The smell of arrogance
So, we're halfway through The Apprentice, and the basic act of selling stuff has finally given way to - break out the big sheets of cardboard! - pitching. It's time to get "creative". Hey, anybody can sell lobsters or cider ice cream (except these people) - what about thinking something up, like, our of your head? The most embarrassing moments of all three series have arisen at pitch meetings and so it proved again tonight, with Renalpha and Renalpha selling greetings cards to Clinton, Tesco and The Other Big Card Chain. This, Sir Alan, who still seemed to be eating his breakfast bagel when he got out of the car, chose to announce to them at Hackney Town Hall where the "special occasion" of his death would one day be logged. So off they went, boys mixed with girls, idiots mixed with fools.Where to start this catalogue of Olympian, fat-headed, instinct-free, grey-sky-thinking ineptitude? To be fair to both project leaders - ineffectual bank manager Matt and ineffectual telesales "executive" Michael - neither volunteered for the job. And neither showed any aptitude for the job. Matt, fired up with the notion of "smashing it" without specifying which "it" he was going to "smash", clearly mistook the word "pitch" for "repeat three statistics about the environment at bemused buyers" (434,000,000 tons of rubbish is thrown away each year, apparently - tonnage that was soon to be joined by an extra 13 stone in a stripey shirt). Fired up with the notion that the planet - indeed, other planets - must be saved by cards, Matt then tried to blame our failure to stem the tide of global warming on Clinton's not stocking his cards. Claire, who's a "buyer" of some sort, and Jenny, who's a "ready-made environmentalist" cleverly allowed the self-inflated Matt to railroad them out of the pitcher's task, knowing that he would fuck it up.
Meanwhile Michael spent three and a half hours (not four, Nick! because that would be insane) failing to get a definitive answer to the Big Question: is there an apostrophe in the phrase "National Cunts Day"? I'm joking, of course. In fact, for their "special occasion", driven by Raef, they'd gone for a National Singles Day (NSD) on February 13th. That's National Singles Day, not National Single's Day, or National Singles' Day, or National Singl'es Day, or National Singles Day', or National's Ingles Day, or N'ational Singles D'ay. Michael admitted he was "inept" at computers, but surely one of his go-to, get-ahead, go-getting team could have suggested "looking it up on the Internet" before, ah yes, phoning the Daily Telegraph and asking for "the editors' department" (yes, that apostrophe is correctly placed). Then the British Library, whose main job it is to offer free punctuation advice. I think the British Library looked it up on the Internet.
"My idea is the environment," piped up Jenny, thus skewering her team before they started. Sara's idea - what would technically be known as a better idea - about pets was ignored, as if perhaps her chin wasn't big enough and her glasses not oblong enough for Jenny to take her seriously in the cut-throat world of business. I know we're all being manipulated by the editors' department of this programme, but Sara was quickly painted as the runt, the victim. Too pretty, too nice, too weak. Weakness will not be tolerated by the self-important. By not shouting, Sara had marked her own card, as it were. The women in The Apprentice hate each other. They just hate each other! Helene hates Lucinda. Jenny hates Sara. Clair hates Sara. Jenny hates Lucinda. Jennifer hates Lucinda. Jennifer hates Helene. I hate Jenny. Oops.
Then, the usual: market research (walking round a shop with a pad), design (pointing at a computer screen), the pitch (not preparing for the pitch). Matt's team went with eco-cards for Save The Planet Week, one special occasion Hallmark have foolishly overlooked. Quite why Tesco's bought 6,000 of the eco-cards ("Ooh look, a Scottish man has just farted: take more showers, or something!") is beyond all business law. Perhaps the supermarket giant was going to pulp them and make them into saleable greetings cards? Thankfully, Clinton and The Other Card Chain took a more eco-friendly stance and bought ... none.
