'Ardcore!
I broke my own cardinal rule this week and watched a "supplementary" Apprentice programme: the one on BBC1, Monday night, that profiled the final five. Although I will never, ever, ever watch You're Fired, as I feel it lets light in upon magic and makes showbiz out of a drama, this one was OK. We found out that Alex's dad has a broken nose, that Helene has a "mentor", that Lee's dad is/was a milkman, that Lucinda's family are dead to her (I think) and that Clur was a club rep. As Sir Alan would say, he doesn't want to bladdy hear about it! He thinks the candidates should be judged not on their boo-hoo, woe-is-me sob stories but on the quality of their work. Quite right. There was always something wrong about the way Michelle Dewberry turned it round for herself with the broken home backstory towards the end of the second series. (I think this is why Sir Alan gave last year's gig to a posh boy, to redress his class-war karma.)
Anyway, everybody's favourite episode: the one where Sir Alan calls a Godfather-like favour of five of his trusted consiglieres and asks them to put the final five through their "paces" in an interview situation in Brentwood, which means goad them, prick them, bait them, mock them, trick them, talk over them, talk under them, stare unnervingly at them, ride roughshod over them, play them like a piano, humiliate them, prod them, undermine them, patronise them and tear their CVs in tiny pieces and cast the detritus like confetti all over the interview room, dancing through this impromptu snowstorm like a wood nymph. It's a bloodbath! The interviewers were, as ever: Dennis Hopper (boss of Viglen), Market Trader (property tycoon), Nicholas Soames (troubleshooter) and, making her first appearance as a sexy stiletto-shod leg emerging from a sports car to some jazzy music, thus beating men at their own game by being successful in a man's, man's, man's world but being reduced to a shapely ankle as punishment by the programme-makers, Football Woman (boss of Birmingham City FC), who seemed to take on the unlikely role of Nice Cop, and was thus Not Much Cop. She actually asked Lee McQueen to sell her a cheap biro, which he did by explaining that the hole in the top was to stop children choking on it (they could breathe through it like a snorkel, you see). This is not what we expect from the Apprentice equivalent of the elaborate torture games in Saw. It certainly was not what Lee McQueen charmingly predicted as "an arse-chewin'." He also explained that his "ass was on the floor" in the waiting room. Did he mean his donkey was at rest, or that his colon was distended? A sweet image either way. That's what he's talkin' about.
Lee McQueen is as fixated on his anus as Helen is on her testicles. She must have used the word "ballsy" about herself every week for the last 11, and out came her lady-balls again today. "I have two swinging, spherical sex glands in a bag down there and that's why I should win. It is more significant that I have them than, say, Lee or Alex, as they are men, and men generally have balls, but I am a woman, and I have grown my own balls, and that makes me more than an equal." (Gordon Ramsay, equally convinced that male gonads intrinsically make you a better person, would love her.)
Alex, 24, got the most roughshod ride, despite the defence mechanism of protesting that he was 24 to every question: "But, I think, with all due respect, that for 24, I've achieved a lot for a 24-year old who's 24. I'm not 25 you know! Nor am I 23! I know a lot of other 24 year-olds, who are the same age as me, which is 24, and they are tramps and heroin addicts, of 24! I, although also 24, am not. You know that programme on Sky with Kiefer Sutherland in it? That's my age. Here's my birth certificate. Check what year I was born ... yes, it's 1983 isn't it? That's because this was filmed last year, and I was 24 then. When it goes out, I will be closer to 25, but even that's only one year older than 24." Market Trader said he was boring and couldn't light a candle, let alone light up a room (which sent Alex's 24-year-old mouth on a journey all the way round his head until it landed back under his nose). It was, as Helen noted, "'ardcore."
They called Clur "cheap" because she'd apparently made eight million quid profit and only seen a "27k" bonus (being a holiday rep is obviously more lucrative than I ever realised). They called Lucinda "unemployable", because she was successful and wore colours. They called Helene "corporate" once again (in what way is Viglen non-corporate? I didn't see people sitting around in t-shirts, smoking dope), and she was forced to get out her violin and play the "two drunk parents" card, which was low, I felt, but she was in a corner and her giant balls could not protect her - certainly not from the two interviewers whose heads actually look like two testicles, one bald, one stubbly.
