Apprentice 4, ep 8: Let them flog cake
Current mood: bitchy
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

This has to be a real quickie - sorry folks - had loads to do this week and I'm mean't to be getting to Liverpool this afternoon. Erm.

This week's task was buying a range of wedding dresses and one wedding accessory from trade and then flogging them to crazy-eyed Bridezilla's at the NEC, except some of the candidates came across as far scarier than the brides-to-be.

Team Alpha this week was lead by the lovely Lucinda and comprised LEE McQUEEN, Raef and Claire. They split up so that both Raef and Claire got to see all the dresses and chose £2000 designer wedding dresses by Ian Stewart, which were ok, although did some like they were made out of tissue paper. Mind you - I'll probably go for the full meringue next wedding. They also cleverly rejected cakes costing £600 (wow - the cake at my wedding to the ex hubby was a present - and it looked nicer than some of the cakes on this show, plus my dress was made by a mate for less than £50! I love budget weddings!), in favour of some really tacky looking underwear and honeymoon beach wear (wtf?). The lady flogging the latter was so enamoured that her stuff would be displayed next to Ian Stewart's dresses that she ditched Renaissance in favour of Alpha to sell her tut.

Renaissance had Helene as a harried looking Team Leader and included Sara, Michael Sophocles and Alex. After Michael Sophocles had damned the designer dresses as ghaaaastly, Helene chose the cheap and tacky range of colourful rah rah style wedding frocks, talking into it by a woman who used Jodie Marsh and Jordan as examples of some of the fashion conscious and tasteful women who would buy her dresses. Um. Therefore knicker lady went with alpha and Renaissance were left trying to flog uber pricey cakes - by apparently giving as many free samples as possible to a greedy wedding fair crowd (I'd have queued for free cake too - it looked scrummy).

Lucinda was our favourite lovely kooky debette as usual, but delegated confidently and well, and displayed some balls of steel dealing with LEE McQUEEN's over-enthusiasm. The man practically rolled over and let her tickle his tummy this week. Everyone, even Claire FFS, praised her PM skills (Project Manager, Team Leader... wish they'd just stick to the one rubbish title). My favourite bit was when she wondered around in one of the designer wedding dresses telling all the brides-to-be they looked lovely like some sweet dotty fairy godmother with a slightly bent wand.

LEE McQUEEN was a revelation in flogging tacky wedding underwear (and later on designer dresses) to the laydeez, combining a surprisingly sensitive side with the ability to accurately undersize a woman's thong size. I enjoyed him bonding with Lovely Lucinda over mouthfuls of cake, and the trademark SHOUTING of odd pep phrases.

Raef was at a bit of a loose end during this task, as he declares himself "anti marriage" (a confirmed bachelor eh?), and he fails to sell any dresses, so dresses up in the lingerie companies promotional BEAR outfit (yes I went wtf? too!) and prances around throwing shapes, frightening children in an Adam Hoskins stylee and trying to put lingerie onto a small teddy bear he carries around with him. Women eye him with pity..."It will bring sales" he states resignedly. However as it was Raef's idea to take the risk of picking uber posho designer dresses, and he takes the responsibility for the gamble (which paid off) he'll still be here to delight us in his Noel Coward dressing gown. My fave Raef bit was him explaining ernestly and poshly to Claire of all people that some people are over-size "for a reason... they love cake."

Claire seemed to suck all her spite in for a task which clearly had her dreaming of her own future big day tying the knot to a myopic, deaf software engineer. She did well selling to the bridezillas by being utterly on their level - and her appalling accent seemed at home in the NEC. I loved her trying on the oversize designer dress and still not being able to do the back up and blinding poor Raef and Lee with a glimpse of industrial bra strap resting above her back cleavage.

For Renaissance Helene seemed drawn and harrassed and did little rather than dress in a red tacky dress and stand around slagging off Sara whilst looking like a novelty prostitute.

Alex got on with things in a no nonsense Northern fashion, and charmed the ladies consistently with his comments about their skin tone complimenting the dress. The fact he said this to three different women in the same dress, one of whom was black, yet all of whom were delighted, says something about Alex's strange appeal. He still mainly has a face like a slapped arse though. I loved it when he was watching Michael Sophocles deliver another disturbingly mental sales pitch and desperately tried to suppress his laughter.

Sara had a bad week, although being left with the task of flogging overpriced cake didn't help her. She seems to go more shrill and scary when she's panicking, so her voice rose throughout the day and she resorted to slightly offputting hard sales tactics, almost thrusting cake at people and demanding they pay deposits. Helene tuts about Sara's lack of empathy from afar, but makes no effort to take her aside and have a word. Watching Sara was like seeing a rabbit in the headlights this week, but I did like her look of disdainful bemusement when Michael Sophocles started rambling in the car about how Helene should have split the teams so two people saw all dresses when at the start of thr programme it was his idea to split the teams to see retailers by location ("North London is close to Central London").

What can one say about Michael Sophocles apart from the fact he's an odious, mendacious little shitbag. He doesn't even have the class to be a weasel, he's like some sort of pimped up rodent. His constant passing the buck and refusal to accept responsibility is becoming legend. You can almost see the cogs in his plastic head whirring as he tries to figure out how to get himself of some shit he's created or lie he's been caught out in this time. How on earth does he get away with fibbing and toadying to SirAlan every week? They must be saving him for the interviews round so that baldy bloke can tear his CV - complete with it's enormous front page photo - into shreds before his cold dead shark eyes. Michael's behaviour to the brides to be bordered (extremely closely) on the sociopathic, and contained a charming mix of threats ("You'll regret it" and insults "If you choose a traditional cake it will cost more and your wedding will be DULL. This is your BLOODY wedding! Oh God above!!!") that had me wishing that more burly grooms to be went to wedding fairs. To Michael all other people are "dum dums" (the bullets he would like to use on them) whereas he exudes "effortless charm" - whether he feigns passion for a thing "or a woman". Hmmm if he tried to exude any effortless charm towards most of the women I know, he'd wind up hit with the pepper spray.

In the boardroom it transpires that by co-operating, Alpha have won by miles (about £4,000) and they are sent to drink strange herbal tea (Claire: "It tastes like leaves.. not like PG tips" - er Claire....) and chant with a baldy buddhist in a red room. I like LEE McQUEEN's chanting, and his cracking up. Even Lucinda has a sly giggle. Renaissance return to the boardroom and Helene saves Alex by bigging up his sales, leaving SirAlan scratching his head as to "the Alex effect" but sending him home. Sophocles switches his allegience and fibs about his involvement in the product placement and is wonderfully caught out by Margaret again and again, but Sara panics and defends herself in squeaky machine gun mode, and SirAlan clearly just doesn't like her, so she's fired.

So farewell Sara, the Shilpa Shetty of this year's Apprentice. In the cab of doom she practically renders herself unemployable by stating she can't work in a team so will go it alone (Note to Sara - most people may feel that way but have learned not to say it), but I wish her luck.

Next week it's the TV advertising task. Hurrah! And they appear to be working with children, so lets hope* there's no disastrous end results reminiscent of the plane wanking advert from two years ago.


*Let's hope there is!

Liking and hoping they will win: Lucinda
Liking: Raef
Strange see-sawing feelings for: LEE McQUEEN
Indifferent to: Alex
Still disliking: Claire, Helene
UGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!: MIchael Sophocles

4:17 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Apprentice 4, ep 7: I Yid. You not.
Current mood: bitchy
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

It's 7am and Michael Sophocles runs like the bedwetting school spaz to answer the phone. The teams are told to pack for a business trip to Marrakech. As ever Raef is concerned by the sartorial connotations ("Black suits and ties are probably redundant"), whereas Lee is keen to practice his Frebch ("Je PONCE!!"). SirAlan can't be arsed to see them off, but appears on the laptop screen to break down the task details (to buy 10 strange obscure objects from the maze that is the Marrakech souks - having wandered round the souks myself this is much easier said than done) and warns the team about accepting the first price from any stalltrader therein. Michael Sophocles and Jennifer are transferred to Renaissance, which now also includes Alex, Claire and madJenny, rendering it utterly twat-tastic. Sara is transposed to Alpha, which is lead by LEE McQUEEN and also features Lucinda, Raef and Helene.

