with the definition of 'selling', since he hasn't actually 'sold' things as such for quite some time.  Jamie blames it all on his ass of a business partner and also the recession, and Cyprus.

Stella
Stella's not going down without a fight, and immediately disagrees with Alan, who wonders why she's having a change of career.  Claude calls her a 'very very good PA' and she nearly decks him.  And... that's about it.

Joanna
Bordan starts by asking what job Joanna thinks she's applying for.  "Do you mean, wot duz Lord Shugah do in this Vig-i-len?" "Viglen" "Oh, yeah, Viglen".  She stammers something about selling computers to schools, and other than that doesn't have the faintest idea, much like the rest of us.
Claude's a bit cross with her for letting her cleaning business be enough to 'get by', instead of being a megalomaniac big corporation, and she looks like she might cry.

Chris
Chris has claimed to be a "revered and outstanding Theology scholar", and impresses himself even more because he's not even remotely religious.  Margaret pokes a bit, and we establish that he means he's done all right in A-Level RE, and sometimes talks God after a few drinks.
Claude is more concerned that Chris changed courses at university, and that he thinks you have to be a lawyer if you do law, and then he did politics and didn't become a politician, and then become an investment banker and gave it up after 9 months, and is therefore obviously a quitter.  It's all a bit ridiculous - how many of us don't know someone who changed course at university once they realised the variations in the number of lectures for different courses, and discovered the student union?

Hairbaggs
Stuart seems to alienate the interviewers as quickly as he did the rest of the nation.  On walking into the room and seeing Margaret, his little face lights up. "Margaret!" he exclaims, only to be flattened immediately for his impertinence. Undaunted, he goes on to tell her about a thing he has invented that she can stick to her cat when it goes to Bermuda, or something.  She does not look impressed, but he says he'll work 24/7 and give 110%, without irony.
Alan gets straight in there: "You're not very nice, are you?".  He then goes on to list all the ways in which Hairbaggs is not very nice, and it is lengthy.  Baggs explains how he is a character of integrity, which seems something of a contradiction when he's just admitted falsely announcing to the newspapers that a rival company has gone bust, but then he gives an example: if he's up for promotion, against 3 other people, he'll tell the boss how rubbish the other 3 are.  Ah, THAT definition of integrity.  Alan's face is like a bulldog's bum chewing a lemon-and-poo-flavoured wasp.
The conversation with Claude cannot be easily summarised, so here it is:

Claude: 'I'm Stuart Baggs the Brand'... what on earth are you talking about?
Baggs: ...er..
Claude: You're a 21 year-old kid, you're not a brand.
Baggs: ...er.. a brand is... err...
Claude: Don't tell me what a brand is. You are not a brand.
Baggs: I think I might be
Claude: Why does someone as successful as you want to work for Lord Sugar?
Baggs: At the moment I'm a big fish in a small pond
Claude: You're not.  You're not a big fish.  You're not even a fish.

Bordan asks about Baggs' 'fully licenced' telecoms company, which turns out to be a broadband provider.  He does have a licence, much in the way I have a TV Licence; i.e. bought from the Post Office.  There's a little light-hearted banter about how much they love technology, and then Bordan sticks the knife in again and makes Baggs admit he's been lying.

At some point in the above, I got confused about who was Claude and who was Alan, by the way.

Back to the boardroom, where the interviewers give Lord Shugagh the rundown, while the candidates wait outside and look nervous (if I was the mysterious Hand Who Answers The Phone And Sends Them In, I'd have suggested a game of Pictionary, I think).  They all liked Joanna; thought Chris was monotonous;  found Jamie a bit dull and full of cliches (we see a snippet of him going on about being a key cog in a wheel, and making no sense whatever); worried about Stella being corporate and good at admin (because those are things you'd run a mile from in business); and had a good slagging off of Stuart's ponciness.  Then Bordan reveals the Big Lie About The Telecommunications Company, and that Baggs has nothing Karren couldn't get.  Ooooh.  Things have turned against the Hairbaggs.