They called Lee McQueen - or "leee mqcWeeM" as it says on his CV - a big fat lying liar and he was. He'd claimed to have completed a two-year Creative Depilatory course at Warwick University, but in fact had only walked past the building once, on his way to Burtons. He was exposed! He was "disappointed" with the lie that had accidentally fallen on his CV! (As he had been "disappointed" that someone had not magcially spell-checked his CV and that he had "conveyed a message to the weeder" that he can't spell!) Dennis Hopper all but rubbed his letter from Warwick into Lee McQueen's roughshod face! Could this be the end for our fox-faced, reverse-pterodactyl-impersonating hero from Princes Risborough? He also winked at Market Trader, as if trying to insinuate that they are cut from the same cloth ie. cheap cloth. This was also a strategic error. All he had to cling to was the fact that he once fired a 42-year-old cripple in front of his blind wife and five children, of whom three had terminal illnesses, because he had stolen some paper clips. Mind you, Clur would be equally cut-throat if someone didn't get an email to her by ten o'clock. And if needs be, she'd have sex with Market Trader to land the job. ("I should have leaned over that desk and sucked his lips off," she remarked. I'm surprised Alex, 24, didn't use this against her in the boardroom, as the snakey fucker did with an off-the-record remark made by Lucinda, whose face seemed to widen with every criticism.)
I love it when Sir Alan gets his lieutenants into the boardroom and faces them as if perhaps one of them is gonna get fired. (My money was on Football Woman, so at least we could ogle her leg getting back into the sports car.) I also like the matey, gym-changing-room, towel-flicking banter between fellow execs, and the fact that Soames called him "Alan", while Football, being the new girl, called him "Sir Alan" (even though, we were told, he has "come to admire her" - ie. he likes her money). As ever, most of them liked some of the candidates, some of them like disliked most of the candidates and no consensus was reached. In other words, it was highly entertaining to see the final five squirm - and to see Nick's eyes reach a point of beadiness where they are now almost permanently closed - but it was going to be up to Sir Alan to do what he had to do ie. pretend he was going to fire three of them but in fact simply skim off the "zany" Lucinda, still not quite sure how she got this far in the first place with her hats. I'm afraid she was on borrowed time. There is no room for colour in an organisation like Viglen in Brentwood. There is not really room for colour in Brentwood.
So, five became four - group hug, air punch, come on etc. - the snake, the fox, the gobshite and the Blackwall Tunnel, and with only one of them working without testicles, it seems that the playing field is almost even. Although one suspects that both Nick and Football Woman are now in love with Alex, 24, and - as we discoverd on Monday - he has a girlfriend! What sport it must be playing pin-your-lips-on-Alex's-moving-mouth! I say, good luck to them, and may the best man (or Clur), win ie. get their own programme on Sky. Advice to Clur: if you want to win, adopt the crazy hairstyle you had at the start before you'd got ready. It had balls.
Recaps: Week One, Week Two, Week Three, Week Four, Week Five, Week Six, Week Chicken, Week Fong, Week Tissue, Week Zonda
posted by Andrew Collins @ 6:53 AM
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37 Comments:
Alex does indeed have a very pretty girlfriend. And his dad appears to be a hippy stuck in the Sergeant Pepper's era North.
Not sure if I even enjoyed last night's episode...
The funny (and desperately sad) fact to come out of the extra programme is that Alex's family call him "The Manipulator" and as such he thinks that this is good thing !
Simon James x
Another very funny post Andrew.
I agree, Claire is the only half-decent vaguely-humanoid candidiate. Lee is a nice guy but way too fick. Balls-woman is duller than ditchwater and Alex is quite simply an absolute cunt. He makes my flesh crawl whenever I see him. Women find that sort of thing sexy apparantly. Take back the vote, I say. Before we know it they'll be electing David Cameron.