Once again Raef, in this spirit of multiculturalism, is keen to dress up like a foreigner ("how about getting up in the local garb") in order to better negotiate with Johnny Native, whereas Lucinda wisely points out that with her blonde hair and blue eyes this may come across as taking the piss (this doesn't stop the ginger chin warrier Jenny getting up in a scary pastel pink headscarf emsemble). LEE McQUEEN is immediately on Lucinda and Sara's case - citing negative feedback from previous tasks, and conveniently forgetting that he was Lucinda's biggest fan when she was team leader.

In the Djema al Fnar, Claire's not so charmed by the sight of a snake and immediately gets all Freudian ("If Sir Alan said he'd give me a million pounds to kiss that snake, I wouldn't" - to be fair Claire I reckon the snake would raise more cash to avoid a clinch with you), and Jennifer decides not to bother looking at the shopping list or research anything on it. Hence they run round like headless chickens before chancing on an orange juicer, which Alex tries to haggle for in shit French in a shop displaying signs stating "Fixed Price", whilst Claire bizarrely pretends to be his girlfriend, cos the shopkeeper is really going to fall for that. Jennifer asks Claire to drop the embarrassing double-act routine, which Claire mishears as "keep on interrupting Alex whilst he's trying to knock a few quid off the price of a Berber bedspread by saying 'darling I want to go home, my feet hurt, just take the worst price" etc. etc. until Alex has to settle at £60 over the average price. To be honest I think Alex is merely put off by the thought of being in any way intimately involved with the chubby racist.

Lee's team go about their business in a relatively quiet and organised manner, (Sara proving to be a dab hand at acting the effronted Asian babe in some shrewd haggling moves), although Raef's sheer incredulity at the price they are offered on a cowhide (with tail) from the tannery nearly costs them a bargain ("250 dirham? Two hundred and fifty? Two hundred and fifty what?") - they still end up getting the hide for £15, as opposed to the other team who pay £60, which makes negotiator Michael Sophocles spurt a little self importantly in his pants. Meanwhile Lee bounds around like a disgraced rugby player bellowing things like "You're breaking my balls", impersonating alarm clocks (sounding a bit like that beeping, whistling bloke off "Stop the pigeon")  and (in the Jewish quarter, on the quest for a kosher chicken, to a Jewish butcher) "You are Jewish? I love you!" Amazingly he doesn't apologise that he never learnt how to speak Jew at school.

Jennifer heads to a decidedly non-Jewish part of the souk on her kosher chicken quest, and undeterred by the lack of viable chickens, asks directions to the nearest Mosque so that someone can bless a chicken for them (Margaret: "Not many rabbis in this place"). Perhaps Team Renaissance are merely looking to bring peace to the Middle East by combining faiths. Even Claire, who has the intellectual capacity of a kosher chicken points out the error, only to be assured by Jennifer that "Islam does kosher too", before the latter hands over the thorny issue to Michael Sophocles and madJenny, the latter amusingly harrassing bemused butchers with her a request for a kosher chicken ("Can you make it Halal?").Meanwhile Alex haggles for tagines, without bothering to check what make or type SirAlan specified, whilst an observing Margaret tuts loudly.

Lee's team are searching for freshly strung tennis rackets in a posho Marrakech shopping mall, and spot madJenny and Michael Sophocles on their way away from the same shop. Cleverly Lucinda smoozes to the shop keeper ("You sold our friends rackets at a discount and we'd like the same discount"), much to the annoyance of madJenny, who attempts to bribe the shopkeeper into not stringing Lucinda's racket. She gloats both to camera and Sophocles about her "espionage" and the latter actually seems impressed.

Elsewhere Jennifer seems to be losing it, and she bobs her head alarmingly at the foreign types, having realised that she's bought the wrong colour mosque alarm clock. Finally they find a green one, and Jennifer urges her team to say "Hail Mary", although given their religious knowledge I'm amazed Michael doesn't say "Insh' allah" and madJenny "Yom kippur".

Lee's team have been doing well, especially Lucinda and Sara (so eat that McQUEEN!), and there's a lovely shot of the former triumphantly carrying an enormous phallic
cactus, to Lee's obvious testosterone fuelled delight on the phone to Raef ("WE ARE SWEATING! WE ARE SWEATING! WE FUCKING NAILED THE BLUE CACTUS. THAT'S WHAT LEE McQUEEN IS TALKING ABOUT" etc.). Cue Raef wincing genteelly whilst realising that LEE McQUEEN is ALWAYS at MAXIMUM volume, and discreetly apologising for the bad language to the shopkeeper he's negotiating with. All Team Alpha lack is the very same juicer that Renaissance bagged hours ago, and all the shops are closing, but Lucinda and Sara aren't giving up, and they get the word about that there's a bunch of wannabe TV suckers looking for an overpriced juicer before clinching the deal from the crowd of juicer-salesmen that suddenly appear (Lee: "FUCK OFF! THAT'S UNBELIEVABLE" - um any chance of an apology to Sara then?).

Nick and Margaret report back to SirAlan, with Nick stating that although Lee did very well "The real revelation was Sara, and Lucinda", whereas Margaret's less impressed with Renaissance's "scattergun" approach. It transpires that Alpha found all the correct items and purchased them for £413, whereas Renaissance spent only £36 more, but fucked up on the chicken (unsurprisingly) and the unbranded tagines, and with the penalties incurred have lost £603. Alpha therefore get sent on a balloon trip over Leeds castle, the BBC being too tight to give them one over the Atlas mountains seeing as they're still in Morocco when they hear the results. Whilst Lucinda and Raef look in their element in the hot air balloon, and Lee enjoys the brief sensation of being loved up by his team, Renaissance get to sulk in a cafe, madJenny in particular amazed that they have lost. IceQueenJen's more circumspect "If you know in your heart and sould you did the right thing..then you've got nothing to be afraid of". Unfortunately no-one ever told madJenny and Sophocles that it's not the right thing to be a cunt.

Back in the boardroom SirAlan eyes team Renaissance suspciously as they cheerfully pipe "Bonjour" to him. That's not going to cut any ice with him, and he lays into Ice Queen Jen for her lack of preparation and team control. Claire's fairly equivocal in her support for Jennifer (SirAlan: "Was she any good?", Claire: "Yes and no"), whereas Alex decides to stick it to Claire for daring to interrupting his negotiations over the berber bedspread. SirAlan points out that Alex wasn't that great, and bought "any old piece of tut" rather than the brand requested on the list, which Margaret is keen to point out Alex failed to even glance at.

Chickengate rears it's ugly gizzard with SirAlan directing his ire firstly at madJenny ("You're a lady of the world... you're slightly older") who as a hag should apparently understand that kosher food is a bit of a Jew thing.  Rather foolishly she simpers on about being 36 (in your dreams lady) and it being her birthday, but claims to have no knowledge of what kosher means. Playing the birthday card is surely grounds for firing in anyone's books, just for the sheer hell of it. Michael Sophocles is in deeper shit however, when it transpires that he described himself on his application as "a good Jewish boy". Sophocles backtracks and then claims to be half Jewish, to SirAlan's disdain ("If you're unsure you can always pull your trousers down" - go on SirAlan, make him plonk his todger on the table, and get Margaret to circumcise him with her teeth if he's still got a helmet), and our grizzled Nookie bear entepreneur correctly deduces that Michael has been playing the pseudo Jew on his application form (adorned with a superbly large photo - proving that Michael Sophocles is in fact the poundstretcher Patrick Bateman) in order to somehow identify with SirAlan's Jewish background. It doesn't help when he boasts about his brilliant negotiating skillz for the cowhide, as SirAlan points out that Raef got the same cowhide for £45 less, despite being a bit bumbling and over-surprised at getting such a bargain! "I'll fire all 5 of you if I have to" growls SirAlan wonderfully prompting them all to attempt to blame one another. Unfortunately madJenny decides to try to screw over Michael by claiming that he had said the halal chicken would be ok, and that she believed him because of his Jewish roots. She's clearly too thick to realise that she's tripped herself up, until SirAlan points out that previously she had stated she hadn't known kosher was Jewish, and now she's stating she trusted Michael's knowledge on the subject because she knew he was Jewish. Duh!  Margaret scuppers her further by pointing out her bribing shenanigans. "Bit of a cheap shot" mutters SirAlan, before sending all 5 out to stew in reception whilst he ponders who to fire. Excellent!