So they all get trekked back in to the boardroom.  We talk about Chris' academic record, and his obsession therewith, and then there's a bit more about why he dropped out of law.  Oh, shut up about that, nobody cares.  Something else about Stella being all corporate.  Blah blah blah.  Onto Joanna, and a bit more about her not being a megalomaniac and expanding her cleaning business to take over the world.  Jamie has another whine about his business partner doing no work.  It feels like one of those moments where a small child comes up to you and starts on about how another kid took the lorry off him, and you just can't really bring yourself to wade in and sort it out, but he's only 2 and can't do it himself.

On to Stuart, who admits the process was tough.  He then lies again about the licence.  AND GETS FIRED!  Even more gloriously, Lord Shugagh actually loses it a little bit, and shouts at him.

Two more to go, and, to cut a long story short, it's Joanna and Jamie who get the chop.  He's nice to Joanna, who cries, and not quite so nice to Jamie, who's still smirking.

So the final, tonight, is Stella vs Chris, with everyone else back to help.  Hurrah!  My money's on Stella, but I'm not without hope that Melissa and/or Baggs will somehow clinch it.

A Helpful Guide

In case anyone's thinking of giving me sweets for Christmas, I made a list of my favourites:

Small Bars:
1. Dairy Milk
2. Anything FairTrade
3. Galaxy
4. Regular milk chocolate
5. Mint chocolate (After Eights etc.)

Selection Boxes:
1. Cadbury's
2. Mars
3. Nestle

Roses etc.
1. Roses
2. Quality Street
3. Miniature Heros
4. General mixture of chocolates
5. Celebrations

I'm not saying you have to buy me sweets, I'm just saying.  And of course, any sweets are appreciated.

Christmas Song!

Do you think, if we tried really hard, we could get this to number one for Sunday?



Because I think we should try.

The Apprentice 2010: Week 10

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.

The Apprentice 2010: Week 9

Apparently I was wrong last week when I said that this week's task was the one where they have to sell miscellaneous tat to unsuspecting members of the public (I was thinking of the one which, last year, brought us Nooral and a skeleton); rather, this is the one where they have to buy miscellaneous tat from unsuspecting members of the public.

They really don't give an ass any more, as evidenced by taking a year and a day to answer the phone (Stella eventually gets down the stairs, wrapped in towelling; Jamie sits up in bad and looks all handsome, and the rest of them swear loudly).  In the half an hour which they allegedly have to get ready, they manage to tong hair, moan about being tired, and do the ironing.  Off to London's Financial District, where they form an orderly line to await Lord Shugah arising slowly through the floor, like some sort of inverted Angel Gabriel.

The task, as we've said, is to buy all the items on a supplied list as cheaply as possible.  They have 10 hours; if they don't get back in time, they get penalised, and if they miss any items they get penalised.  The ones who spend the least, win.  We're back to girls and boys this week, which mercifully means that either Baggs or Laura has to go; no more jammy being on the winning team - this week, Lord Shugah is on the ball.

Jamie and Liz are in charge.  The boys basically explode in a fury of racing around the streets trying to buy anything they can lay their hands on, while the girls stay back at base with their list and their phones and their Yellow Pages, and Plan.  Not well, of course ('What's our strategy?' 'I think we need to figure out where we can buy these things'), but enough that they know what they're looking for.

Jamie is desperate to prove he's not a twit, so he tells the boys they're to aim for 70% off, make up whatever stories they want, and 'negotiate their bloody bottoms off'.  He then sends Chris and Stuart off for half the things, and goes on the hunt for the other half himself.  There's a fabulous moment when he walks into a shop looking for a 'tikka, 22-carat gold', not knowing what it is, and the salesman says 'Yes, that's not a problem... what's a tikka?'.  Now THAT, my friends, is a sales technique.

Stuart and Chris are trying to buy a Blue Book, which they suss out really quickly is a rare American magazine, and they start sniffing round bookshops, where the owners do a lot of teeth-sucking and slow shaking of heads because they've never heard of it.  Meanwhile, the girls figure out that a Blue Book is actually a taxi driver's manual, and nab one from a taxi driver school for 50 quid by telling the guy in the shop that his mate said he'd look after them.  Jamie's having no luck with figuring out what a tikka is, whereas Laura and Stella have Googled it or something and picked one up for £160, having gone into the shop saying 'You have the item and we have the money', which even I know is a crap negotiation technique.  Eventually, however, Jamie strikes gold, and wanders into a jeweller's looking sad because he wants a tikka so much and they are trying to charge him so much money, and isn't it so so sad, and lo! he gets it for £135.  The jeweller's now homeless and starving, like, but never mind.

