97p
The Apprentice: it's bitchy!
"Anything?" was Adam's plaintive cry to the man behind the counter in the auto spares shop. This, we were led to believe, was his skill as a salesman, coming out. He was in a car-related shop, and his skills required him to knock the man in the green overall down on the price of a 1997 car battery - one of the humorously random ten items Siralan had sent the team off to buy on the cheap before six o'clock. The man in the overall wasn't budging. "Do you think you could do one as a one-off for about twenty pounds?" asked Adam, his chin in his hand (stop rubbing your face, man - you'll get spots!). The man's answer: "Nah." Adam's response: "Can you do anything at all for us? Anything?' "Nah." "Anything?" "Nah, sorry." It was that final, decisive "anything?" that sealed Adam's fate. Finally. His fourth time in the boardroom was booked in that pathetic instance. I will never agree with the now monumentally appalling Katie, but Adam did have to go. As a team leader, he looked lost. He and Ghazal went in one people-mover, his nemeses Kristina and Katie in the other: the two blonde witches, scheming to bring the dumb northerner down. (This geographical snobbery, incidentally, was all Katie's. She appeares never to have driven her Range Rover further north than North Kensington, and in this, comes straight out of the 80s. How I wish she would go back there. Kristina, who has the ambition and drive of Katie, but none of that armoury of withering, rehearsed putdowns, is of course from the north too. "She's a hard, evil little wench," concluded Katie, after discovering that Kristina had hung her dirty knickers out to dry in last week's boardroom. Perhaps the 80s doesn't quite cover it. Maybe she's from the 1780s.)
We've seen this task before, and it combines the plot of one of those British comedies from the 1970s in which a group of character actors have to perform ridiculous tasks in order to qualify for the will of an eccentric uncle, with the lowest of Siralan's trade: squeezing every last penny from everything. You can tell the task itself is dull (basically: our nine suited fools haggling at ten different types of wholesaler - and even, for the microwaveable leg wax, in a shop, where such haggling would get you precisely nowhere if you weren't accompanied by a BBC film crew), this episode was packed with Other Stuff, ie. the bitching and the scheming and the assassination and the intrigue. Which is fine by me. Not all tasks can be as televisually entertaining as the food or the art.
As is often the case on this programme, none of them read the instructions properly before hitting the road with their Yellow Pages. These are people who never read the instructions in life, they just weigh in, with their "dynamism" and "drive", and hope for the best. If they had read the rules, they would have been better able to weigh up which risks were worth taking in terms of potential penalties. Instead, they became obsessed with finishing by six, and in the case of Adam's divided team, working for each other and not the corporate good, this meant failing to get the problematic Nigella Seeds. Adam wondered if these might be the rubber granules that you get on modern athletics tracks. Sadly, those are called rubber granules, rather than seeds. They turned out to be for cooking. We established this when, improbably, Tre used an Indian accent to negotiate with someone at an Asian food market. Whether or not Tre is entitled to do this (I don't know his background), or whether it actually fucking helped, it was certainly inadvisable for Simon, from Cambridge, to copy him, with a Mind Your Language head-wobble thrown in. All this in front of the TV cameras.
Ghazal, to her credit, never used any ethnic assimilation in her phone negotiations, instead doggedly sticking to her incomprehensible Glaswegian. it's an interesting ethnic mix this time around, but communication breakdowns do occur in the heat of accented negotiation. The lady who sold elegant kitchenware from a lock-up in East London wrongly advised Adam to try the "pahnd shops" in Bethnal Green (where, let me tell you, they don't do the Brabantia bin on the list - try John Lewis). He thought she said "pan shops", which was an easy mistake to make. I loved it when Simon defended his strategy of trying to buy all ten items in a tiny radius around Brick Lane, and Naomi said that it would be a good strategy, if they could get all ten items in that tiny radius. Logic!