They're brought back in and as soon as madJenny tries to lie and argue her way out of being dismissed, SirAlan just fires her. Simple as. Brilliant! Her face is a picture of chinny outrage as she storms off to the cab to mutter darkly about Michael's underhand behaviour. She may have a point, but er pot.. kettle.  "Right, who's next?" SirAlan mocks the remaining contestants, and a bitchfight ensues between Jennifer and Claire (who the former describes, kindly, as a Tasmanian Devil).Sadly useless pouting pretty boy Alex is sent home, and just to tease us the last three are again sent outside whilst SirAlan confers with Margaret and Nick. Wonderfully Margaret describes Michael as "a waste of space", and when Nick expresses his disbelief that Michael got a degree in classics from Edinburgh, she mutters archly "I think Edinburgh isn't what it used to be". Back in the boardroom and Claire yet again attempts to talk her way into trouble ("I've got a thick skin.. I'm trying to change.. there's a loud of bullshit in this team.. I don't know what else to say", SirAlan "Thank gawd for that"), but Ice Queen Jen really scuppers herself by harping on about Michael's part in the bribery scandal, and SirAlan fires her for switching allegiances to save her hide. Which seems a tad unfair seeing as Sophocles is a prize lying cock, but SirAlan appears to put this down to youthful excuberance. Youthful? He looks like a 40 year old man who's simply lived at home with his parents most of his life.

Whilst Jennifer also skulks off to the taxi full of bitter regret, Claire and Michael laugh all the way home, with Claire celebrating the fact that she's back to rottweiler mode again (I'm guessing she's treating aggressive and scary as virtues). Back at the house meanwhile Raef actually speaks more sense than anyone has all episode ("I hope they all get fired.. but Michael playing the Jewish card was hilarious"). I'm guessing Raef's seen Michael's cock.

Next week sees our teams flogging wedding tut to hapless retards spending their daddy's money at a wedding show. I'm loving the word "tut" and want to use it as much as I can in the next few days.

Liking: Raef, Lucinda, Sara
Disliking: Helene, Michael
Still haven't forgiven for his shouty bollocks: LEE MCQUEEN
Cunts of the highest order: Alex, Claire

5:24 PM - 4 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

Apprentice 4, ep 6: Save water, take a bath with a friend, except you haven’t got any friends..
Current mood: bitchy
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

It's Week 6, and sadly (or happily for me) I get home too late for the obligatory pants/phone shot, but I quickly get a fishfinger sarnie and cam of grolsch on the go in order to catch up with the latest shenanigans of the besuited gobshites in the Argoos house of fun.

The teams are dragged to Hackney town hall and  tasked with designing greetings cards and then pitching them to the famous occasions stationary giants of Clintons cards, Celebrations and um Tescos.

Rennaisance end up with: Kevin, Claire, madJenny, Sara and Alex (already I'm feeling sorry for Sara).

Alpha: Michael Sophocles, Lucinda, Raef, LEE McQUEEN, Helene and evilJennifer.

SirAlan chooses "only West country bank manager in the village" Kevin to lead "Renaissance", whereas "ruthless" Michael Sophocles is charged with the task of running Alpha into the ground. Kevin's Brentishly confident ("as a leader I inspire devotion.. I make people's lives inspirational" yes - I'm inspired to vomit), after all he's used to achieving ("At age 20 I had my first house, at age 22 I had my second house, at age 23 I had a porsche... when I was 17 it was a very good year for wanking into my mum's pants" etc etc). Michael's also feeling ruthless (grrrr) as he states in his Ken Livingstone voice "there is no-one I wouldn't screw over". Yuk.

The teams start brainstorming - apart from Sara, who has lots of great ideas ("eid cards" or cards from pets to their mental owners), but none that the team of the twats want her to air, so madJenny resorts to rolling her eyes and talking VERY SLOWLY over Sara. Instead madJenny and Claire manage to persuade Kevin that the team should take an eco-warrier approach - because nothing spells environmentally friendly like a fuck off card in a paper envelope sent through the post and presumably travelling by train and van telling you all about it. It speaks volumes that Claire and Alex are enthusiastically backing yet another idea which seems doomed to failure. Kevin tries to gauge which team-member is most confident about presenting (poor Sara suggests that Claire or madJenny would be better suited, presumably because she knows their idea is pants), before nominating himself. He hopes to bring his "personality" into the pitch. Sweet baby Jesus! With his limited self-awareness and obsession with tools and DIY (snigger), Kevin confidently predicts that they will "nail Alpha to the floor by 4 o'clock". Even a fact finding mission to Clintons cards - revealing that they have no environmental message cards (er why not ask "why?") fails to ring alarm bells with these fucktards, as madJenny's far too busy gloating that her idea gets picked.

Alpha fare little better, after rejecting plastic surgery cards (Raef "in my experience most women I know would admit happily to a boob job but nothing else" - I love these snippets about Raef's lifestyle), and going with Raef's idea, a card apparently designed for terminal wankers and stalkers (hmm perhaps there IS a market!) celebrating "Singletons day" which Alpha decide crushingly should be February 13th thanks to the input of two random women on the street. Way to cheer up the lonely hearts amongst us. Actually I'm almost evil enough to buy enough of these for a laugh and send them anonymously to really smug married couples. But not quite.

Alpha create "ecological images" using poor oppressed Tom the model as bait for madJenny after she manages to terrify small tousle headed child models into floods of tears with her insaniac whooping and cheering. She fares slightly better with the womanly arsed Tom - who has to lift his kilt and reveal his smooth cheeks in order to get the message about wind-power across. Good grief.  " I can see your buttocks - but remember we're getting a serious message across" cackles Jenny hideously, although the look on the wonderful Margeret Mountjoy's face at the end result is glorious.

Michael Sophocles loses the plot and sends Lucinda, Helene and IceQueen in a cab to shoot pictures for the singleton card. The atmosphere is frankly arctic as IQJennifer and Helene practice their thousand yard stares and disdainful put-downs every time Lucinda attempts to make a suggestion. Helene finds a reason that I'm not even aware of to have a go from Lucinda ("She's always looking for an argument". Eh???). I mean, ok, Lucinda's dressed like something out of a posho emo goth recital of "The Railway Children", but what is Helene's problem? Whilst Helene and IQJ "direct" some models representing "single mums" to spin around, Lucinda's left in charge of "props" and nips unnoticed out the back, presumably for a much-deserved little weep.