Renalpha's NSD cards did better, with 1,500 sold to Clinton and Tesco (cue: Michael doing mental arithmetic in his telesales head in the boardroom ... that's 1,500 + 1,500 = 3,000, and 6,000 - 3,000 = 3,000, sooooo, we need to sell ... mouths words ... 3,000 to The Other Card Chain). The maths-based tension was too much to bear. Then Nick revealed that The Other One ("they were keener") had bought ... (cue: Jennifer's ice melting as she tries to fit both fists into her mouth) .... 19,500. At which, we witnessed quite the most appalling display of testosterone-fuelled hooliganism yet seen on The Apprentice, with Michael punching the air and miming having sex with a lady from behind, yelling, "Come on!", Raef raising his fists in triumph ("Yesss!"), as if having won a polo match, while Lee McQueen shouting, "That's what I'm talking about!" as if he was perhaps in James Brown's touring band. Poor little Michael shouted, "Come on" again without the exclamation mark as the grunting subsided, pulling back from smacking his fist into Sir Alan's table. Our reaction was supplied by Margaret, flushed, shocked and dumbstruck, as if Michael, Raef and Lee had actually got their cocks out and pissed a big territorial circle around themselves. Even Sir Alan was disappointed: "This is not a football match. This outburst of yours is not something I would condone normally." (Not normally.) Shamefaced, Michael put his metaphorical member away and said, "Apologise, apologise, apologise." But they won, fair and square, and were soon packed off to watch Mylene Klass give them a private recital. I'm not sure if she offered the boys a happy finish, but that would have been more use to them.
Over at Renalpha, saving the planet quickly became of secondary importance to saving their skins. Matt was already a man made of jelly in our eyes, but he had one more despicable move up his stripey sleeve: after Jenny had singled out the quiet Sara from the pack, as a square-chinned cheetah might isolate a wounded antelope, and blamed her for the team's pathetic failure in order to protect herself, Claire joined in the bullying and when asked whom he would fire, Matt pathetically said, "Sara." Sir Alan saw through this from the start, and by bringing Sara back in, instead of Jenny, whose idea it had always been ("a ready-made environmentalist, " remember, ie. she talks a lot of wind) to send cards with cycling children on to George W Bush to get him to sign the Kyoto Protocol, Matt replaced the smell of arrogance with the smell of something else. The guilty party walked away in her oblong glasses. Matt didn't have the moves to fend off Sir Alan. Small Man Syndrome was sent back to the village to manage his bank.
An unusual and ugly postscript: back at the house, instead of the usual brief round of gasps as Sara and Claire trooped back in minus Matt, it turned into Nuremberg, with Lee McQueen leading the attack against Sara, who must now have the sympathy of the nation: "If four people out of five thought you didn't contribute, how are you sitting on that sofa?" (Maybe he's never seen The Apprentice.) Presumably he had harboured a secret crush on Matt, as his vehemence at this injustice did not let up: "If you don't step up to the mark, you're going in the boardroom, simple as that!" (Lee McQueen, she did go in the boardroom. And stop smacking your hand into your palm - you're not her boss. You're not her boss.) This was all rather unpleasant. Maybe we really have reached the halfway mark. Maybe the producers are building up Lee McQueen's part "ahead of" his firing next week, or the week after?
I'm worried about Alex, and not because of that Stone Roses hat, or the fact that he keeps trying to manouvere his mouth off his own face in moments of stress, or for the fact that he said to Raef, "I wanna ask my opinion!", but because he's not actually joining in, is he? This is naked game-playing. He must be stopped.
Recaps: Week One, Week Two, Week Three, Week Four, Week Five
posted by Andrew Collins @ 2:18 PM
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The final scene in the house was something I have never seen in the Apprentice before. They definitely seem to have raised the infighting and bitching to unprecedented levels this season.
Makes you wish for the yalycon days of Michelle and the Badger.
Some classic moments last night - Claire informing us all about "small man syndrome" as if it really IS a syndrome that we could possibly catch; Michael's ludicrous celebration upon winning; the three women in the back of the car all trying their hardest to look anywhere but at each other as they obviously loathe each other so much; and, best of the lot, the contestant's farcical attempts to "appreciate" Myleene Klass's discordant piano-banging by assorted clapping, bobbing and nodding of collective heads.....
My wife is the art director of a greetings (or should that be greetings') card firm and was entertainingly splenetic throughout this episode.
She is convinced that in the 'real world' none of the retailers would have bought a single card off either team.
I was rather hoping we'd thus have the first draw between the teams with the prospect of the whole shower getting fired.
Sophocles is a desperate cretin isn't he? And I hadn't minded Lee so far but where did that unjustified attack come from?
Wasn't it Lee who said that there was no way Kevin should be fired - even though he was on the other team. How did he know?
Whereas previous episodes have made me laugh my ass off, last night's had me alternating between laughing and wanting to claw my eyes out. What a hopeless bunch of twonks: One mental environmentalist (who even makes children cry) and a whole lot of mentalists.
Don’t they use the planning time to stop and think about it rather than simply exercising their voices? Are they so completely self-centred that they haven’t noticed the messages about saving the environment across the media over the years?
