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The Apprentice: Week One

The Apprentice hopeful Nicholas De Lacy Brown
  • Posted at 5:59pm
  • 27 March 2008
  • by PaulJones-RT
  • 1 comment

"There's no 'I' in team, but there is an 'I' in winner" says business liaison manager Lindi, cleverly subverting a classic of management speak. There are also three 'I's in "irritating", Lindi. Hmmm…and two in Lindi. What can it all mean…?

Irish marketing consultant Jennifer will get a lot of stick for proclaiming herself "the best salesperson in Europe," but she has the evidence to back it up. "I can sell pieces of paper for £50," she says. They wouldn't be red, oblong pieces of paper, would they Jennifer, with the Queen's head on them?

Claire, a self-proclaimed "rottweiler" (or German Shepherd, depending on what mood she's in), has her very own motto, "JDI: Just Do It" (although the marketing people at Nike might have something to say about that). Quirky Lucinda, who chose to wear a cerise twin set and beret to sell fish, should have a motto of her own – "JDI: Just Dress Inappropriately".

Yes, new candidates, new gibberish, new series – The Apprentice is back! 16 more pumped-up, overexcited, proud-to-be-arrogant "winners", set on barging their way to that 100k job.

And so to the boardroom, for the first of many daunting audiences with Sir Alan.

"I'm no Mary Poppins", said Sir Alan, by way of a greeting. Actually, Mary Poppins was pretty strict - "tidy your room, take your medicine, spit-spot" - but Sir Alan is even harder. After tantalising the contestants with tales of a luxury living space transformed from a disused glass factory, he dropped his first bombshell – no house for you until you've sold some fish!

So this was the first task. Armed with £600-worth of seafood and a white van, the girls' and boys' teams each had to pick a market, choose a pitch, identify the different swimmy things (using the pictures provided!) and sell them for the biggest possible profit. Simple. Well…

Cut to: night, high above the glittering London skyline. Beautiful, peaceful, tranquil almost – but not in Sir Alan's boardroom.

The surly knight was not impressed by either side's efforts at wet fish sales – "sounds like a bloody mess to me" - but the girls at least presented a fairly united front and they easily outstripped the boys' measly £32 profit. Alex's "direct sales team" backed him as a good leader, but Nicholas and Raef disagreed. Michael was just hurt that, after nearly an entire day together, Alex didn't consider them best friends…

The Alpha girls were sent home to their new 7,000sq-foot luxury home and, blimey, were they impressed. As the cars drew up outside there was much shrieking. "A staircase!" screamed one woman, who obviously had been brought up in a bungalow.

As the girls settled down to a meal prepared by dishy French Michelin-starred chef Jean-Christophe Novelli, the boys were somewhere much less comfortable. After a grilling – or was it more of a deep-fat frying? – from Sir Alan, and more squabbling over fish identification and pricing, project manager Alex predictably chose Nicholas and Raef to accompany him back into the boardroom, and the firing line.

Alex was worried that Nicholas's training as a barrister meant he'd be a skilful defendant. It didn't. From the moment Nicholas decided to set himself up as the educated, cultured antidote to Alex's supposed salt-of-the-earth, football-loving salesman, he was doomed. Know your audience, Nicholas!

Raef did enough to save himself – "it's not as if I labelled a shark a hamster!" - but meek Nicholas did nothing. All Alex needed to do was be assertive, and add a Sugar-friendly "you just don't want to get your hands dirty" (debatable, since Nicholas seemed quite intent on digging his own grave), and Nicholas crumbled. From there on in the outcome was never in doubt and Nicholas De Lacy Brown became the first contestant of the new series to put on the overcoat of shame and depart in his mournful black cab.

Last week I went to the press launch of the new series of The Apprentice and afterwards found myself using a urinal alongside Sir Alan himself. Of course, I didn't have to look to know which of us is the best endowed. Metaphorically speaking, Sir Alan has one of the biggest in British business. I was just pleased that for a few precious moments, I was within touching distance. Which is more than you can say now about Nicholas. I wonder who'll get flushed next?

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  • Posted on 03 April 2008
  • at 10:43am
  • by Whoisthis

Whatever has happened to The Apprentice? As successive series have been made the contestants have become more and more bitchy (both boys and girls) and shown less and less evidence of being able to work as a Team or even behave like adults. In the very first series of The Apprentice everyone worked for the Team but tried hard to excel in their own task within the Team to prove they were worthy of remaining in the programme. It was only the last one or two programmes of the series that it became an individual effort to prove themselves - which could be at the expense of one of the others at that stage.

Last night's showing (Wed 2 April) was a joke, and sadly went a long way to prove that this programme is now chasing the ratings rather than providing an interesting and exciting 'interview' process. If the Team Leader for the ladies had not spoken in the manner she did in the Boardroom in front of Sir A then maybe his decision was understandable. How could he allow someone who could speak to their Team in the manner Penny did to stay in the programme. The other two in the Boardroom might well have made their mistakes but Penny managed to make mistakes, speak down to, and over her Team members repeatedly in an atrocious manner. Why is she still there this morning? Because we don't like her, she is likely to cause more problems and we, the licence payers will stupidly tune in to see what she will do next. So the programme makers win.

You, Sir A should have stuck to your original format, and not allowed your programme to follow the example of Donald Trumps 'lot' in their behaviour.

Now we have to ask ourselves is the rest of the series worth watching? Sadly - I doubt it, though there is the saving grace of 'The Appprentice - You're Fired'. At least the three business representatives there displayed considerably more sense in their comments and views.

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