All is also not well in the boys side of team Sophocles, as they can't figure out where to put the apostrophes in "youre a lonely bastard, its best that you top yourself now", and despite Michael ernestly calling chaps at The British Library and the Telegraph (I guess the Guardian for spelling would have been asking too much) and Raef calling a chum who presumably once stuck a dictionary up his arse for japes, Apostrophe-gate rages on inanely and timewastingly for over 3 and a half hours, until Michael sighs and concedes to Raef's greater grammatical knowledge, despite the fact his parents didn't know how to spell "Ralph".

madJenny, Claire and Alex unsurprisingly decide turn on Kevin regarding his decision to pitch with only 2 hours before it's due ("Who'd want to listen to him droning on" they all drone without a hint of irony), until he starts to crack. "I can tell Kevin's feeling very very stressed and I don't want to push him over the edge" Claire winks knowingly at madJenny and they both make their best Lady Macbeth faces before setting about undermining him over every aspect of the pitch. Claire suggests that Jenny would be better to do the pitch and the MadOne makes gurny faces ("I'm loving how it's coming back to me...I would have been very happy to do this pitch had I known yesterday.. 2hours before I'm not happy"), before moaning to camera about Kevin trying to pass the buck. Oh FFS, Kev's an arsehat, but I'm almost feeling sorry for him here.

Raef ("Words are my tool... errrr um") pitches to Clinton cards, unveiling his "diary entry concept". I love the caption on the single mum cards ("Love, laughter innocence.. is there something missing?" and can only pray there's a giant pop-up cock inside.Clintons beast them about picking February 13th at the height of the Valentines season, when people would possibly more productively send their single chums Valentines cards to build their fragile hopes up before shattering them. Tescos are similarly unimpressed, despite Raef claiming above the team's collective raised eyebrows that he's just had a positive meeting with Clintons, and Lee attempts to pitch in (Lee: "There's so many single people in the UK that despise Valentines day, so we're looking to tap into that market", Tescos bloke: "Um - who would send the cards?" Oooh touche!). Gutted, Michael decides to remove the date from the pitch, and Raef pitches to Celebrations (Celebrations woman: "What date?", Raef (channeling Prince Charles): "We're quite um open to er suggestions", Celebrations woman (smugly): "So you don't know?", Raef: Splutter). Lee steps in and argues that he wants the date to be logistically most convenient for the retailers, and the Celebrations woman can't resist his stubbly rough boy charm.

Kevin channels a combination of David Brent and Gareth Keenan in his pitch to Clintons, passionately decrying the amount of rubbish chucked away in the UK (seemingly unaware that his cards would join that pile) and citing his knowledge of "numerous people" who would welcome a patronising green message delivered at great expense to the enviroment, especially anyone who saw the "Live Urth" concert. "I know who your market is" whines Kevin triumphantly, "It's everyone", but Clintons unamazingly find the cards depressing and look sadly at Kevin. madJenny doesn't help matters by declaring that she's stopped buying so many cards because she doesn't want to hurt the poor planet anymore. Way to sell to your target marget you crazy ginger chin-ja warrier. Kevin compares Clintons contemptuous attitude towards the very dull cards to the USA's stance on pollution. Fucking hell - Kevin's turned into Dave Angel eco warrier.

Claire decides to try her old trick of beasting Kevin after the pitch by declaring that he comes across as too aggressive. Because Claire is like a quivering Bronte heroine and feels intimidated by masculine body language, despite the fact that even her tits are testosterone fuelled. Alex just sulkily pouts and attempts ironically to eat his own girlish lips whilst "listening" to Kevin waffle on about being the lone voice for saving the planet as exhaust fumes pour out of the cab to the Celebrations pitch. When smug Celebrations woman points out the contradiction of sending a card to an environmentally minded person when they would probably rather send an e-card, his face suggests that it had never crossed his tiny hamster mind, before he ignores the question and gets back to his beloved statistics on rubbish in the UK, before suggesting that the message could also be put across on balloons. (According to an annoying eco-type I know, balloons choke dolphins. She really knows how to liven up kids birthday parties I can tell you!). Finally they meet Tesco bloke, ironically at an over-enormous wooden table. By this time Kevin sounds like a drowning man, and Tesco man appears to take pity on him. Or as madJenny patronisingly puts it "We captured his heart and mind". Hmmm.

Next day in the boardroom I'm loving Lucinda's black suede cap, I've got one pretty similar, and she looks as bonkers in hers as I do in mine. Alex smirks as SirAlan lays into Michael's singleton card idea. Nick damns Michael's team leadership with faint praise ("quite good... but they did spend 4 hours toying with an apostrophe"). SirAlan turns his attention to Kevin, and his Nookie bear face furrows with confusion at the idea of a "Love Your Planet week" ("People don't send cards to politically preach to people" - unless they're mentals SirAlan). Claire immediately tries to scupper Kevin with regards the pitching, neglecting to mention that she didn't put herself forward.

The results come in, and the nice man at Tescos took pity on Renaissance to the tune of 6000 orders, with Alpha's singleton cards only getting 1500 orders. Clintons cards ordered 1500 again from Alpha, and unsurprisingly absolutely fuck all from Renaissance. Celebrations also fail to order from Renaissance, but dropping the date seems to have worked as they went for a whopping 19500 from Alpha, sending the boys' testosterone levels soaring amid somewhat unsporting whoops and cheers (the lovely Lucinda stays quiet and dignified). Margaret looks somewhat alarmed by Michael's rubbish table thumping and "COME ON!" ing, and SirAlan reprimands their "football match" antics, and Michael's forced to apologise whilst Raef stifles a schoolboy grin. To calm them down, they win a "private recital" (which I'm convinced is with "Myleen Klaas", but it can't be), and get to sip cocktails whilst listening to some women play piano and cellos.

Renaissance are despatched to the cafe of shattered dreams where Claire accuses Kevin of trying to "swing the pitch back" to her at the 11th hour. Erm? Meanwhile madJenny decides to try and make lovely Sara her bitch this week (perhaps she still hasn't forgiven her for standing up to her when she was beasting Lucinda) by accusing her of only delivering a "couple of ideas" (that'll be the ones you didn't talk over - you lying cow). Back in the boardroom, SirAlan asks who the prime innovater of the shit idea was, and rather stupidly madJenny instantly takes the credit.

SirAlan suggests that bereavement cards might have been better, and in a display of breathtaking insensitivity to the parents of Rhys Jones suggests the wording "Sorry to hear that your 11 year old beautiful child got shot in the head by a hoodie". If scousers aren't up in arms (so to speak) about this I'll eat my own Everton scarf.

Kevin's informed that Clinton cards found his pitch "dreadful" and his attitude "cocky" and "preachy". When madJenny and Claire state that they offered to pitch, Margaret wonderfully points out that madJenny would have been even shitter, given her statement to Clintons that she was buying less cards due to green issues. SirAlan lays into Kev for not letting Claire the "retail buyer" pitch, and she duly bullshits that Kevin "was adamant.. and very passionate" that he would pitch, despite admitting that he asked her to pitch. Again Margaret intervenes beautifully, pointing out that Claire did not attempt to step in herself, but merely claimed that madJenny would be better.

Attacked with regard the concept, madJenny desperately tries to blame Sara for lack of ideas ("nothing was delivered from her throughout the first day" FFS!), and uses her grating whiny voice to grind Sara into submission. Come on Sara, show some of the backbone you showed in weeks 1 and 2! SirAlan fortunately recognises that Sara's being ganged up on and even states that he's discounted "75%" of what's been said. Despite this clear indication that Sara is probably safe, stupid bastard Kevin wimps out of taking madJenny back into the boardroom and chooses Claire and Sara. Doh!

Kevin's asked why he bought Claire in and claims she should have stepped up to the plate and used her retail experience ("I'm not blaming her", SirAlan "Well you bought her back in"). Rightly SirAlan points out that as madJenny had the idea, she should be in the firing line and that he doesn't understand people trying to blame Sara.  Claire immediately claims that Sara said that her ideas were not heard for the last three tasks (um maybe she has a point?). Wonderfully Sara loses her rag and finally starts sticking up herself, seething in disbelief "You feel you failed this task - NOT because of the design idea, not because you can't sell these cards, NOT because of the pitch!" and SirAlan runs with this and gets Claire and Kevin to admit that the bad idea lost them the task. Still he confides that he's worried by Sara that he's only ever seen her moaning (surely he means people moaning about her?), whereas Claire's criticised again for not stepping up, but finally Kevin's fired for being the biggest cuntmonkey to come out of Woking since Paul Weller.

