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.
So, a 15-year old starlet from America called Miley Cyrus, star of the Disney Channel's Hannah Montana (which has crossed my radar in name only but I think I get the picture), has had her photograph taken by Annie Leibeovitz for Vanity Fair magazine and uproar has resulted, due to the inappropriately sexual nature of the shot, in which, to quote the sober, unsensational Guardian coverage, "Leibovitz has her draped in a satin sheet, most of her back exposed, in a pose that gives the impression she is topless. The actor looks straight at the camera over her bare right shoulder, her hair across her face" (this drooling description despite the fact that, as with every other paper accidentally advertising Vanity Fair for free, the picture was printed in full).
Those who expect "family values" from the Disney Channel have reacted negatively to the picture. Some reactionary moral guardian has already called for Hannah Montana merchandise to be placed on a communal bonfire (ah yes, book-burning, that has a savoury history), and I wouldn't want to get my hands dirty there. But it does, sadly, point to a larger problem, and that's the early sexualisation of children in our crazy, mixed-up, media-saturated world. I actually don't share the tabloids' paranoid conviction that there's a paedophile lurking on every street corner (if they lurk anywhere, it's generally within the family, isn't it?), but for as long as parents who believe their young offspring to be their "friends" allow childhood to be incrementally bought off (and Cyrus's parents - one of whom is indeed Billy Ray - were apparently at their daughter's photo shoot, so they should share the responsibility for the tastefulness or otherwise of having their young daughter depicted in a sexualised manner in a mass-market magazine), it's little wonder certain individuals find it harder to ascertain where the line is drawn between acceptable and unacceptable. You'll have already noted the saucy slogans on toddlers' t-shirts and the Playboy bunny pencil cases in WHSmith.
I know ages of consent are arguably random (different people mature at different times - some adults are little more than kids with cars and credit cards), but the phrase "barely legal" is now a recognised subsection of pornography, and remember all that unbecoming laddish fuss about Charlotte Church's 16th birthday (step forward, if it's not too much of a strain, Chris Moyles), so we should at least allow kids to be kids until responsibility takes over. Having said all that - and I'm nothing if not a fence-sitter/liberal goody-two-shoes, as you know - this is a kid who's already famous, and is being fast-tracked through the usual stages of growing up. It's not a representative case. (For her part, Miley Cyrus said she found the picture "artistic" and said she was wrapped in "a blanket", and officially regrets having it taken that way. Different people see different things in the same image.)
At least Vanity Fair can add a few more readers this month. That's the most important thing.
Collings & Herrin Podcast 10 is done. This makes up for no podcast on Friday. There will be another one this Friday, so you'll have to listen to it straight away. Richard was having scaffolding put up all around his one-man West London mansion while we recorded it this afternoon, which was exciting. A single metal pole appeared outside of his attic window as we were finishing up. We listened to our arch-rivals Adam & Joe's podcast (the 6 Music one), while we were waiting for ours to upload, and they are much better-spoken than us, and they have jingles and everything, but then again, they are supported by your licence fee payments. We are not. (We decided to take a moody picture of ourselves this week, because the light was moody. No other reason. Try not to read anything into this.)
Because Richard will be in Edinburgh and I will be in Northampton on Friday, we shall be recording the 10th Collings & Herrin Podcast on Monday. Be patient. (Oh, and I've tried to make the proper microphones work again, using the clear and helpful advice that Mr Angry led me to, but they still don't work. I'm just warning you: the sound quality will be as it has always been.) Back to normal service next Friday, so just think, you'll be able to listen to two new podcasts within five days!
Not a vintage Apprentice this week. Another making-stuff task, requiring a "back office" and a "sales team", which is getting a little formulaic. (Am I misremembering previous years, or where they always this mechanical?) Although usually a fan of the editing, I found this week's confusing - I couldn't remember which team was which and found myself thinking that Renaissance had done really well when in fact it was Alpha who'd made the sale, that kind of thing. Sir Alan moved Matt Lucas from one to the other and made Claire project manager of ... you see, I can't even remember which one now! It was the winning team anyway, as that's why Claire was in floods of pathetic tears in the boardroom at the end. How's that going to go down at the Mighty Amstrad - who still make satellite dishes, we discovered (not that this would stop Raef trying to sell Amstrad a satellite dish if he "really believed in the product", the plummy fool). I think I'll call both teams Renalpha.
What a surprise to hear the note of amused cynicism and barely suppressed disdain in the narrator's voice when he revealed that, as well as a risk assessment manager, Lucinda - star of this week's show - was also a "part-time aromatherapist!" (Being a risk analyst is OK, but dabbling in black magic, which is what it is, marks her out as a figure of fun. All hail the consensus!) This was Lucinda's chance to prove herself more than a workshy, technophobic, "eccentric" - ie doesn't wear a dark suit - posho with a permanent sniffle. (She should remember the words of Reeves & Mortimer: smell to get well!) Sir Alan put her in charge, much to the blank faces of her Renalpha teammates. Helene, who'd come to blows with her over the laptop, made herself clear: "Everybody thinks Lucinda is a bit of a fruitcake, and the reality of it is we've seen four tasks now where she's been so lazy. Its like, 'If I'm not in charge I'm going to sit here and have a cup of coffee and do fuck all'." (That's no language for a lady!) But Lucinda said, "We are going to work together to have fun." Radical. And impossible. These people are not here to have fun. And especially not miserable southerner Alex. Having been auditioning for the part of Ice Queen for the past four weeks, part-time Corr and marketing consultant Jennifer Maguire was finally cast. Her bob seemed more severe, her wicked-witch lipstick more red, her piercing blue eyes more piercing and blue, as she summed up her project manager's skill set: "Lucinda made no difference, we would have done it whether she was there or not." Done what? Lose the task?