Once they decided that these stupid environmental cards were the way to go, it should have gone straight to the pitches from hell and the buyers tearing them new assholes to speak out of. Here is the fact Kevin should have told them: “I’m a useless arse!” Who was the target consumer? “Numerous people.” Brilliant! Even saying “tree huggers” would have been better.
The inconvenient truth was their idea was so utterly rubbish it was obvious that they were going to be caned. Also there would be less shots of the mental environmentalist’s scary jaw and strange alien blotches on her neck.
As for the other group... Priceless! Michael seems to be something nasty that has been scraped up off the pavement and inflated to size. Mate, I’ll tell you where to put the apostrophe. Yes, the British Library person said they looked it up on the internet. His response: “Try another library.” The Russian Library? The German Library? Maybe there should be an umlaut or two in there.
Then the growly girl-against-girl action where everyone still hates Lucinda. Is it because she’s dressed like the president of the Allo, Allo! fanclub? “A lot of the ideas have come from my head!” said potato-headed, bingo-winged Helene as her reason to oversee the shoot. Are you quite sure that’s anatomically correct?
Michael seems to be something nasty that has been scraped up off the pavement and inflated to size. Did you notice that, back in the board room, after he got all petulant over how long they had pissed away pissing around over that apostrophe, he stopping adding “Siralan” to every statement. When he had to apologise for the yobbo behaviour it was just “I apologise”, not “I apologise, Siralan.”
Of course neither team’s ideas beat Siralan’s. Obviously he wasn’t keen on “this green stuff” and went for “Sorry to hear your beautiful 11-year-old child got shot in the head by a hoodie” and “Sorry to hear that your loving husband with two children got kicked to a pulp.” Genius!
The Apprentice: You’re Fired afterwards was brilliant because they pretty much ignored Kev for a long part of the show. Maybe because he was such an easy target it wasn’t worth it. Instead they took the piss out of everyone else, including a Margaret and Nick reactions montage. When it came to his ‘best of’ clips they were pretty lenient by not showing his worst bits: totting up how many tomatoes were needed for the soup or stating that a cappuccino makes a great dinner dessert.
It was a very revealing episode. Kevin's pitch (lecturing the potential buyers with a ream of environmental facts and figures) was similar to Whatsername's pitch in a previous series of The Apprentice trying to sell a Cat Calendar to support St Thomas's Hospital and bamboozling the buyers with useless data about how many people in the UK own pet cats!
Jenny just goes from STRENGTH to STRENGTH (please affect extreme sarcasm in your voice when reading that!) as if her £4.99 an item laundry pricing idea was not brilliant enough, now she comes up with send a PAPER card in a PAPER envelope that will be transported by ROAD (or train) to help SAVE the environment -- Gordon Bennett! Why could NONE of the contestants not see the irony in that within 2 seconds of the idea being spoken?
Jenny Celery Redhair is a bully and bulldozes her way through the competition, and STILL manages to escape the noose! I think Kevin was too scared to bring her into the boardroom, possibly thinking that she might make mincemeat of him.
It is possible that Sir Alan might have still fired Kevin, for being weak and not taking responsibility as project manager, but there is a small possibility that SrAlan might have actually seen Jenny's role as more pivotal to the failure of the task and her bullying and railroading of the other team members as NOT the actions of a team player.
Kevin Smith was very affable in the "You're Fired" programme afterwards. He seemed to take his firing in good humour, even despite getting the worst audience vote (about 98% agreeing with Sir Alan's decision) in the series so far.
Kev also admitted that he has long been familiar with the comparisons with the Matt Lucas character Daffyd ("I'm not the only gay in the village") and he was happy for the jokes to be made. He still kept smiling during "You're Fired" even when an unseen (in the programme) clip of Sara, Jenny and Alex in a card shop picking up a singing Daffyd card and laughing that "Kevin would like this!"
The end of the (main) programme, though was AWFUL with the unjustified bullying and vilification of Sara (especially by Lee McQueen who was not even on the same team!). The evil poison spread by Jenny had started to work.
Anyone need a Cruella de Vil in panto December 2008? I believe Jenny Celery Redhair might be available .........
Both these ideas were doomed from the start. The singles one was slightly better than the other one, and perhaps if they'd called it Anti-Valentine's Day it could have been more attractive. There are a lot of people out there who loathe the whole Valentine industry, and that could have been an antidote.