Kevin's typically gracious in Losers Taxi ("I truly believe Sara should have been fired"), but the return to the house is even more upsetting than madJenny's puke gesture upon Lucinda's return last week. ICeQueenJennifer states wisely that Kevin should have gone, prompting madJenny to make witch faces and shriek "not Sara?". Only Lucinda hugs poor Sara on her return whilst Michael Sophocles openly whinges that SirAlan made the wrong decision. Nice. Worse still, LEE McQUEEN has gotten over his stubbly chivalry face and becomes an aggressive sneering shouting ball of fury aimed directly in the face of the hapless Sara ("IF 4 PEOPLE THOUGHT YOU DIDN'T CONTRIBUTE - WHY ARE YOU ON THAT SOFA. IF YOU DON'T PERFORM - YOU'RE OUT!!! SIMPLE AS THAT!!". It's Raef's turn to be a gentleman as he points out that a decision has been made by SirAlan and they should let it lie ("We do not need to fire questions at her". Sensing blood, Alex chips in "Raef it's my opinion", but Raef stands firm (!) ("Allow me to express my opinion too then and say it was inappropriate"- hurrah!!!),  and even Claire points out that it wasn't Sara's fault that the task was failed, sending madJenny into whiny voiced rage.

Next week the candidates head to Marrakech to hunt for exotic items in the souks. Lucky bastards. LEE McQUEEN is seen trying to mime an alarm clock to a storekeeper, who I hope sells him a fucking backwards pterodactyl.

What a sorry shower of shits most of these are eh? Lets campaign to bring back Simon Chopper Smith.

Liking: Raef, Lucinda, Sara
Loathing: The rest, but special pit of burning pain reserved for Claire, madJenny and now LEE McQUEEN

7:06 AM - 5 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

Apprentice 4, ep 5: We all scream at ice queens
Current mood: bitchy
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

After the travesty of grafter Simon's firing is replayed complete with the confusingly wonderfully politically incorrect dismissal of SirAlan to Claire that would probably make Emmeline Pankhurst toss around in her grave ("You're showing no respect whatsoever to this man [Simon], get back to the house"); we're straight into the strangely subdued "action" of Week 5.

madJenny and Claire lounge around in their white jimjams and Michelin towelling robe respectively in the kitchen (no surprise Claire) like a scene out of "Munter, interrupted", only to be, erm, interrupted by the ding-dong of SirAlan creeping up on them in the morning. Claire answers the French windows sheepishly, and SirAlan's clearly still got her card marked, despite her apology for not being appropriately enough dressed (is there a burka in the house?). She immediately rallies the other candidates, warning them to get themselves decent; cue a raggle taggle bunch of tousle haired gits wombling downstairs, presumably thinking "if it works for Alex..". apart from the wonderful Raef, who saunters in looking like something out of "Brideshead Revisited".

SirAlan does a tad more team jiggery pokery, sending Kevin to join a Renaissance consisting of madJenny, Michael, Alex, Sara; which, given last week, is inevitably headed by Claire. Meanwhile, keen to see what it is Lucinda can actually do, SirAlan appoints her head of Alpha, comprising Jennifer, Lindi, LEE MCQUEEN, Raef and Helene.

The teams are sent to two ice-cream farms (you see, it does grow on trees), to help them develop new flavours and then sell them to the London market.

Claire's clearly learnt from her SirAlan card-marking last week ("I'm conscious I can be very direct...so please tell me if I'm doing so, so I can stop"). madJenny shows that nights spent alone drinking gin and sticking pins into effigies of your exes can be inspirational by suggesting an alcopop theme to the ice-cream (oh ok, "cocktails"). Michael Sophocles isn't convinced ("I can't see a faimily going into a cinema with their kids and ordering 'sex on the beach'"; clearly he's never lived in Essex).

Meanwhile "part time aromotherapist" (oh dear) Lucinda brainstorms with her frankly bemused team ("So far I've got carrot, ginseng.. ginseng's an aphrodisiac, ooh!" - so's carrot if you use it wisely), and her deceptively sweet and laid back managerial style eventually suckers LEE McQUEEN IS STRANGELY AROUSED into joining in and making suggestions ("'Ow about a normal cuppa tea!!!!"). I think he meant an ice-cream flavour as he didn't say "love!" afterwards. Helene's still not feeling the Lucinda love after getting away with blatently lying about our lovely debflake last week, and condemns her as lazy and manipulative.

Team Claire discover they have to organise a tasting session of their new flavours in the village hall in rural Kent (a village probably full of multi-millionaires who could buy or sell these shitclowns) and have fun mocking the locals as potential toothless webbed feet old crones. At the farm, Claire's suggestion of a chocolate orange flavour prompts the worthy farmer to order that she has to use at least 50 oranges and hand squeeze them. I really hope he's just taking the piss. As Claire shoots him daggered looks he smiles calmly: "The secret is.. to be organised". Claire puts Alex, Kev and Sara in the kitchen making their presumably non-copyright breaking "Very berry", whilst she flounces round the countryside with Michael and madJenny "looking for oranges" (i.e. snorting down litres of cider as "research" for their cider and elderflower flavour).

In East Sussex, Lucinda's team are STILL brainstorming ("what about blue cheese and cranberry?") before deciding on avocado and chilli (frozen guacamole - yum!), "cosmopolitan" (whatever the fuck that is) and toffee apple flavours, before despatching the sales team lead by Lindi to browbeat uninterested locals into coming to the tasting session. Margaret is quietly impressed by Lucinda's management skillz which appear to have everyone happily mucking in and not acting like a complete arsehat for a change. The sales team get fired up like fuckhouses getting appointments to meet retailers in thatLondon (Raef seems particularly in his element calling from a posh country club on behalf of "Alpha luxury ice-cream"). The tasting session goes reasonably well as the bunch of old biddies quite like the frozen guacamole and toffee apple and solve the mystery of the Cosmopolitan ("tastes like mashed potato").

Claire's team is so far under stress, with her having taken 4 hours to "find her oranges", and Michael Sophocles's charms failing dismally on a class full of Joanna Trollope types doing yoga ("Come and taste our ice-cream" "No, fick aif" "Oh sorry"). They're forced to test out their wares on a bunch of lairy cuntry type pissheads ("We'll taste your icecream if you buy us wine yah" "The icecream has cider in it" "Ooooh yah!"  etc.).

Back at the house, Lucinda, looking more each day like a heartbroken Lady Penelope, tries to reorganise her teams to better equip them for selling the next day. She's met by frosty glares from Jennifer and Lindi, who retain their original group, so they can congratulate themselves on how fucking briliant they are, how their team have won already (much to Claire's chagrin), and how they'd be as brilliant without Lucinda who's a shit waste of space etc etc (Jennifer "Lucinder's Lucinda...we would have achieved anyway"). Fecktwats. If I had a manager who encouraged me to do my job well, whilst remaining barely unnoticed, I might start believing in a benign God.

Alpha are streets ahead, as Claire's still keeping Renaissance back to discuss why they got no leads the previous day and suggest targeting Indie cinemas the next morning (too late, Jennifer got that lead yesterday), prompting Alex into more sulky boy whining ("My job yesterday was to make ice-cream not calls" he moans).

Lucinda calls by at an appointment organised by her "sales team" to discover that the comedy Dolmio Italian therein "makeas" his "owna icecreama". Concerned ("Mm that's a bit of a fuck up") she contacts her "number 2" in sales, Lindi, who's still so assured of her own brilliance she refuses to see Lucinda's reason ("I've just sold 15 litres.. we can still sell to people who make their own" (eh?). Unruffled as ever Lucinda charmingly suggests that although LIndi is "sales, and therefore knows what" she is doing, she would rather they concentrate their sales on people other than Mr Fucking Whippy. Cue Lindi sulking like a child in the sales tossers car ("I hate people telling you how to do what you know").