Being sent off into the country to liaise with two ice-cream-producing farms (well, you can't get a decent price for a pig any more) did not bring out the best in our thrusting city types. Michael, from the Greek island of Telesales, imagined that their tasting session at the village hall would only attract "a toothless crone with one arm and seven chins." Johannesburg-born Claire, who used to be a holiday rep in Magaluf, wondered if there might be someone "with webbed feet". Oh, how they laughed in the back of their people carrier - because that's what people are like in the country! (If any of these twerps were actually as successful in the town as they pretend to be, they'd live in the country, and know better. The stereotypes in the country are people with no chins.) It seemed like a Straw Dogs-style act of revenge on behalf of all country folk for this remark that led to, well, nobody turning up for their ice-cream tasting. The village hall was actually locked, meaning they had to force their cider and elderflower onto two rugby-attired, fume-breathing men in a pub. That's market research. Michael's simpering style was enough to turn anyone to strong drink, as he sucked up to them with guff about "discerning palates" and actually said - to two men in a pub - "I know you're busy." (Bravo for the obviously posed cutaway of Nick checking his watch as the drunks tasted the ice cream and wished there was less elderflower in the cider and elderflower.)
I was almost sick when Jenny, Claire and Michael clinched what would be the clinching deal with the Hoxton Bar & Grill for 200 litres of the aforementioned dessert with 20 minutes to go: their high-pitched, air-punching, self-congratulatory back-seat ecstasy was almost too much to bear. How old are these fucking people? This week's show was heavy on the self-love, with Jennifer at one point saying, "I'm very pleased with the independent cinemas - plural - I managed to bag today, I think I did an absolutely fantastic job." And, later, "You know, I am overwhelmed by how good we are." (Were none of the candidates ever told off as children?) There was a lot of this kind of talk, in between the whooping and the high-fiving. "That is the sign of a good salesperson," yelled Jenny, "We kept up the momentum against all odds!" True enough - those "odds" being incompetence and sloppy marketing. They were so useless they made an appointment with the Clapham Picture House cinema, not knowing it was part of an 18-cinema chain, and lost the account to Renalpha, who made their appointment with the area manager. The killing joke was: Claire's useless team won, and Lucinda's less useless team lost. There is not justice in this game. Still, the producers had already earmarked Lucinda and Jennifer (two Jennifers? what were the casting people thinking of?) for a showdown, and that is what they got.
I think perhaps the producers were hoping for a bit more slapstick footage from the back room, but in both cases, the ice cream production went smoothly. We all liked the egg-separating device, but that's one shot. Men in blue hair nets, also mildly amusing, especially when they are Alex or Lee McQueen, but again, a couple of shots. The search for oranges was promising, especially the glimpse of four oranges in a Spar when they needed 50, but this didn't go anywhere either. Hence, we had way too much of the selling part. This became dull very quickly. The cinema-chain disaster was high-wire stuff, but the rest was all a bit low-key. Thank heavens, then, for the evil, snake-like Jennifer (not my words, Helene's, at least according to supergrass Lucinda), with her direct telesales style: "We really wanna set up an appointment to come and see you's" - none of teammate Raef's "I'm CEO of Renalpha Ice Cream International" bullshit. Jennifer and Lindi constantly battled to be the most self-satisfied ("I wanna make sure I do those appointments myself because ... " "... you've built up the relationship." "Exactly" - the woman had made one cold call!) And - snap! - both women offered exclusivity deals which were not in their power to offer, thus pissing off Sir Alan. Even when they'd secured a 130 litre deal with Bruno Brookes who ran the gastropubs, the desperate need of Jennifer and Lindi for extra praise was unbearable. "The first pub in London to serve avocado ice cream - how d'you feel about that?" pushed Jennifer, as if she were a local news reporter. "How d'you feel?" And Lindi, who makes the cat that got the cream look look like an ungrateful bastard, couldn't keep her mouth shut: "Three months' exclusivity!" On the batphone to Lucinda, Lindi cast her praise net even wider: "Did we blow your target out of the water, mate, or what?"
Despite being on the losing team, hats off to Raef for being by far the best turned out in his smoking jacket and patted-down hair when Sir Alan "surprised" them before breakfast by turning up to film some footage of himself looking impatient while they put on their "PJs" - I think perhaps Raef's butler dressed him. You could tell he wasn't going to be anywhere near the final three in the boardroom, as he barely appeared in the edit. Nor did Sara or Matt Lucas, or, sadly, Lee McQueen, although I could have sworn he'd had a shave at one point. Maybe it was just the light. He certainly did some Ali G finger-clicking when he explained that "targets are there to be broken, and we're smashin' them targets! That's what I'm talking about!" He will have his own episode at some point.
Lucinda was better protected in the boardroom than any previous disgraced project manager, flanked by the evil Jennifer and the gobby Lindi, who had already attempted to paper over the cracks in their performance by saying they had "given it their all." (Mind you, Lucinda's claim that they had "had fun" didn't cut it with Sir Alan either. Business is not about fun.) Lindi's fate had been sealed back in the people carrier. During what was for her a moment of quiet spiritual contemplation, she murmured, "We are sizzling hot superstars." Cue: sound of gallows. Her tarantula eyelashes almost reached across the boardroom table to irritate Sir Alan further. He doesn't like mouthy birds and he doesn't like bullshitters. Lucinda was actually adjudged to have been better than anyone had expected, especially in a glowing tribute from Lee McQueen, who might be the Mellors to her Lady Chatterley. For being not as bad as expected, Lucinda was saved, as was Jennifer, because there's no way the producers were going to let her go. So Lindi was the sacrificial provincial egomaniac, much to the obvious regret of Lucinda, who actually stroked her as she got up. "I'm literally shocked that I've been sacked today," she said, in the death cab (as opposed to being figuratively shocked, or metaphorically shocked). "I'm still in a state of shock as to why Sir Alan hasn't understood how special I am." Not so hot and sizzling now. She'll be a reporter on The One Show within six weeks.