It was an unedifying performance from both teams, once again. Simon's had a bit of luck (the seed supplier was just round the corner from the corner shop which stocked them), and came back with all ten items, but having bought some marble at the first price offered, they incurred a penalty (and some wrath from the wheeling-dealing Siralan). They beat Adam's team by 97 pence and missed out on the opportunity of going in some racing cars. This took the wind out of car-loving Adam more, I think, than losing The Apprentice, which he was scripted now to do. It all came out that Kristina had shopped her new confidante Katie, with Katie's already-ruddy cheeks flushing to a new crimson. Unfortunately, the red button on my television did not allow me to wipe the smile off her face, or else I would have done. She really is a ball-achingly unpleasant toff. When things got personal, she hit back at Adam, suggesting, libellously, that he had a rather too intimate relationship with "Mr Pinot and Mr Grigio." This was low. Although with Adam already on the carpet, perhaps there's no point in aiming high. This bitchiness was unbecoming and riled Siralan, who'd rather not hear about people "carrying on". Adam had no defence for not asking the Nigella Seed supplier who they supplied to, and simply lied that Ghazal had asked and they'd refused to tell. If there was a corner of his coffin lid that still needed a nail, this crap deception provided it.
"I've proved that I can sell. I've proved that I can lead a team and motivate people," said Adam in his own, face-rubbing defence, perhaps still hoping that Ghazal would get the boot for being 23. In actual fact, he had - while being filmed with some cameras - proved that he can't sell, that he can't lead and that he can't motivate people. Here, ladies and gentlemen of the real world, is The Apprentice in a nutshell. That vast airless vaccuum between what people do and what they say they do. It's in Simon's talk of being a Rottweiler who will not let go. At what stage did this Rottweiler emerge? At the "never" stage. He's like a rabbit. A rabbit that any pet shop owner would flog for under twenty quid. These fucking idiots - they go on about being "dynamic" and don't actually exhibit "dynamism". Adam says he wasn't down here to make friends, which is just as well, and admits - in a video exclusive on the Apprentice website - to being just "knackered", and at last, on the final cab ride, honesty prevails.
I hope the rabbits, by the way, were returned to their respective pet shops, unharmed, and not dumped in a bin like the cheese and sausages.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 9:07 AM
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15 Comments:
I remember some 'expert' on telly saying that you can haggle successfully anywhere. I mentioned this to my wife during the programme and last night she put it to the test. She actually negotiated a £15 reduction on a £70 kettle and toaster combination in Currys. With a 3 year warranty thrown in.
I'm amazed.
I thought this weeks episode was excellent, as you said more to do with the politics than the actual task.
I did think SirAlan was a little unfair when he suggested that they should of tackled the seeds first. Imagine if they would of done that I can imagine SirAlan now "What the bloody hell where you doing wasting all your time on these seeds, you should of left them and come back to them later if you had time".
It would of been quite funny if he would of actually thrown in a 'red herring' an object that didnt exist. Maybe next year!
All this talk of dynamism - it's ludicrous. It's against the law to advertise for a 'dynamic' individual as it implies youth and thus falls outside of the demands of age discrimination legislation.
Plus, it doesn't actually mean anything.
I hope Katie meets a proper Northerner on the street, away from TV cameras, and gets a good telling off.
I sent an email to Nemone at 6Music yesterday, which read:
Hey Nemone,
Just heard you mention last night's Apprentice. Had to get in touch as I'm still reeling from some of the comments made by that grasping, horse-faced *%^&* (insert word of choice here). "The North" is not a pejorative term.
She read that out and also the subsequent barrage of Kate related abuse.
A good afternoon's work, I'd say.
Much as I wasn't a fan of Adam and his Amazing Forehead, I'm sure I speak for many Northerners when I say it's time for Katie to GO!
"Northen chums", indeed! Ignorant little cow.
I felt a bit sorry for them when they realised they'd have won had it not been for their decision to get back on time rather than late with seeds. I remember Syed et al getting fined for being late last year, and I bet they remembered it, too.
samoff:
I think Currys is a haggling possibility because they are under so much pressure to sell the extended warranties. Many years ago I made the mistake of buying a washing machine from these people, and was all but locked in a room until I agreed to buy the warranty. I eventually relented when they gave it me for half price, which was an indication as to how much of a mark-up there is on the standard price. When I got home I realised that they had taken the discount off the price of the washing machine, rather than the warranty, I assume for sales bonus accounting purposes.