Claire's team are still flailing, despite madJenny trying to convince people that the berry ice-cream constitutes part of their "5 a day". Kev is convinced that cider and elderflower will sell, what "with the new cider narket opening up.. cider is sexy.. like champagne". Maybe it is in Guildford you podgy special. Kev, Alex and Sara manage to get an "Independent" cinema in Clapham to give them an appointment to see the head of their chains purchasing (sigh - nothing is ever independent anymore) later in the afternoon, and the boys swan around congratulating themselves. Unfortunately for them, Lindi, Raef and Jennifer meet another manager of the same chain of "Independent cinemas" in Notting Hill in the meantime, and have had the foresight to invite their head buyer, who laps up their frozen guacamole and "ethics" (eh?) like a kitten under an udder, especially when Jennifer, without any team discussion, offers them exclusive rights to the products. Oh oh.Blokie from the other cinema in the chain calls Alex back to say "no deal", and he and Kevin are mortified. Foolishly Sara suggests they go back and discuss it, which the boys see as the chance for a sulky showdown. They're duly told where to stick it (Kevin "game over"), leaving Alex whining about people acting as though "they're the big cheese". Oh the irony. Minutes later he's wanking on to another hapless customer about how the products "sell themselves" (thank goodness eh), before confiding to camera his lack of faith in Claire's leadership like a rat deserting a sinking shit ("It's about getting big deals... if you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail"). Buck passing tosspot. Lindi meanwhile, having heard Jennifer offer exclusivity, and thought it sounded quite cool and street, has started offering exclusivity to every man, woman, child and dog she meets.

Lucinda's so charmed LEE McQUEEN that he's selling avocado ice-cream to gastro pubs and saying things like "it can be served with rocket as a starter" (the fact they buy into this convinces me they're a waste of cash). He goes so far as to describe Lucinda as "cool, calm and collected when others may have panicked" and starts channelling Timothy Treadwell from Grizzly Man every time they make a sale "That's what I'm talking about! That's what I'm talking about! That's what I'm talking about!".

With it all looking fantastic for Alpha, the inevitable "narrative twist" (well I never!) occurs when Michael, madJenny and Helene manage to bully some restaurant bloke into buying 200 litres. Oh no!

Most of Rennaissance therefore suck up to Claire in the boardroom, but when SirAlan asks about Lucinda's management skillz, Lee McQueen is surprised to find himself the only team member endorsing her 100%. IrishJennifer damns with faint praise ("It's the first task I saw her being positive.. but I wouldn't say she was good"), whereas Lindi rather dimly goes on about how brilliant SHE was as second in command, and how many great leads she got. "Three of your leads made their own ice-cream" sneers Margaret fabulously. Lucinda claims that she wanted to mix the teams in order to have someone who'd worked in the kitchen helping with sales, which SirAlan commends as a great idea. When asked why it didn't happen, she looks worrying weedy, citing negativity and non-verbal gestures from Jennifer. The latter immediately leaps in and denies that she was negative, Why no, she'd merely been sucking on an ice cold lemon during that meeting.

Not too surprisingly Team Alpha lose, despite Renaissance's overall crapness; having only pulled in £1273 worth of sales as opposed to £1455. So Renaissance are helicoptered off to another mansion el posho, to learn how to do archery and golf, or in Claire's case, engage in Schadenfreude. She moans about Lindi and Jennifer's triumphalist behaviour the night before; "You don't cackle like witches round a cauldron...anyhow who's laughing now" she cackles, witchily.

Back at the house Lindi and Jenny slag off Lucinda, prompting LEE McQUEEN to channel his outer Clive Owen and come to the lady's defence ("No-one said anything beforehand.. she did very well"). Yay!

Back in the boardroom, Lindi's questioned over her questionable targeting of ice-cream makers, and lamely churns out business studies GCSE jargon (SirAlan "All cliches!"). Lucinda's asked who the main opponent to her mixing the teams was, and fingers (ooer) Jennifer, unfortunately (although maybe deliberately) putting Helene in the shit by suggesting that Helene had described Jennifer as a "snake" and "evil" to her. Helene's all bobbing headed finger wobbling incensed "Don't speak for me", before they all turn on Lucinda and call her a useless liar. Given Helene's bare faced porker last week, I wonder if Lucinda is just cannily sowing a few seeds. As the bitching continues, Margaret rolls her eyes and loudly sighs "Can we get off this and can we bring this back to business?" Poor Margaret, having to face such crap representatives of her gender every week.

Jennifer's next in the firing line from SirAlan, over her decision to offer one cinema chain exclusive rights to her product.  She doesn't take long in dragging Lindi into the exclusivity do-do, and when it transpires that Lindi cancelled other sales appointments after offering the pub chain exclusive rights to the product ("for three months" - for whatever the fuck that's worth), the shit hits the fan (SirAlan "had I known earlier... these sales would have been void"). Unsurprisingly Lucinda brings Lindi and Jennifer back into the firing line, apologising hoarsely to the permanently blank eyelash flapping Lindi as she does. Nick also sticks up for Lucinda as being less shit than Lindi - now that really is damning with faint praise.

SirAlan sticks it to Lucinda for being incapable of controlling her marketing team, prompting evil kiss of the spider woman red lipped smirks from Jennifer. Lindi's under fire for not speaking up over Jennifer's maverick exclusivity move, weakly admitting she feared losing the customer. I feel a bit maimy as Jennifer pipes up yet again with "I think we're missing a vital point here" (what? Your jugular?) and cunningly emphasises Lindi's position as second in command. SirAlan's still perturbed by Jennifer's demeanor though, and even Nick shudderingly pipes up "I've always felt there's a bit of a chill in the air between you and the others". Fire leaps out of Jennifer's ice blue eyes and her forked tongue dances in hissing disdain as she defends herself ("I'm not a bad apple") and then swiftly accuses Lucinda of lying and shifting the blame. Oh I see what you did there.

SirAlan asks "risk manager" Lucinda what her risk assessment is, and she calculates the problem as "one in three" before suggesting that he inhale a few drops of lavender oil. He's not sure whether Jennifer is good at anything other than sales and being a cold-hearted bitch, but fires Lindi for being most useless, as well as "second in command". Jennifer's card is also marked though (SirAlan "You said on your application that one of your worst faults was giving idiots a second chance, well it must have rubbed off on me, because you have a second chance" ooh!).

The boys back home dismiss Jennifer as a "wannabe ice queen", so look duly disappointed when she comes home, claiming, somewhat less than honestly that she put her hand up over the exclusivity mistake, although amusingly she adds that "another point up was that I was quite cold" which is met by a silence so icy that even the tumbleweeds can't move through it. I think she (rightly) scares them. However, Lucinda has truly emerged as still being a dark horse-sheep-thing, as Lee admits he was convinced she would be fired "although you were a good team manager". Claire ("Ooh dear Lucinda's back I've lost all my money"), Helene ("Don't fucking use me by reporting what I've said about Jennifer") and Jennifer will be gunning for her from now on though. I'm hoping Lucinda's next team includes LEE McQUEEN and Sara or she could be lovely sweet toast.

Lindi in the taxi of doom still doesn't appear to have twigged what's happened. "SirAlan missed how 'special' I am" she jabbers. Oh I don't think anybody missed that Lindi.