Great episode. But apart from Football woman and the stubbly bruiser - the rest of them seemed quite unpleasant and intimidated by alan sugar.
Wouldn't you feel really sad and deflated if your senior employees and 'friends' were intimidated by you? I would.
What's the use of all that money if you still have to play the big cock game. Poor sad old fucker.
A sad indictment of today's business world was portrayed last night as Sralan unleashed his attack dogs on the chinless wonders of Brentwood. Only Lucinda seemed able to hold her own in the interview technique, which meant it was evenmore bizarre that she was the sole firee.
Lee showed himself to be a blatant liar. Am I the only person that thinks this is acceptable? Surely his whole intergrity is dashed in one fell swoop? Why was it simply put down to youthful exhuberance? Just because "we've all done it" (I haven't), doesn't make it right. Personally I would have fired Lee simply for not being able to use a spell checker. I assume the CV that they were referring to was the one Lee originally used to apply for the show, in which case why did the show's producers accept him onto the show in the first place?
Alex showed himself up to the be the snake we all knew he was. The way they all ganged up on Lucinda was appalling. His tutting and sighing at the interviewers was priceless. Helene came across as a rabbit permanantly caught in someone's headlights. And Clur came across as an ex-Club 18-30Rep.
I wouldn't employ any of them.
(Great telly though).
Not my favourite episode, but watchable nonetheless.
Lee really should know better as someone who works in recruitment (or recwuitment), that it's not a good idea to lie on your CV or not spell check it.
Lucinda was the right one to go, but what a snake that Alex is, announcing in front of the panel that she didn't want the job. I hope he's not the apprentice, but I've a horrible feeling he might be.
Can't wait to see what they call their fragrances next week.
Isn't it time Nick and Margaret got their own show? Not sure what format it would take, but ITV are willing to give anyone their own chat show if they're popular, so perhaps there's mileage there.
I suspect we will see either Nick or Margaret on the next run of Strictly Come Dancing. (Margaret has been sidelined this series, I think, by Nick, who's much better in front of the camera, despite Margaret's way with a shocked expression.)
I really don't think Alex will win. I think it will be Clur or Lee (should they be successful in the last task, obviously).
Although it was a cringe worthy reverse pterodactyl impersonation I did think it was a cheap shot from Stubbly Del Boy one to admonish Lee for doing something he’d actually asked him to do. Although I like the fact the Del Boy one did then tell Lee that SurAllun wouldn’t find that funny. I suspect that there’s nothing on this Earth that Sir Alan would find funny, although a resurrected pterodactyl doing a reverse Lee impression might crack a fissure on his crumply fizog.
Not the best interview episode as we didn't get to the dizzying heights of Katie Hopkins being brought down a peg or two, but entertaining nonetheless.
I must admit that although Lee was silly to lie and have spelling errors, I did feel sorry for him. He's obviously ashamed of his education, although I don't know why as Siralan seems to love people who left school at 7 and who had a merket stall at 8.
Zoe
Andrew
it was worth watching you're fired this week as Michael Macintyre was on it and he was very funny
Steve
They really are all terrible terrible people aren't they?
Lucinda was probably the only one with any sort of humanity and self-awareness. Probably best for her she got fired.
BTW I know that Michael McIntyre mentioned it afterwards but I'd love to think that, at the moment Clur referred to herself as not wanting to be a "big fat lemon", she noticed how she was dressed...
A disappointing episode. Interesting that Lucinda is the only one to offer any self-reflection over and above the usual 'I'm a tryer', 'I deliver', 'I'm the strongest' nonsense & it lead to her departure (we don't want any of that zany-ness around here thankyouverymuch!) She's better off I feel.
I pity my family if Alex wins. There'll be a tirade of naughty words in my house.
Geoff
On a(seemingly)unrelated topic ...
Has anyone seen the Cadbury's tv ad for their new chocolate bar, Twisted?
Is this perhaps the most unwittingly obscene advert ever broadcast?