I'm not sure if Jenny actually said, "No fluffing around," but I like to think she did. And a sincere thank you to Alex, for introducing me to this exciting new flipchart phrase, "If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail."
I think it's fairly well established that I don't often go to the theatre. I've found myself getting into musicals these past couple of years, mostly because they're such good value for money, but the actual stage play remains something of a mystery to me. I realise I must come across as a philistine, but I do prefer filmed drama, as it's finished, it's complete, it's finite. I've been to the theatre a couple of times and although I enjoyed the very act of being there (hardened by the determination to appreciate something that costs so much), I found I couldn't connect with the action, perhaps because of faraway seats, or an underpowered performance. With all that said, I'm prepared to occasionally shell out to see some famous people walking about and talking on stage.
The God Of Carnage, written by Yasmina Reza and, like her previous hit Art, translated from the French by Christopher Hampton, is star-studded: Ralph Fiennes, Janet McTeer, Tamsin Greig and Ken Stott. What a bill! Call me shallow, but that's four good reasons to leave the house. Thus it was that I found myself at the Gielgud on Saturday, in the same room as these talented people. At home, the Sky+ was even recording Tamsin Greig in Love Soup while I watched her act for real, right there.
It's one of those plays that takes place in real time, with no interval, in one room. Quite a different experience from, say ... searches for comparison from limited repertoire of theatre experiences ... Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman, with Brian Denney at the Lyric in 2005, which was as much a spectacle of set design as of acting. With God Of Carnage, you're right there in the living room of a posh French couple, McTeer and Stott, their vast coffee table groaning under the conspicuous display a number of art books; Fiennes and Greig have called round to discuss the unfortunate violent altercation that has taken place between their two sons, in which two teeth were knocked out. It begins in perfect genteel fashion, with all four polite and positive in the belief that they are civilised enough to work this out. Needless to say, the summit descends, via coffee and rum and tulips and home truths, into shouting chaos. It's a comedy, in that it makes you laugh (especially Fiennes, whose lawyer, constantly on the mobile, echoed Reginald Perrin - I've always said that he was born to play Leonard Rossiter in a biopic!), but it's more satire than farce, despite outbreaks of physical interaction, including a very convincing vomiting incident, and violence of their own.
I've never seen Art, so I don't know if it was the same, but keeping the settings, names and cultural references Parisian is odd at first - they're called Alain and Veronique and they eat clafoutis, a type of French tart/flan - but it makes sense in the end, as this is specifically about the French middle classes, who, luckily, seem not so different from the English middle classes. (I've read a couple of fanciful reviews which suggested the play could be viewed as an allegory for the situation in the Middle East, and/or America's failure to apologise for invading Iraq, which could be bollocks.) It's about 90 minutes long, and does become quite a trial as order breaks down, and then breaks down a bit more, and then a bit more, but the end result is a stinging rebuke to those who seek to dress themselves in a veneer of respectability by having art books lying around and caring about Darfur. I read that the playwright doesn't write her plays as comedy, but that's how they come out, either in performance or translation. I can see that.
Anyway, bottom line: I enjoyed the experience. I've seen Ralph Fiennes and Ken Stott live.
Yesterday I took the day off work - which is easier if you work for yourself - and went birdwatching on the Norfolk coast with my birdwatching friend Dave, who also works for himself. It really was the most fantastic day. Dave's a much more experienced birder than I, but we share a similar pitch of enthusiasm for the feathered and have been threatening to do this for some time. So we booked ourselves into a nice B&B in Dersingham for the night and spent what added up to seven solid hours over two separate reserves, in gorgeous bright sunlight but with the coastal wind battering us for dramatic effect and testing our outdoor garb. We're talking marshes. Wading birds, waterfowl of all types, seabirds and yes, lots of ducks! First stop was Titchwell Marsh RSPB Reserve, featuring lots of lagoons and reedbeds. Then onto Cley Marshes, a Norfolk Wildlife Trust site that also offers pools and wet grassland and looked spectacular in the late-afternoon light. The picture above was taken at around 6.30 when about 150 sandwich terns had settled onto a small island for the night, only to take to the air en masse occasionally, which was a sight in itself. Both reserves were well kept, with modern, unobtrusive boardwalks, neat hides at regular intervals and good signage. The visitor centre at Cley is environmentally friendly (see: below), with a wind turbine and a sloped, planted roof which collects the rainwater to use in the toilets. It costs just £4. At Titchwell it was £4 per car in the car park, or you could display your RSPB membership card (which we did).
I'm a bit of a novice birder (Dave's been at it since childhood; I only got into it about ten years ago, fascinated by the swallows in Galway), but it's a friendly cult. Clearly, on a weekday, you're going to meet committed twitchers on the boardwalks, but this was educational for me. I loved the camaraderie of discussing the identity of a patchy looking wader from one of the Cley hides - was it a spotted redshank, or a ruff that was midway between winter and summer plumage? (Dave later decided it was the latter) - with another chap in fleece, hat and sensible walking boots. There are those who are very male about it and live to tick off "lifers" (ie. birds they have never seen before), but others who just enjoy pottering about and watching birds. Dave and I were as captivated as the other birders by the marsh harrier swooping elegantly above the dunes at Titchwell (the hardened birder calls it a "marsh" and has no need to say "harrier"), and when Dave saw his first shore lark on the pebbly beach, it was a genuine thrill. But one of the most exciting moments of our long day took place in the car park at Titchwell, when the world's most tame robin actually came up and pecked a raisin out of my hand! This is a long-held ambition of mine - to have a bird feed out of my palm - and it was a good omen for the rest of the day. This photo was taken from within one of the hides at Cley.
