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The Apprentice: Week Eight

The Apprentice hopeful Sara Dhada
  • Posted at 11:41am
  • 15 May 2008
  • by PaulJones-RT

How is Michael still in this competition?! The task this week was to sell bridal gowns and paraphernalia at a wedding exhibition, and as a sales team, Michael and Sara were a marriage made in hell. Sara was painfully pushy but Michael's obsession with "closing deals" at all costs (and remember we're talking cup cakes here, not real estate) made me wonder if he hadn't seen Glengarry Glen Ross one too many times.

As Alex pointed out, Michael takes the aggressive approach he's learnt from working in telesales (and we've all had experience of how teeth-grindingly annoying that can be) and transfers it directly into customer's faces.

But it's in the boardroom that Michael's worst traits ooze to the surface. This week saw him lie, get caught lying, back-peddle, feed Sir Alan's words back to him, repeat. It also saw him fine-tuning his pseudo-apologies, pseudo-self-deprecation and pseudo-outrage (do you see where I’m going with this?). And finally it saw him beg.

The frustrating thing is, Sir Alan spotted immediately that Michael was attempting to cover his tracks yet again - and allowed him to squirm out of a firing anyway (as opposed to Sara, whose constant yammering got her the boot).

Now I have this horrible feeling that, against all reason and decency, Michael is going to win. The only thing giving me hope, is that so far in this series Alan (why should I call him Sir if Nick can't be bothered?) has eventually cottoned on to the dodgy candidates and finally made the right decisions. Come on Al, get rid of Michael.

Right, that's the squalid side out of the way for another seven days, once again we can concentrate on all that is good.

I loved Raef and Claire's conversation regarding strategy. She was dubious about the wisdom of pairing wedding dresses for the larger bride with cakes, but Raef took a more pragmatic view. "What I think we need to remember," he said, wonderfully deadpan, "is that those people in size 16-32 dresses are that size for a reason – they love cake!"

Lee, meanwhile, had loads of fun selling thongs and things to the ladies. Despite his tendency to get dangerously pumped before a task, Lee is a surprisingly subtle salesman, with natural charm (although I did laugh when half-way through a sale he confessed to camera, "I’ve got that woman this close to buying that wedding dress and I need to nail her!" Slightly beyond the call of duty, perhaps?)

And finally, the most striking thing of all…

Before this week, Lucinda had twice shown herself to be a fantastic manager, and Claire had deliberately undermined every project leader she'd had. So would this be a case of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object (sorry Claire, that's probably a bit harsh)? Well, no.

Claire didn't play up at all under Lucinda! She was bright and pleasant throughout and gained deserved praise from Nick for working "like a trooper". It seems Lucinda really does have the magic touch. I wonder if she could put a curse on Michael…

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