Watching this with a single friend last, she said she would be heartbroken if her mantlepiece heaved with singles day cards - and she'd be angry with those who'd sent them to her. Anti-Valentine's would have been a whole different matter though.
On a back at the house note, is this the first time we've seen them bicker and round on someone on their return?
It's all getting nasty. But isn't it great?
One more thing I've just remembered (despite it having caused me to wake screaming during the night) - Jenny's awful rictus grin when she was holding the presentation board. Froze the blood...
So many marketing errors made last night, in copy alone.
Kevin's copy for the cards really was the worst example of vague, Brentian non-language.
Make it happen!
Sharon said: "Kevin Smith was very affable in the "You're Fired" programme afterwards"
I meant Kevin Shaw -- I don't know why I got that wrong. I had the name written down in front of me before I sent my comment.
It must be my infatuation with Simon Smith (the former NCO chappie) from a few weeks ago.
Also "Whatsername" who did the terrible Cat Calendar pitch is Nargis, but I have Swineshead to thanks for gleaning that piece of info from his blog.
You've dodged the most important question, Andrew: just where would you put that apostrophe?
Px
Px, if Michael had phoned me, I'd have said: there is no apostrophe in National Singles Day, as it is a Day about Singles, not belonging to Singles. Valentine's Day, presumably the point of reference, is a Day belonging to St Valentine, although this has been eroded to Valentines Day as the name has become a noun eg. a Valentine, thus a Day about Valentines. Whether I'm right or not, it looks better without one. That's what I'm talking about!
'Ugly' was also the word that came to my mind re the trial scene. Sophocles surprised me a bit with his "I think Sir Alan made a huge mistake" comment which struck me as the most breathtakingly insensitive of all. I'm not sure how personal Lee was being or whether he was being inquisitorial in a general way, anyway perhaps his and Alex's overbearingness should be put down to Tall Man Syndrome, just to redress the balance. Btw, not joining in could be a good tactic for surviving as long as possible while ensuring you never have to work for Sir Alan.
The apostrophe thing - I'd have said it's 'Happy Mother's Day' on every Mother's Day card so you should do yours the same as that. I don't think there's one correct answer though.
Was Sara's idea to send a card to your pet? Since you ask, my idea is Compliment Day when you send a card complimenting someone on something. Simple and it could be a new industry I believe. Five-centres' idea is good but Sir Alan would probably still have asked "where would they go in the shop?", as he did with their idea, like that was an intractable problem.
My favourite line was Sir Alan's "(something something)... lecturing me about green." My least favourite were all the other ones in his embarrassing, rubbish outburst about the "problems of now" which somehow still managed to sound premeditated.
Because I'm wet I feel bad for having called Jennifer Corr a narcissist when most of them probably are, so I'll say that last week she knew she'd fucked up and this week she cracked up at Sophocles's COME ON so she's not the worst in any sense. I'll probably regret saying this too but Jenny and Matt - does their self-confidence and decisiveness simply come from being thick?
Andrew
I think you are right - that's where I'd have put it (rightly or wrongly.) But either way, it definitely shouldn't have gone BEFORE the 's' (as several suggested it should) as this would make it a National Day for one poor, lonely single person!
Ahhhh if only they'd had your number!
I notice nobody's used the word "ideation" yet this year...
Px
I too say no apostrophe.
Two great moments this week. Firstly mad green Jennifer's piece to camera where they left in a couple of seconds of silence at the end, as if they were waiting (as I was) for her to say, "..And so, you see, I've never really had any friends." And secondly Alex virtually pissing himself in the car (miserably, natch) as he listened to Kevin's hubristic nonsense and somehow managed not to ask him if he was going to need any help packing. I only realised it last night but Kevin may just possibly have been the best Apprentice contestant ever: an absolutely sky-high self-confidence-to-intelligence ratio. And if You're Fired was to be believed, he wasn't acting. I'm genuinely quite sad he's gone. Still, the banking sector needs him. And the way things are, we need him there too.
The discussion at the end had to be staged, didn't it? Surely even Lee McQueen can see that if you do step up to the mark and then prove yourself to be absolutely shite then you do deserve to go. That's what I'm talking about. (I'm waiting for him to be fired and to walk out of the boardroom saying, "Yo, I ain't goin' out like that. Sir Alan." As he goes out. Like that.) And it gave Raef yet another opportunity to prove himself the perfect gentleman.