We bought homemade rolls and Tunnock's caramel wafers and a hunk of sheep's cheese from a small village post office and ate those as we walked. We listened intently to a Bill Oddie-type in a Titchwell hide, who said "bins" for binoculars and was clearly an advanced breed of twitcher - if you closed your eyes, it could have been Saxondale! I really enjoy breathing in the air of such dedicated gentlemen. There were quite a few old couples we passed and said hello to, but birdwatching does seem to attract a greater number of men, many of them with telescopes and massive cameras and tripods. You don't catch these men referring to bird books in mixed company, but Dave and I were far more relaxed, and consulted ours regularly. After our seven solid hours in the salty air, we drove back to Dersingham and ate a hearty meal. We wrote down every single species we saw, in the bar, including all the common ones, which we still hold dear, and our grand total was 47. (I have put an A in brackets after each one I saw for the first time yesterday, and a D if it was the first time for Dave. Just for the record. It may help you to re-live our excitement.) In no particular order, then:
Blue tit
Great tit
Wood pigeon
Shore lark (aka horned lark) (A, D)
Swallow
Marsh Harrier (A)
Lapwing
Pheasant
Carrion crow
Rook
Blackbird
Magpie
Garden warbler (A, D)
Cormorant
Robin
Kestrel (a number of these, hovering above the roadside)
Teal
Gadwall (A, D)
Wigeon
Pochard
Shelduck
Shoveller
Pintail
Tufted duck
Mallard (and, as duck lovers will have spotted, that's nine species of duck - we pretty much only needed to see an eider and a smew to complete the set)
Brent goose
Greylag goose
Canada goose
Black-headed gull
Sandwich tern (A)
Avocet (A)
Oystercatcher
Redshank (A)
Ruff (A, D)
Curlew (A)
Ringed plover (A)
Coot
Moorhen
House sparrow
Wren
Chaffinch
Goldfinch
Greenfinch (the finches were at the seed feeders outside the visitors' centre at Titchwell - it was like being in my back garden!)
Brambling
Dunnock
Black-tailed godwit (A, D)
Mute swan
We saw a jay and a collared dove on the drive home this morning, which makes 49. Not quite 50, but hey, it's not about numbers, it's about the beauty of birds. (Dave also saw a reed bunting, but I didn't.) I didn't attempt to photograph any birds as I only have an ordinary digital camera. But the landscapes look good. It was a good day, and in many ways a shame to have to come back to urban reality and work.
In the ninth Collings & Herrin podcast (which is on its way to being uploaded in the usual spot - cheers, Mark!), Richard and I hit out at our critics. In other words, we give the oxygen of publicity to the two people who posted negative one-star ratings on iTunes about our podcast, possibly directed there from this embarrassingly nice piece about me on Channel 4's 4 Talent website, and clearly very disappointed by what they found, and to whoever posted on the Comedy Forum about the podcast and said that I interrupted Richard too much, which I hold my hands up to, and to whoever it was who accused me of being a "left wing goody two shoes", which really hurts. We also discuss a particularly graphic piece of spam email in detail and try to solve Gordon Brown's body language problems. Not having recorded one for two weeks, it was great to get back in the saddle. Next week, I promise we will try and solve our GarageBand problems, thanks to the timely intervention of somebody called Mr Angry, whose input we may find it impossible to ignore in our usual cavalier fashion.
Don't forget to go to this gig that Richard is organising and hosting. There, I'm plugging my own colleague's venture.
Ha ha, on a less loyal note, you can also download this podcast with me on it. Even though it says it's Mark Kermode reviewing the new releases with Simon Mayo, it's actually me reviewing them, today, with the genial Colin Murray. Don't subscribe to it, though, or it will beat the Collings & Herrin podcast, which needs far more help than a BBC-branded one. Just listen to it on the iPlayer via the Five Live site.
PS: Here's an alternative photo for anyone offended by the big-Andrew-small-Richard one used above:
It's taken me the best part of a week to catch up with the first episode, but I'm happy to say that Pushing Daisies isn't a show I'm going to have to watch every week. So, unlike those who took to the latest US import, I won't miss the second episode, which ITV1 are not showing, due to the surprise start of Euro 2008 (which no British team is actually playing in) in seven weeks' time. If I had taken to the show, I'd be furious at yet more manhandling by British broadcasters of imported series - and indeed, I am furious on behalf of those who did take to it, it's shoddy in the extreme, and don't give me any excuses about the writers' strike, you despise your viewers, ITV1, you despise them. I thought the first episode was quite sweet. Anna Friel's accent was fine (although we're getting used to that type of thing with British and Irish actors, now - Dominic West, Aidan Gillen, Idris Elba, Matthew Rhys, Zoe Slater, Kevin McKidd ... and it doesn't seem to bother anybody that Hugh Laurie can't do one). The chap who plays the pieman seems nice. Good to see Kristin Chenoweth from West Wing (good to see anyone from West Wing). Good to hear Jim Dale narrating. However, it's a little too self-conscious to love. A bit like Tim Burton's films, which I admire but rarely love. I wish Pushing Daisies well in the ratings. (It launched with 5.7 million on Saturday night, which sounds like a lot, but this was Saturday night, and this was ITV1, and it was beaten by Casualty, so expect a dip this week, and then the show will be moved, if not to another night, certainly to another timeslot. It feels harsh when British broadcasters do this, but a US network would simple pull it off air and cancel it. We're still quite quaint in that regard.)