If you haven't seen it, I won't bore you with a long description, but basically it's a creme egg which melts and then gets resurected as some sort of 'Twisted' monster chocolate bar with lots of horror movie thunder & lightning sound effects.
Fair enough. But what happens next is that the bar rears up and attacks!
The problem is, this part of the ad looks exactly like ...
(look away now children and delicate Victorian ladies ...)
... an angry spitting cock!
Sorry but there's really no polite way of saying that. Well, there is, but it wouldn't have the shock effect I felt when watching the actual advert.
It really is like watching the money shot in a porn movie.
What sort of idiots do they have making these things?
It reminded me of the sort of thing the Apprentice candidates might produce.
Is it just me, having admittedly spent my youth watching way too much porn - or is this quite unpleasant to watch?
Shame really - 'cause I love creme eggs.
Anyone have any thoughts?
Although there was still stuff to enjoy - Big Interviewer Geezer's knowing wink to S'ralan as he left the board room being the highlight - I thought last night's episode was a total non-event. And a bit of a swizz really.
I reckon the 4 finalists set up was in the can before any interviews took place and Lucinda was always going to be the one to miss out. I know he always protests that, regardless of the effect on ratings, who he fires is up to him. In most weeks I’m sure that’s true but this felt very prescribed to me.
I said a few weeks ago this series is meant to be about Clur's (I'm only copying that gag because I can't be bothered to look up whether it's Clare with and 'i' or not) journey. She probably just about deserves a shot at the job but she hasn't changed at all. There was no journey. All that's happened is that she has just enough self-awareness to alter her behaviour. It's an increasingly rare quality in the contestants and despite what the viewing figures or the media tell us about this being the best series yet, if we get a similar bunch next time around I think we’ll all get bored with it.
Looking forward to BB9 tonight AC? No, I thought not. Haven’t decided whether it deserves my attention yet and I have the last 3 episodes of series 4 of The Wire to get through and I want to watch them in one go. I don’t care what anyone else has said about it fading slightly at this stage, series one and series four (and I think 4 shades it) have been easily the most outstanding... so far.
Siralan: "thanks (Football Woman) for giving us a lady's perspective..."
Nice bit of inherent sexism there.
And poor Margaret, eh?
I think Lucinda was definitely the right one to go. As was pointed out yesterday she's shit in a team if she's not in charge.
I think Alex was a total dick for bringing up her doubts about the job in the boardroom, but at the same time I do get the impression that Lucinda would be much less likely to stick it out in the job. She says she "wants" it rather than "needs" it, but in fact you need both. If she doesn't need to money what's going to make her stay when she gets bored?
I felt quite sorry for Lee. He was bloody stupid to do what he did, but I think they made a bigger issue out of it than they needed to. I'm sure I saw, from a brief show of the form, that as well as having the dates he was a Thames Valley Uni (ie. 2 years instead of 4 months) he also had the qualification (an HCIMA one) followed by the words "Not Completed".
Anyway, it's Claire or Lee for me.
heres the offending ad in all its glory, if anyone wants to see it.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hdYAfR274gU
thanks to mr david 'trawler' hepworth for the link.
No I shall not be tuning in to Big Brother tonight. Having watched last year's through to its bitter end (and not blogged about it once for fear of getting embroiled), I will seriously never let a second of it pollute my life ever again. How nice to be able to say that. (Not that I have anything against those who do choose to watch it.)
Actually Tristan, you are right - I saw that "Not completed" thing come to mention it too. On that basis, why didn't Lee just say he never claimed to have completed the course? I stand corrected as far as Lee is concerned, and do feel sympathy for him. I feel very guilty now.
Why shouldn't Alex shop Lucinda? Like Alan Sugar and his male friends agreed, business isn't about being nice. (Karen Brady carrying on like some kind of therapist attempting to heal the damage inflicted by those nasty men who preceded her ("What about your childhood?" "What is it that motivates you?" "Would you like a nice cup of tea?") certainly didn't really chime with the spirit of the exercise.)