Stuart and Chris have evidently taken Jamie's command to 'have a story ready' too seriously, and now that they have worked out what a Blue Book actually is, they go to a bookshop and try to haggle.  Chris comes up with some crap about his brother doing a taxi driver exam on Monday but being unable to study for it because Chris borrowed his Blue Book and left it in Nottingham or something... Please consider this for a moment.  Consider that this is a regular shop, and 2 guys in suits have walked in, and one is claiming that he borrowed his brother's taxi driver exam books (? What? Why?!) and then managed to leave them in Nottingham (??!?); these 2 guys are accompanied by Karren with 2 arrs, who you'd imagine they would at least recognise as being off the telly, and a camera crew.  Presumably he imagines it's some kind of candid camera show or something, because he gives them the first discount ever in the history of Blue Book sales, as long as they give a pound to charity.

The basic gist of happenings is thus:
> the girls are fairly rubbish at negotiating.  They hair around Knightsbridge trying to buy truffles from Gordon Ramsey (well, Stella tries, while Laura sits next to her and shreds the Yellow Pages with her laser eye glare, because she thinks it's a stupid idea but doesn't like to say so); they eventually manage to buy 50g of truffles (cost: £2000 per kilo) for £200 and an agreement to come back to the restaurant for dinner some time.
> Jamie is very good at negotiating, but feck useless with common sense; he manages to spend half the afternoon being unable to buy 4 metres of kitchen worktop.
> Stuart and Chris are lying gets, and not even good at it.  Trying to buy tartan, they wander into a Scottish shop and Chris spins some complex yarn about needing the tartan cheap because he has to go to a Scottish wedding next week and he wants to take the tartan for his nan's birthday present.  What?

There's a last-minute dash back to the boardroom, with Liz almost stabbing a pensioner for not being able to write fast enough, Chris begging embarrassingly ('I have no money and I really need truffles'), Stuart racing up the stairs and almost landing on Jamie's knee, and the girls being late and incurring a fine.  In their wake is a collection of robbed, deperate shopkeepers, vaguely hoping that they'll be on tv.

Then it gets interesting: the boys only got 7 out of the 10 items but made it back on time, whereas the girls got all of them but were back late.  This means that the girls get a £50 fine, and the boys are charged as if they had bought the 3 missed items at list price plus something I miss.  The girls explain their planning technique and their route around the various items, and it's all very P5 project.  The boys explain that they ran around with fire in their bellies telling lies.

The girls have spent (including their fine) £1094.40, where the boys have spent (including £500 of fines) £1020.50.  Heck, says everyone.  Jamie witters on about the kitchen worktop again, and then the boys get sent to Paris, to gad about in berets on the Champs Elysees.

Back to the boardroom for the girls, and bizarrely, they all seem to have turned on Stella who, ok, was wick at negotiating, but no more so than anyone else.  Lord Shugah makes some sexist comments about how they'd be better at buying handbags and shoes than computer chips, and then they all turn on Stella again, for being 'too corporate'.  Obviously Laura's going, if only Liz has the wit to bring her back in, which she does.  Stella comes too, so that they can snark at her some more.

It turns out that Liz and Laura can't stand Stella, which is quite exciting.  Also, Laura's 22 and has never had to scream, and reminds everyone that she was a shambles as project manager.  Stella and Liz blame each other for the whole truffles fiasco, and then Laura snipes at Stella again.

Obviously Laura goes, although not before Lord Shugah gives Stella a good fright by pretending he's going to fire her.  Back at the house, they're all snarking about Stella (mysteriously, the boys are back from their weekend in France).  When Liz and Stella come back, Liz complains that Stella was mean about her in the boardroom, and announces that Laura will be missed.  They all agree.  Gulp.

So there are 3 weeks left.  Next week is the final team task, then there are the interviews (please let Stuart get to the interview stage, pleeeeease), and then the final.  It is time to begin predicting.  Obviously it depends a bit on who's on which team, but I suspect that next week will see the end of Jamie (or maybe Stuart), and that the final could be Liz and Chris.  Anyone else?