Anyway, selfishly, I'm pleased. If it had hooked me in, I'd have yet another US import to watch for a number of weeks (albeit one less than the makers intended). I have enough to watch with Nip/Tuck and Mad Men right now. I'm also glad I didn't like Dirty Sexy Money, or Dexter, or Journeyman, or The Bionic Woman, or The Shield, or CSI (imagine the hours I'd have lost on that particular franchise!), or, going further back, the second series of Lost, the second series of Desperate Housewives, the third series of 24. I have a funny feeling I'm not going to want to watch the second series of Heroes either, but I'll give it a go. I always give these shows a go. But The Wire (for reality) and Brothers And Sisters (for schmaltz) and the recently finished Damages (for pot-boiling intrigue) set the bar very high. As did Six Feet Under, the show Pushing Daisies most wants to be, but isn't.
With the eyes of the Laughing Cavalier following him around the room at the Wallace/Wallis Collection, Laughing Sir Alan drops Week Four's project bombshell: "This task is all about portraits. You're going to photograph customers ..." Captured in close-up, Simon closes his eyes in semi-religious ecstasy and holds back his head, teeth together, mouthing the word, "Yesss!" "... and sell them their portraits."
Thus was his grisly fate sealed in that one second of hubris. (Who writes this stuff? It's award-winning.) Yes, it was sad to see my old favourite Simon go, as he had chopped onions so well last week and seemed, to my fanciful eyes, as if his military training might actually cut through the business bullshit. But no. The moment he "stood up to the plate" (as Alex mangled it) and pretty much ordered them to let him be project manager, Sgt Mjr Ego emerged and took over. Because his best friend was a photographer, Simon felt that this was his moment, to borrow the title of that Martine McCutcheon song. "I know the terminology, I know about shutter speeds, I know about single lens reflex," he volunteered. Margaret had to stop herself from letting out an audible sigh in the Renaissance cafe. ("Have you heard of Renaissance Photography?" Simon would later ask one of those potential customers, having already threatened - and I mean threatened in a really creepy, call-security kind of way, to pick a woman up and plonk her bodily down on the glamour couch: "Get yourself on my settee right now!") Worse still, Simon believed that only he was qualified to understand the type of person who shops at Bluewater Shopping Centre, where our teams would set up shop for the day, hoping to fleece some of the 582 billion people who pass through its doors every hour, or something.
"The sky is blue, the grass is green and the women are orange," Simon explained, charmingly, in the back of the cab. He was already on the verge of tears, so fired up was he by the victory that lay ahead of him. Unfortunately Bluewater would be his Dunkirk. By the way, I have never been to Bluewater but I think I know what kind of person shops there, Simon: the kind of people who shop in fucking shopping centres, ie. everybody in the country except the Royal Family. At this point, just moments into The Apprentice, Simon's body bag was being unzipped by Frances. In many ways, it's irksome that each episode thus far seems to have told us who was going to get fired, but what can you do when the candidates are such easy meat?
Just to mention Alpha briefly (the boys and the girls were mixed up this week, which is always an exciting moment, as it's when the girls find out what a bunch of cocksure cocks the boys are - Alex: "I know I am the strongest" - and when the boys find out that the girls don't just bow and scrape to their obvious superiority - Claire: "Don't try and manage me"), Helene might, in any other week, have been the star, with her unfathomable bullying of Lucinda Nice-But-Dim. Lucinda, who claimed to be so technologically inept she couldn't take a picture with her mobile phone - I doubt she can even make a phonecall on a mobile phone - was tasked with looking after the technical side of things. "No matter how hard I try I'm not a technical person," she pleaded to the ice shelf masquerading as a project manager. The sheer unabashed hatred flying between these two was enough to support a wi-fi connection in the backroom, never mind all those cables and leads. (Meanwhile, Lucinda's future husband, Raef, was quietly printing a photograph onto a mug, upside down - I don't expect he's used a mug before. Or been into a "shopping centre.") "It's about teamwork!" yelled the appalling Helene, a "businesswoman with a lot of balls" (there's a nice image to take back with you to the car park - why are testicles still so envied by certain women in business? Even having two, it seems, is not enough), "It's about being assigned a task and doing it." Yes, even if the task if beyond your "appropriate skill set" (which, to be fair, does include almost everything in Lucinda's case, who had a cold last week). Anyway, they were bright enough to pick an excellent lookalike, of David Beckham, thus proving a soaraway success at Bluewater, albeit in terms of getting shopping-centre people to have their photos taken. I'd have been happy if they'd chosen the Del Boy, he was brilliant!
Let just have a big laugh at the Renaissance "theme": Glamour and Beauty. ("Glamour's not a theme, it's a word," grumbled the grumbly Alex, who was either playing a clever game and isolating his nearest rival for the kill, or is just a miserable northern fucker who didn't want to be second-in-command, it's not fair.) Glamour involved putting orange-faced women - none of whom had orange faces, incidentally, but, hey, Simon was out in the jungle eating rat meat for a long tour - on a settee, against a sheet, and having bits of Poundstretcher costume jewellery placed all over them as if being attacked by insects. "Let the camera create the illusion that you are wearing something regal and nice," smarmed Simon, who confessed, "I have a real talent for photography." This talent was unfortunately not apparent from his ugly photographs, none of which the backroom team could find on the disks, which is when communications broke down. Simon became convinced Claire was "unmanageable", when in fact she was just unmanageable by him. In the boardroom, where the names "Simon", "Alex" and "Claire" had already been typed onto the call sheet, she said he'd been shouting, sweating and "it wasn't particularly pleasant."