I wish you would watch ...You're Fired, Andrew, because it usually tackles lots of the amusing things you yourself pick up on in these blog posts. In fact, reading through your stuff I've often thought, 'Huh? Why's he making that joke? Adrian Chiles did that last night'.
Anyway, can you do next week's like the fake script one you did the other week? That was a cracker.
Tom
Tom, I hereby solemnly promise to do next week's Apprentice as a fake script.
I will never watch You're Fired. I am happy with the hour-long episode, exquisitely edited as it is, and I don't need the showbiz. Or Adrian Chiles making the same jokes as me. I like it here.
Can I just ask where everyone on the Apprentice gets the idea that Lucinda is so bright? She's certainly smarter than the rest of them, but that's obviously no great achievement.
But where is all this coming from?It must be her CV, because she never demonstrated any particularly special intelligence so far as i could see.
You're so bright. obviously very bright. highly intelligent woman etc. based on what?
Is it simply because she's posh and wears comedy All Allo costumes which mean she must be eccentric therefore intelligent.
If so, it shows what a narrow little world the Apprentice business people live in.
Lucinda wasn't ideal but it must be difficult to go through the whole thing as an odd one out and ultimately, obviously, there's no room for style and imagination and humanity in the wonderful property business. Crap buildings must be erected everywhere because we're not in The Netherlands or Denmark or somewhere that does stuff like that well. Imagination-bypassed fuckwits in their boringly silver, pointlessly powerful heart/lung disease-causing machines must eradicate all colour, style and imagination. It seems that Lucinda's appearance was a problem with most of the other candidates. Sad. And sad if Claire Balding was right to say on YF! that colourful clothing could be distracting in business. In grey Britain.
I loved Lee McQueen's response to the 'was-it-really-2-years?' inquiry - "er, as far as I know...". I'd like him to win and he might have a chance but the way they've been paired suggests that separated Alex and Clur are the last two really.
Only Lucinda was described as clever and articulate but Clur is too and I just want that noted! Don't know why really.
Why did Karen Brady bring up Alex's appearance? He had every right to be defensive.
Alex came across as a revolting little cock knob. All that, "I'm 24..." Fuck off you total tool!!!
Some years back I interviewed a chap who, well before his twenty-fourth birthday was piloting his bomber on night raids on the Ruhr Valley (this was during the Second World War I should point out) so if we're going by achievements, I think he wins. Not some wanky little snake in the grass.
Lee - not using spell-checker on your CV - is incredibly stupid.
He knows he can't spell, so why not use it? The mind boggles with him. The problem with Lee as an employee is he would need some very good secretaries to back him up, to be eloquent on the phone, to do a presentation and type readable copy and let's face it, that could be expensive.
Okay, but does wearing garish clothing qualify Lucinda both as 'a bit of character' and highly intelligent? And what's all that stuff with her family? Very suspicious.
Maybe she appears 'kooky' and 'brave' in the dull grey world of business industrial estates, but in any really creative environment, she'd have to prove her creative thinking with, well, some actual creative thinking - rather than differently-coloured berrets.
I think it's a variation of the big fish in small pond syndrome.
She only manages to stand out as creative and exciting or whatever bollocks people have said about her in relation to the drearyness of the other candidates.
I've done contractor Business Analyst roles. It is very well paid, but mostly populated by very dull people.
(Incidentally, I wasn't very good at it. So I was sacked.)
Maybe it was just me, but dear old Lee with his made-up CV and made-up spellings reminded me of the old Goons routine....
Spike (as Eccles) "I've got a Cambridge Tie"
Harry (as Neddie) "YOU went to CAMBRIDGE???"
Eccles "Where do you think I bought the tie!"
"As he had been "disappointed" that someone had not magcially spell-checked his CV ... "
I hope "magcially" was intentionally ironic, Andrew!
Olivia
It wasn't, Olivia. But this is a blog, not a job application, and if it were a job application, I would have checked it, I promise.
Ginja, thats a great line.
My favourite Goons gag is the one about the time. Can't remember the characters involved, Eccles etc, but the gag is:
A: Do you have the time?
B: Yes, it's 2.15. I have it written down here on a piece of paper.