Liking: Sara (she should win based on her contribution so far, but when did that ever matter?), Raef, Lucinda, LEE McQUEEN
Unconcerned by: Michael Sophocles
Hating: Claire, Helene, Alex, Kevin, Jennifer, madJenny

5:33 PM - 4 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

Apprentice 4: Episode 4. David Flailey
Current mood: bitchy
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

Week 4 and rather than the obligatory pants scene we're treated to the sight of Claire waddling to answer the phone in her Michelin man towelling robe. To make up for it the editors slip in a Hockney-esque shot of Raef in the shower. The teams are summoned to the Wallace collection, to Claire's bewilderment ("The only Wallis I know is clothes"). The rest of the girls look bewildered when they enter the well known art gallery - perhaps they expected a collection of Wensleydale cheeses and silent plasticene dogs. The teams are dispatched to photograph shoppers at Bluewater and sell them their portraits, but not before a bit of team jiggery pokery by SirAlan ostensibly to attempt to deal with the rifts in the existing team, but in reality to create yet more psychotic backstabbery. Therefore Renaissance now consists of Simon, Alex, Michael, madJenny, Sara and Claire; whereas Alpha now comprises Helene, Lucinda, Jennifer, Lee, Kevin, Raef and Lindi.

Given his promise to step up to the plate, Simon "Chopper Smith" volunteers himself as project manager ("I'm 100% up for leading this") whilst the rest of the team stare discouragingly at it. From the start it appears that Claire and Alex in particular have decided to drown Simon in their own pungent blend of cunt soup, as immediately they're sulking, undermining him and questioning his ability to keep his calm in the manner of a manipulative partner suggesting you're being over-emotional and resting their case smugly when you rise to it. Simon points out as calmly as he can that it's his bollocks on the line should they lose, but it's clear that Claire and Alex don't need to be told this. Nonetheless Simon (who's apparently "got an IQ of 170" and a best mate who's a photographer) is undeterred, and cites his expert knowledge of shutter speeds and putting tripods up as reason alone for his leadership. Oh dear, I have a bad feeling about this already.

Helene leads Alpha, and Kevin volunteers to be sales guru ("I'm really good at selling and I want to be out there NAILING it" - this man is obsessed with nailing things). Helene appoints the self-confessedly "technically useless" Lucinda as technical production wizard in charge of transferring the pictures from the memory chip onto the pc and out again, despite Lucinda's protestations that she doesn't even know how to take pictures on her mobile phone. Raef's put in charge of printing stuff onto cheap useless crap.

Meanwhile Simon's still swimming against the tide as he attempts to appoint someone as a link between the two groups. Alex wriggles out of it by suggesting that although he sees himself as "strongest" (knob!) he doesn't want to take Simon's share of responsibility (or his own), until an exasperated Simon asks Claire if she'd like to do it ("Alex. You're off the hook"). SirAlan's henchwoman Margaret is in a feisty mood this week and has got Alex's number ("Alex is playing a game here"). However, poor Simon's too honest to spot this, and whilst he expounds on his glamour theme for the photo stand ("Bluewater is the land of the Essex and Kent beautiful people...the grass is green the women are orange.."), and takes his group to buy cheap and tacky glamour "nik naks" and tit whilst he wanks on about the magic that the camera can weave, he's blissfully unaware of the daggers that Alex, Claire ("he's like a toddler") and madJenny are sticking into his effigy in the other car. Worryingly whilst Simon shops on the high street for shiny shit there's a lingering shot of the job centre just behind him. He calls the rest of his team, who are ostensibly learning printing skillz, but in reality starting phase two of their mutiny and suggests he look for frames. Claire pounces, followed by Alex and both smugly claim that as Simon has delegated production responsibility to them, they've decided not to have frames. A clearly shaken Simon firmly informs them he's looking at frames ("Whether I've delegated or not, I'm responsible for the whole project" - good point) before also deciding to dress shoppers up in his own clothes to add that touch of glamour (insane point). Whilst he's shipping the tat across the Bluewater carpark and setting up - under constant disapproving backchat from Alex and Claire, only Sara tries to buoy him up ("I think you've definitely got that glamour look" she says of his seedy red satin chais longue set up, and manages not to laugh or vomit). Claire's still trying the classic 'undermine their sanity' trick ("Just be conscious of any flare-ups", Simon "I'm not flaring up", Claire "there you go being an autocratic dictator" etc etc.), whereas Alex decides to ignore everything Simon says ("I'm not being negative.. just leave me alone and I'll sell"). That military discipline must be all that's preventing him taking the pair out with a semi-automatic weapon at this stage.

Wisely, rather than getting all "artistic" and looking for the illusion created by the camera, the other team have sussed that you need more obvious illusions to get the punters in, and hie themselves to a dodgy lookielike agency to check out a frankly terrifying Cheri Blair (she can do the alien mouth and everything), a convincingly ropy Britney (who Nick gapes at in amusing bewilderment), a crap Del Boy (Lee "Who are you?", Crap Del Boy (in a reasonably good Del Boy voice): "Are you avvin a poke? Cushty etc. etc."), before settling on a slightly rubbish Becks. Of course Becks goes down a storm with the Bluewater punters flocking to pay £16 for a print plus some personalised novelty bollocks (oh ok, a mug or a jigsaw), and even Lee McQueen is happy and showing a surprisingly good touch with the camera and clientelle, the only problem being that both teams can only accept payment once the photos are printed. And who's in charge of getting them printed again? Lucinda and Raef you say? Hell's teeth! Whilst Lucinda flakes out, despite wearing the sort of specs that page 3 girls attempt to use to look intelligent, and repeatedly presses the error button to make a little dinging noise, and Raef prints an upside down mug, Helene starts losing her patience ("just get on with it!", Lucinda "How (very) DARE you speak to me like that") and they have a shouty match whilst Becks-alike cowers worriedly in the corner and Raef whistles and pretends he's not there. To be honest though Helene's equally shit at anything technical, and is clearly setting up our favourite passive aggressive freaky deb chick for a fall, something that hasn't passed Nick by. Whilst they try to sort out the technical "hitch" they're forced to shut up shop - at the busiest time of the day! Finally they work out how to print - onto A4 paper only. Wonder if they're still charging £15.99? Probably.

Michael Sophocles is working his sleazy charms with the girls for Renaissance, but it's a toss up as to who is coming across as more rapey between him and Simon, as the latter practicely chases a terrified woman across Bluewater yelling "Get on mah settee love! Do I have to come and get you?" The classy Renaissance Glamour deal costs £30 for a print, keyring and jigsaw, because nothing says glamour more than taking your own face to pieces and trying to put it back together. They get some insane customers who agree to be dressed up as terminally ill Roman emperors or something, but sadly the communication between the front end and the back end is worse than a pantomime horse containing Helen Keller and Stephen Hawking. The order system which involves Simon dilligently writing the number on the camera next to the person's name goes to pot when the camera numbers don't transfer to the computer (eh?), but Claire's too busy sniggering at how crap Simon is and neglects to tell him this until they're inundated with orders. So Renaissance too are forced to shut up shop, whilst Claire nags Simon about his "invasive" leadership tactics (this done with pointy fingers and bobbing head by the nasty little beeyatch, who then accuses Simon of hurting her when he gives her a pat on the back, oh for fuck sake you're built like a blubber coated shithouse woman!).  it all falls apart for Simon, who cries like a broken man in front of the confused Bluewater shoppers ("I'll lose cos I've lost control.. I'll take it on the chin and I'll get fired... I'm absolutely depressed... leave me alone a minute"). Oh dear. Claire reassures Simon that the production and ordering problems are fixed, when by Alex's ruddy little sulk-face they're clearly not. "Of course we'll make a profit, don't you worry. You concentrate on taking photos.." she soothes patronisingly, neglecting to add "Whilst Alex and I shaft you royally".

Back in the boardroom Simon looks like a condemned man, whereas Claire grins broadly. Helene tries to stitch up the "technically incompetent" Lucinda, by claiming that she failed to point out that she had no computer skills. Oooh pants on fire! SirAlan's having none of it and asks Helene why she didn't help out, forcing her to admit that she didn't "have the ability", before she somewhat mendaciously adds "my knowledge base was far behind Lucinda's" (in which case how the fuck did she manage to work out how to sit on the chair, or wipe her own arse). Simon's asked about his theme, and Claire's immediately looking to interrupt and undermine, but again SirAlan's in no mood for bullshit ("I've asked the team leader" - ha!), although Simon's forced to admit that he felt that he had lost control of his team.