Neither Alpha nor Renaissance could actually turn their photographs into prints. Renaissance, who made a two hundred quid profit, managed this by knocking them out on plain A4 paper and hoping nobody would notice. (Hey, they're only idiots who shop in Bluewater: they've probably never seen a camera before and would be dazzled by the flashbulbs.) It was a dishonest victory: they didn't win, Simon lost. Renaissance, a long way from the rebirth their name gently suggests, actually lost money. Sir Alan was incandescent. He had to fire Simon, as Simon had led his team over the top to defeat, but he doesn't like women who talk too much, who give it too much of this, and almost-fired Claire: "Get back to the bladdy house! (translation: go and make me a cup of tea) I'm sick of lookin' at you at the moment (why aren't you as nice looking as Frances?) , get out that door (bladdy women)!" As far as Sir Alan is concerned, he needs "ear pads" when mouthy women are around. Another Amstrad invention perhaps?
Simon had already cried once, behind the curtain, and his eyes filled up again as the firing squad lined up - hey, he's damaged, he saw things in Nam that no man ought to see. Alex, whose explosive S-S-Studioline hairstyle wouldn't have been allowed when I worked in Sainsbury's, was only there because he'd effectively asked to be there by playing the teenager. He was a decoy. Despite a last-ditch rescue effort by Margaret, who'd earlier disparaged Alex and now accused Claire of "treating Simon like dirt" (sisters!), Sir Alan had decided Simon was, in the words of the rejected Del Boy lookalike, "a plonker."
There was even a beautifully-crafter punchline. Sir Alan called Simon "my friend", certain that he could build him a wall or dig him a trench, but not look after his portfolio, and fired him, at which Simon crawled away on his stomach, saying, "Thank you for a wonderful opportunity." He refrained from saluting, although did you see the way he literally stood to attention and marched in there when Frances gave the order?
Despite the foregone conclusion (and I've only used a picture of the jovial Lee because I don't wish to ruin it for those who've yet to see the episode), it was more fabulous entertainment. We can now be sure that these 16 people are not chosen for their business acumen, but their hilarious personality flaws.
"I made people laugh and smile in that shopping centre yesterday." You certainly did, Simon. You also made them grimace and wince.
I have recently moved into a new rented office, which is in a reasonably new business centre-type building. I only mention this because it's a clean and well-kept complex, used by a large number of people, and I have just been to the gents and found an unflushed toilet. All squeamishness aside, this is an unedifying sight. Now, the flushes on the toilets are quite gentle in here, but this person - and I think we may assume it was a man - had clearly not even attempted to flush. He must have just walked away, in the full knowledge that his work would still be visible to the next person who went in that cubicle. This sort of behaviour baffles me. Even if, say, the toilet had to be flushed when he went in due to the bad form of the previous occupant, and the cistern was still refilling when he was ready to leave, you only have to wait a minute or so for it to fill back up, ready to be flushed. But no, this gentleman was just too busy to wait, and felt it was perfectly acceptable behaviour to leave his business unflushed. It was late on in the working day - perhaps he felt that a cleaner would flush it for him. (Because that's their job, isn't it?) Or perhaps he thought his mum would come and do it for him. I didn't write anything about toilet etiquette in my seminal Manners Manifesto in January, mainly because it's all so self-evident: leave the place as you would expect to find it; have a bit of respect; it's a public space. The slovenly, antisocial behaviour of men constantly amazes me. I wonder if he washed his hands? I know being embarrassed about toilet habits is a bit English, but rather that than this.
Look at my colleague Richard Herring dealing with a stupid, inebriated heckler at the Wam Bam Club in London's Soho two Sundays ago. Is there anything people aren't filming? (Way to go, colleague.)
Is it really him, or is it a hairy ghost? Ha ha! Just because Richard Herrin is, as we speak, on holiday in Sicily (but still blogging) doesn't mean there's no Collings & Herrin Podcast this week! We recorded number 8 when we'd finished number 7 last Thursday! (How hard do we work for your pleasure?) Thank heavens there hasn't been a September 11-style tragedy in the meantime, otherwise we'd look a bit foolish. Check the link now - it should be up before lunchtime today.
Hope you like it. Fingers crossed the quality's improved this week, as it was recorded on my laptop, which, as I've specified, is worse than Richard's but better. (Thanks, by the way, to all those who have offered to help us with the sound quality. We'll make some kind of decision soon, but as we keep saying, we're rather wedded to the amateurish feel.)
Ha. I think I've found a mistake in the New Yorker. Can it be real? I found one at Christmas, and now I've found another. In the April 7 issue, in David Denby's fine piece about the new Kimberley Peirce film Stop-Loss and other "soldiers coming home" pictures, he lists three recent Iraq movies: Rendition, Lions For Lambs and ... wait for it ... Redaction. He means Brian De Palma's Redacted, surely? I'm not gloating - and I'm prepared to eat my words if someone tells me that Redacted is called Redaction in the States (it wasn't) - but when a magazine is so full of beautifully chosen and elegantly arranged words and notoriously so heavily fact-checked, it's actually reassuring to spot one that got away. It makes them all more human.