A: But what do you do if it's not 2.15?
B: If it's not 2.15, I don't look at the piece of paper.
A: But how do you know what time it is?
B: That's simple. I have it written down here on this piece of paper.
Or something like that - although Spike put it much better. But you get the general idea.
I didn't really like the Goons, all those self-consciously 'funny' voices.
But when you see it written down, you often realise how funny it was. More of a Q man myself. And his books were great.
So this week we found out what they're all good at - interviews! Very little mention was made of the fact that they have all been pretty useless throughout the series but the interviewers all suggested that all the candidates (apart from the "unemployable" Lucinda) were all quite good.
I actually felt nervous when I was watching the interviews and it's almost 30 years since I was last interviewed for a job.
I have to agree that it would have been very good to have seen Sophecles chewed up at the interviews.
Apparently Lucinda's real name is Cindy Burger.
That is all.
Zoe
paul, that Goons line is the only clip I every hear when people talk about the Goons.
I always assume the BBC wiped everything else.
It's a bit like Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. You've got "one leg too few" and "Greta bloody Garbo" and nothing else. You never see anything else.
There's a BBC2 Saturday Night 90 minute clip show there.
"The stuff that isn't the obvious stuff".
A "shut up Pike" and "Del-boy through the bar hatch" free zone.
Well, they need to schedule something now the Apprentice is over.....
Hearing clips from their CVs how on EARTH did these people even get selected in the first place? What must the other applicants have been like?
On the basis of what were admittedly edited highlights for the purpose of a TV programme I'm annoyed he fired Lucinda, who came across as the only likeable, honest candidate, and certainly the best performer in the interviews. The others all came across as highly dislikable (and in Alex's case, TWENTY FOUR and highly dislikable, oh, and how exactly does "public school educated" prove that he's clever, which I believe was the question?) And equally I wish Lee had dropped the I'm-so-working-class act. If he really is "ashamed" of his background that irritates me, because on the basis of the programme all about the finalists both his parents have perfectly respectable, normal jobs (his dad's a milkman I think), but from the way he talks about his "background" you'd think they were crack addicts.
Not the best episode, but, as usual, your summary made me giggle.
Px
- How did you get on with your fellow contestants?
- It was tough, for me and for them. I don't really know why. To some extent they were bullying me but although I cried sometimes, I certainly never let them get to me. Pink! It's just that sometimes, you know, you can't get through to people who can't see past my voice. There's more to me than just a voice. I have berets. And colours. So it's disappointing when people think that you have to be grey and dull to be a successful woman in business and they pick on you because you're not like that. Green! And they say things like, "Just get to the point!" But there isn't always a point, I'm afraid. Not afraid of them. The others, I mean. I'm not afraid of them. They can try to break me and make me the same as them but I'm not the same and I never will be the same. Because I'm different, you see. Different from them. Different from you. Pink! I'm not like you at all; you're this person who sits in this room all day and asks questions, aren't you? You're quite intimidating but I just say "Chin up!" and I get on with it. I can get on with anything and anybody, you see. And I do. And I've proved I do time and time again. It's just that sometimes people don't realise that I'm getting on with them and they think I'm not getting on with them and I'm being awkward, or difficult. But it can be awkward, can't it? I mean when you can't get people to see that - Purple! - they're wrong...
- So you didn't get on well with the other contestants?
- Sorry, I'm having trouble understanding your accent with that suit. Contestants? Pink! I thought you said my family.
Does anybody else get depressed when, after laughing heartily at these apparently inadequate wannabe megalomaniacs, the voiceover informs us that Lucinda already earns over 100k, and Claire 70 or whatever? Then I think of my paltry salary and wonder who's laughing now?
There are more depressing people than the Apprentice candidates, earning far more than 100K. We just don't see them on television acting like idiots.
When the guy started to talk about Lee's CV lie, Sir Alan looked surprised and said "Oh? I didn't have him down as a University type" Yet from previous firings, it would appear that he does read candidates' CVs beforehand. Don't tell me I can't believe anything I see on this programme...
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