Oh, Sir Alan! How should we divide up those Sorry Your Son Got Shot cards? 0-10 Years? Then 10-14 and 14-18 maybe? Some bigger ones with a badge? Near to the till maybe, for those impulse buyers? Tesco would certainly have bought thousands of those. I can't believe he said it. I can't believe they broadcast it.
Lee McQueen. Apologise.
Two great Raef moments this week (apart from his uber-gentleman act at the end to shut Alex up):
1) Sat up in bed rehearsing his pitch in full stripey button up pyjamas and dressing gown, giving off the full Noel Coward effect. This was nicely offset by Sophocles and Lee McQueen lounging round in their beds wearing apparantly much less. It gave off an air of prison mixed with boarding school. (Not that I know anything about either, I've just got a vivid imagination).
2) Sat listening to Myleene Klass, Raef gave off this air of "well, surely everyone has this kind of entertainment in their drawing room at least once a week?"
BTW, that has to rank as possibly the worst ever reward for winning a task.
There are several single people, therfore it is a possesive plural apostrophe, which means it goes after the 's', ie: 'National Singles' Day', as they wrote.
There are several single people so we add an 's' makining it singles, the plural form. Then as it already has an s at the end, we use the apostrophe after the s, making it Singles' Day. It would only be Single's Day if there was only one single.
There's a a page about how to use apostrophes here
I thought now that Eats Shoots and Leaves was on the bestseller list everyone knew this stuff.
I admire your confidence, Mike. Mother's Day is a day devoted to a singular Mother, hence the apostrophe after the "r", but if it were a day devoted to Mothers, I still maintain it would be Mothers Day (a day for Mothers, rather than a day belonging to Mothers). Is this a grey, or am I just wrong?
At Wimbledon, Women's Singles, or Men's Doubles suggests that the singles and doubles belong to the Women and the Men, but that feels wrong. I'm sure, it being Wimbledon, it's technically correct, but it always looks wrong, don't you think? Meanwhile, Singles Day looks right to me!
It's a minefield. Call the library!
Two absolute genius card ideas: one about saving the planet by not buying useless cards, and the other for people who have no-one to buy cards for them - perfect!
In fairness, it's an over-saturated market, I've seen happy birthday cards from/to the dog and even things like "Happy Valentine's Day Grandma" which is just plain odd, so it would've been difficult to have come up with something genuinely innovative.
It reminds me of the scene in The Simpsons where a card manufacturer's is having a meeting and bemoaning the festival-free summer:
"We really need a new occasion to revive our flagging market during the summer months."
"Well, we had great success last year with Christmas 2..."
In fairness, even that beats "Sorry to hear your beautiful 11-year-old son was shot to death by a hoodie", I think that's a bit niche.
NB - Surely you can't get shot "by a hoodie"? By someone in a hoodie maybe, but a hoodie is an item of clothing, you can't be robbed by a balaclava, can you?
grey area.
Apostrophes -- I wasn't originally intending to get drawn into this rather boring discussion about apostrophes (having left my comments yesterday) but this is my way of working things out:
Mother's Day = the Day *of* your Mother (the day to celebrate YOUR mother = one mother)
International Women's Day = the day *of* women / the day to celebrate women (plural)
Happy Valentine's Day = the day *of* (St) Valentine = one person, one saint
Happy Singles' Day = the day *of* SINGLES (plural) -- celebrating single people who either don't feel the need to conform and be married / happy to be single
Mike's coat = the coat *of* Mike
two days' time = in the time *of* two days
If you aren't all asleep by now the trick is to turn the sentence round and work out of the word "of" can be put in between / who + what the ownership is referring to.
Admittedly having said that I might have been tempted to drop the apostrophe on Happy Singles Day simply because most of the rest of the world is giving up on grammar and last golden rule:
- if in doubt leave it out!
I covered this in my blog on Thursday. And Sharon read it. Not that I'm accusing Sharon of having read it and then wantonly repeating my genius or anything...
I am a proofreader by trade, by the way. And Sharon is great.
Hi Swineshead,
I don't actually remember specifically reading your guidelines about apostrophes although I did read your review of The Apprentice. (And copying and repeating other people's words is not my style, I much prefer to come up with my own).
Bear in mind at the moment that I have very limited, intermittent internet access (internet cafes only on ad hoc days).
In about 7 days' time I will be set up with broadband access at home (fingers + toes crossed!) and then I will be able to keep up with all the blogs + comments more quickly.
Best wishes for a good weekend Swineshead.
All the best,
Sharon
Sorry Sharon, my last comment sounded really twattish. Soz.
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