The consumer trick (I realised later, but couldn't be bothered to go through with) would have been to exercise my right to return the warranty and get a full refund, thus effectively engineering a hefty discount on the original white goods.
I hope this isn't too off-topic, Siralan fans, but it has something to do with retail haggling, and also quite a lot to do with the offensive business practice of mindless and aggressive sales people. Curry's made a bit of money out of me that day, but I've not been anywhere near one of their retail outlets in the 8 or 9 years since.
How touching to see Katie and Katrina brought together through the bullying of Adam, nice to see them happy. And how thoughtful of Ghazal to shout at the distant importer over the phone like that - how right Adam was to describe her as polite... sorry, Katie's sarcasm is catching. There was a fine moment on You're Fired! when a montage of clips of Adam with hand on chin ended with him doing it in the lion costume. Still, it's better to believe that rubber granules might be called Nigella Seeds than to be shrewd I reckon (without sarcasm).
Wonder why Srln thought it was a 'joke' that the teams were seperated by 97p. Don't get it.
The more I hear about You're Fired, the more I know I never want to watch it. I much prefer to enjoy and analyse the programme myself, rather than have a team of media professionals do it for me! And I really don't want to see the people who've been fired being all circumspect and decent almost a year after the event. (How weird it must be for them to live with the experience for so long before it is broadcast and they become "famous"!)
Amazed, probably shouldn't admit this but I thought the real-life action hadn't finished! So not shrewd. Quite often YF has an hysteric quality which is very off-putting but I'm kind of addicted to it now, though if I was writing a review I probably wouldn't want to watch it either. You don't need it though Andrew... until their Adam montage I hadn't really noticed that he had a chin-holding habit so I'm impressed that you mentioned it. Wonder if he was born in Switzerland.
"You're Fired" is surely worth it for the little segment they have each week dedicated entirely to Tre.
No?
They're all utter wankers, of course. But isn't that why we're still watching?
ST
A sales lad in Comet once foolishly asked me if he could tell me about the extended warranty options. "I'd rather you didn't," was the obvious reply. Awkward silence. "Er, well, I've got to actually before I'm allowed to sell you it..."
Ghazal beat Adam in the zoo sweets task, didn't she? Wouldn't she have been wise to raise that in the boardroom when Sir Alan was ineffectually having a go at her (failing to make us think he might possibly not fire Adam)? And had Sir Alan forgotten that Adam had already project managed a losing team? Had Adam too forgotten this when he suggested last week that Sir Alan should give him a chance to prove himself? And wouldn't any prospective employer sack Katie on the spot for her outburst of invective in the boardroom? And did Simon really not thank the streetsweeper who gave him directions? Twat(?)
Adam had to go, but then he should have gone after the zoo task. Katie's bid for stardom appears to be working. Ho hum. Maybe if we all fail to rise to the bait...?
I checked, and it took me all of 3 seconds to find out what nigella seeds are in google.
Who would employ any of these idiots (apart from Kristina possibly) in the lowliest of jobs, never mind a frickin £100,000 one? Do the BBC deliberately pick the most inept, wildly ego-ridden, vainglorious ship of fools who seem to have no life experience, no business skills, no social skills but all the chutzpah of a herd of elephants? Is 'Sir' really forced to employ one of these dumbnuts at the end? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the state of modern Britain in some kind of nutshell.
nice to see on Youre Fired that Adams spots have cleared up though but...
When anyone tries to sell me the warranty I reply "You mean this (washing machine/computer/whatever) will break down in less than three years?"
"Er..."
"In that case I think I'd like to buy one that doesn't. Do you have any of those or should I try elsewhere?"
"Er...I'll get my colleague..."
The South hereby withdraws any affiliation it ever had with Katie.
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