A repeat of last week's task on The Apprentice. Instead of washing clothes, the boys and girls were making and serving food. It's as if the programme-makers want to strip our jargon-vomiting, power-breakfasting suits down to the bare, Lord Of The Flies-style basics - sell wet fish, clean spunk-stained linen, make carbonara - before giving them anything more esoteric to do. Sir Alan sold us, and them, a major dummy by gathering the reduced 14 in the promising surrounds of Tate Modern (would they be required to create an installation for the Turbine Hall?), but this turned out to be a tenuous link from regeneration to selling food in two pubs ("The pub industry has been suffering, so they've gotta find ways of means of getting people in," muffed Sir Alan, whose pathological inability to use common phrases or idioms - "blowing into the wind"? - seems actually infectious). Renaissance got the Duke Of Hamilton in Hampstead, Alpha the King's Head in Islington (which is where I filmed my talking head footage for Heroes Unmasked, fact fans) - two groups of seven "global risk pricing strategy liaison managers" let loose in a kitchen? What could possibly go wrong? How about the boys deciding, with the usual high fives, to speak in fake Italian accents? (This idea came from Raef - otherwise virtually edited out of this week's show - a man who already speaks in a fake English accent.)
Actually, they seemed to nix this insane and racist idea before opening time, and thank God, as our non-Alpha males had enough woes on their plate without offending the clientele with Mind Your Language accents. (Michael did sing a shaky but courageous a capella version of Amore, but this clip only made it onto the "extras" on the Apprentice website, which is always worth a look, by the way - and I speak as a purist who will not watch You're Fired on BBC2, ever, ever, as it lets light in on magic. There's a beautiful fixed shot of the front of the pub, with Michael desperately singing inside, and Lee McQueen wanders pointlessly outside, checks the blackboard and wanders back in. We must call him by his full name, by the way. He certainly does.) "A manager would tell the team to get out to the deli and bring back the ciabattas!" stressed Simon, who says "manager" but means "commanding officer". He was frustrated again this week, as he's a get-things-done kind of guy, led by a series of dither-and-get-fuck-all-done project managers: this week, the almost entirely useless Ian, whose asymmetric hairdo could not disguise his symmetric lack of project-managing acumen. How galling it must have been to have Sgt Major Simon on his back for the whole task, smacking that fist into his palm ("fact, fact, fact!") and asking the questions that nobody else was asking, such as, to Matt Lucas, "How many tomatoes do you need?" (Matt, "head chef" - or in plain English "chef" - didn't know how many tomatoes he needed, but then neither did he know what Italian food was, or what was in a carbona, or that you don't need to roast mushrooms in an oven before making them into a mushroom sauce. He stressed to Sir Alan come the inevitable reckoning that he'd eaten in Italian restaurants. Specifically ones where latte sprinkled with chocolate is called a dessert.) Again, in the unused footage on the website, we hear Simon using army terminology, describing his team's catering efferts as "a clusterfuck" and "everything's gone to ratshit" - he was clearly out in 'Nam too long.
More than any other episode I can think of, this one had a clear cut narrative, that built as elegantly as any drama: Ian's downfall; Matt Lucas's redemption; the schism between Sara and Claire; the conflict between Ian and Simon, which led to the showdown, and to Simon's redemption; the seeding of Ian's failure to even say the word "losers" at the beginning, thrown back in his face by Sir Alan at the climax when he became one. It was immaculate, if predictable. Selective editing means you can tell who's going to be in the boardroom by about 20 minutes in - it was never going to be Raef, or Michael, or Alex. It was never going to be any of the girls, who were predestined not to lose, but if it had been, it would have been project manager Sara, nemesis Claire and - welcome to the show! - Helene, a "global pricing leader" from Wakefield who, post-Shazia, is the second oldest Apprentice at 32 (Jenny the "bitch" is 36), but couldn't make a korma.
The "Bollywood" theme was as naff as you'd expect, with a couple of saris and a "Bollywood dancer" on a raised wooden platform about three inches off the ground who was a waiter from an Indian restaurant in Brick Lane, who put his all into jerking about and removing his shirt but was no Bollywood dancer. If an actual building could look embarrassed, the King's Head did. Good to see Jenny acting like a fool, clapping along and wondering where Bollywood was. All the action was in Hampstead, where the boys, who didn't know how to cook, also proved they didn't know how to cater, buying their supplies from that well-known cash-and-carry called Tesco and spending over 500 quid on jars of Dolmio and pizza bases (but not ciabattas or black bags). Matt forgot to add salt and pepper to the bolognese, which was sent back, as were the brilliantly disguised half-pizzas ("That's not a whole pizza," spotted one customer). And Lee McQueen was the first Apprentice to speak of himself in the third person (someone had to do it). They acted like a bunch of idiots, and yet, they made more money than the girls did with their "rubbish" curry. (Hey, at least Sara broke the stereotype of a British Indian who knows all about Indian cooking.) Unfortunately, having given most of their profit to Mr Tesco, while the girls had actually sold advance tickets for a fiver to people who then didn't actually turn up - the thought of which gave Sir Alan a little semi - the boys came back with less profit. It was so squarely Ian's fault, you had to admire the way he tried to deflect the blame onto Matt, the only other team-member with a job title ("head chef") for not doing someone else's job, pricing the food, and onto Simon, whose crime was to be negative. Sir Alan was never going to fire Simon, but attempted to fool us into thinking that he might by challenging him to prove he can do more than chop onions next week. Meanwhile, Ian the losing loser who losingly lost due to being a loser, was on his way back to Flitwick. Favourite TV show: Lost. Favourite song: Loser.
Highlight? Surely Matt Lucas arriving back at the house and delivering a victorious and gloriously white "Booyaka!", as opposed to the actual catchphrase, "Booyakasha!" (So he's Sasha Baron Cohen, not Matt Lucas? How confusing. He's a caution either way.)
Breaking news. In a move that has sent ripples through the industry, the Guardian newspaper today ran a story about the Olympics under the headline "London may forgo 2012 procession after global protests against Beijing games", which, in place of the now accepted phrase "ahead of", employed the grammatically correct alternative, known mainly among older readers, "in advance of." This reversal of the trend towards irritating, Americanised journalese set a new precedent at the newspaper, throwing into confusion the usual, sanctioned gusto with which the idiot phrase "ahead of" has been unquestioningly adopted across the UK news media. "We don't know how it happened," commented editor Alan Rusbridger, ahead of a hastily-convened emergency staff meeting on the use of fashionable, Fox News-style language. "The proper English phrase will be phased out for online editions of the newspaper." Reporters Paul Kelso, Tania Branigan and Vikram Dodd have been suspended pending a full inquiry. Sorry, ahead of a full inquiry.
In fact, two funny things happened to me today as I went about my business in South London.
1) I passed Boris Johnson, on the campaign trail, strolling down the high street. He was surrounded by a phalanx of party supporters (albeit not as big a phalanx as Denise Lewis had to have for the Olympic torch), one of whom had a loudhailer and was reminding us to vote for Boris on May 1, while the Candidate Himself just walked along, grinning, and looking smaller than he does on the TV. Anyway, there was a group of likely-looking teenage boys hanging round the steps to a shopping centre, and as he passed, one of them shouted out: "Boris Johnson's got a big, fat head." I admired this for two reasons: it was incredibly childish, and contained no swear words, and also, this was a Young Person who recognised a politician.
2) Inside a second shopping centre (I get about), I heard the screaming of a child. And this was not tantrum screaming, but the actual squeals of fear. As I approached the sound I saw a mother picking up a very young toddler and removing her from the source of her terror. They were outside a toy shop, and a boy in the shop had made a remote-controlled spider - a giant one - walk outside the shop into the main concourse. The poor girl clearly thought it was a real spider, and reacted accordingly. I had to smile, although if I'd seen that mechanical arachnid when I was her age, I would have been similarly "frit", as they say in Northampton.
I have written a blog about The Spectator for the Media Guardian website. It's always cool to be invited on there, even though doing so risks drawing abusive comments from the mob (because "comment is free" - unlike this blog, where it has to be nice). Actually, the response has been pretty reasonable thus far.
The Collings & Herrin Podcast (number 7) is now up on the British Sitcom Guide site. You will notice that it's the same as usual in terms of Doctor Who quality. However, we recorded it on my laptop as well as Richard's (in case his laptop crashed), and even though my laptop is worse than Richard's, it turns out that the in-built mic in mine is better than the one in his. (Maybe it's to do with where it's positioned, or that it's actually worse, but picks up less sound and therefore distorts less. We are not technical giants in this area.) Anyway, it may be too late to replace number 7, but number 8, next Friday's, might just be the first podcast that sounds OK. (The material is, as ever, pure gold. The bit about oat milk was quite funny anyway.) I won't mention where we are in the iTunes charts. I have stopped looking. It's not about that. In the photo above, Richard is holding a gluten-free biscuit and I am reacting to an odour that is explained in the podcast.
"Oh, my fucking giddy aunt!" Well, it was good to see some actual hard work on Ep 2 of The Apprentice this week. For all the flipchart idioms and the irony-free cries of "In it to win it!", Renaissance and Alpha were put to task by Sir Alan - who, we learned, never expected tips when he sold aerials out of the back of a van. Both teams were given an industrial laundry, usually staffed, one imagines, by illegal immigrants or characters in Dickens, and which - seemingly at random - had to close at 2am. So our assorted sales managers were off out touting for business, starting in what you'd have to assume was their comfort zone: knocking on doors. However, Alpha (that's the "girls"), signed their death warrant in the first negotiation with a hotel, which they went to unprepared and with no more clue about the price of washing than Renaissance had about the price of fish. The meeting, watched over by an internally tutting Nick and Margaret, went like this - and remember, this bloke wanted a thousand items, from sheets to pillowcases, laundering:
Lindi (self-styled "African Princess"): "We're gonna do a standard price for everything: £4.99 for every item." Slightly scared-looking hotel manager: "Right" Lindi: "So, all together, Jennifer ...?" Manager: "And is that your ... best price? 'Cos that will come to £4,999." Jennifer (Dublin-born ex-show jumper and "best salesperson in Europe"): "Yeah." Lindi: "Included in that price, we've got lots of things we'd like to offer you - you've got a 24-hour hotline. Me and Jennifer will both be your personal account managers, so if you have any issues you have a direct mobile to both of us. Erm, so we'd definitely like you to consider the fact, you know, all the other benefits you get along with the laundry." Manager: "It's not the benefits, we're talking about the price. So, obviously you need to come back ..." Lindi: "How much do you usually pay, out of interest?" Manager: "It's a lot less than that. It's in the hundreds." Lindi raises a plucked eyebrow. Jennifer: "So, one thousand items of laundry ...?" Lindi: "... is in the hundreds?" Jennifer: "OK." (you can see why all the other salespeople in Europe know her name)
Renaissance went in, prepared (ie. they'd phoned up an actual laundry, showing a hint of the initiative that they all claim to have 110% of), with an offer of £200 and won the "account". The manager still looked scared, and the boys had so much dirty hotel linen ("mixed lots") they filled their van to the brim, including the passenger seat area ("That's an awful lot of laundry"). Unloading it, Simon - now my official favourite to win - a former NCO who washed clothes in Bosnia, contemplated how much "Harry Monk" might be scattered across those sheets. I think I like him because if you close your eyes he sounds like Mark Thomas. And even though I believe project manager Raef is from another planet, I warmed to the boys this week, who were, by default, the least irritating team. Fantastic editing and use of
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.