Anyhow Simon's team make a £73 loss, whereas Alpha make £145 profit, the most annoying thing being that Simon's team only spent £20 less than Helene's buying all that cheap glamour nonsense rather than a "squint and it might be convincing" Beckham. Alpha are sent on a yacht to the Isle of Wight (hang on, where's the treat?), where Helene gurns and bitches about Helene to camera, suggesting that she should step up to be project manager. Ah poor Lucinda is so fucked.

Simon's team don't even get to go to the bridge cafe such is their loss making disgrace. Back at the house, Simon's prepared to "go in and fight my corner" whereas Alex warns that in the boardroom he will "destroy" Simon. Ha! Not even in your superman jim jams could you do that you snotty little boy.

SirAlan calls them back in after his lunch with the Prime Minister (bollocks), and Claire continues her attempt to make Simon look like a bombastic ex-military mental ("We're all conscious that he's an emotional person.. he's like a missile." - eh???), before the tables are turned gloriously and SirAlan points out that she's been a nasty cow all through the task, and she squirms and backtracks like a beeyatch caught out ("I apologise.. I didn't mean to look like that.. I was trying to communicate and Simon sweated on me" etc. Do these people not know that SirAlan is watching?). "I don't like to see people victimised" SirAlan grunts, sticking up for his bus boy, "especially as you aint that BLADDY great yourself". Wonderfully Margaret joins in ("you treated Simon like dirt"), before turning her guns on Alex, forcing him to hang his head in shame, when he denies shirking responsibility ("You stepped so far away from it you were out of the room"). Go Margaret!

Alex shows his true colours by turning against Claire when madJenny suggests it was all her fault as she failed in her role of linking communications between the two groups (Alex "Oh yeah, initially I thought it was down to the project manager, but now I hear it.. it's down to the people who were meant to be running communications between us" - ooh what a turncoat. Still it's rather gratifying to see the wind beaten out of Claire's hefty wings). Simon has no choice to bring in Alex and Claire, and as the fantastically interventionalist Margaret is on Chopper Smith's side ("He wasn't 100% responsible") and Nick thinks Claire was an unmanageable bint from Hell, I'm almost seeing light at the end of the tunnel for Simon.

Claire's still trying to convince us Simon is some sort of crazed wife beater, but thankfully he points out how aggressively she behaved, and SirAlan points out that she comes across as impatient and overpowering, before suggesting that Alex was more aware of the crisis with orders than he let on. Sadly Simon decides to scupper himself by talking glowingly about his photography skillz ("I was creative.. I could have made you a fortune", SirAlan "Well you didn't.. one of your team screwed up and you're responsible"). Way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory Simon. But wait, what's this? Claire's having a go now ("Can I speak", SirAlan(sighing): "if you must") by trying to tell him that she's only being a cunt because it gets you noticed (agreed) and makes good business sense (god she's probably right, how depressing!). Like the rest of us SirAlan's had enough of her ("I'm sick of looking at you") and he... sends her back to the house after appointing her a team leader next week. Oh bollocks. Simon is duely and "regretfully" fired ("If I asked you to build a wall you'd build a wall.. but you're probably out of your depth" - clearly SirAlan wants someone who he can ask to build a wall secure in the knowedge that they will finger an aardvark instead).

Back at the house, they all expect Claire to have gone (Raef: "It CAN'T be Simon") so their fragile hearts break when she strolls back in. Mr ruthless Michael looks on the verge of tears.

So lovely grafter Simon is gone, alack, but he has the decency not only to hug a very confused Alex, but also to thank Frances when she gets the taxi for him. He's philosophical despite the little lump in his throat, but there's a little wry smile when he says "I'll probably be back putting satellite dishes next week"), and it's gratifying to see that everyone loves him on "You're fired".

Next week masterchef (master something anyhow) Kevin is back in the kitchen with his culinary adventures as the teams design and market ice creams. Willy Wankas the lot of them.

Liking: Sara, Raef (I can't help myself!), Lucinda (only for being so unapologetically useless), Lee McQueen Grrrr!
Potential winner: Jennifer
Unimpressed by: Michael, Lindi
Loathing: Helene, Claire, Kevin, Alex, madJenny

4:35 AM - 5 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

Apprentice 4, episode 3: A pizza piss
Current mood: bitchy
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

Sorry this is late. I was running a comedy club last night thanks for asking, but thanks to BBC i-player here's the latest Apprentice news.

Week 3 starts and oh my eyes as a betowelled madJenny rushes to answer the phone, all chin and ginger frightwig a-go-go looking like a porno versionof Zelda from the Terrahawks. That's counteracted with a nice shot of roughboy Lee putting his pants on. The team are summoned to Tate Modern, which the voiceover helpfully reminds us has been transformed from a humble power station to "glamorous home to the world's biggest collection of modern art" as today's task involves the contestants running a 3 course food service in a pub within 24 hours, in order to transform nice popular pubs into scary dosshouses or something. I'm sorry but fuck me what is Lucinda wearing - with that green top and fetching lilac tartan beret she looks like something out of a Krankies version of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

This week Siralan picks the team leaders so it's foppish "In my vocabulary there's only winners - no five letter words beginning with L. You work it out" twatboy Ian versus steely "international car sales woman" Sara. Sara's confident from the off, and also manages to piss Claire straight off with her breathless, almost coke fuelled, power declarations (Sara "I'm quite forceful..etc etc etc" Claire (wincing) "Um yeah er.. just slow it down a bit"). In contrast poor Ian is such a wet blanket that he makes limp wristed Jeffrey Fairbrother from unfunny holiday camp show Hi-De-Hi look like Flashman. Nervously he suggests going round the team to gauge their um commitment. Naturally Raef is quick to offer 110%.

The boys choose Italian food, with Simon suggesting (to Raef's delight) that the waiters wear false moustaces, whilst Raef goes one better and suggests they all feign Italian accents. Genius! Meanwhile Sara over-rides Claire's suggestion of traditional English with her own of a Bollywood themed night complete with curry and waitresses in Saris. Claire thinks curry is "niche" and that customers would prefer English food. Like chicken tikka masala you daft xenophobic bint? Mind you Claire was born in South Africa.

The girls get to do their meal in The Kings Head in Islington which I recall being a pretty nice pub, really old fashioned tills, but I digress. "Marketing consultant" Jennifer handles the advertising. i.e. she puts some blackboards outside the pub. Actually to be fair, Jennifer also cannily gets leaflets printed out for free (by allowing the printers to advertise on them - classy) and sells them as tickets to the Bollywood night, offering £5 off a curry with a leaflet. Sara's got a flipchart out and Claire declares war on her project manager's need to explain every bullet point of the project in excruciating detail (not still stropping about the curry. Oh no!), until Sara calls her out on her awkwardness and she flounces outside in a strop (Sara to camera "I feel like telling Claire just to shut the fuck up!" Yay - a sentiment from an Apprentice contestant I can relate to!).

At The Duke of Hamilton, a chef acts as kitchen adviser so that the boys don't poison anybody. Spoilsports. Kevin is appointed as "head chef" in the kitchen group comprising himself, Ian and grafter Simon (surprise surprise). Kevin seems to warm to his role by talking as much bollocks about food as is possible in his nasty spawn of Vicky Pollard and Ricky Gervais accent. Kevin considers himself "a culinary adventurer". Hmmm, did he once carry a skateboard into McDonalds, or bungee jump for pies? Whilst the other boys watch, spellbound at his gastronomical wizardry merely because he suggests something other than pot noodle, he proceeds to riff cluelessly about possible Italian recipes like some West Country fatboy Eddie Izzard ("you could er bake a mushroom er with ...salt and pepper and stuff.. then add some creme freche and ..er ..puree it into a sauce" Er WHY IN THE NAME OF GOD???). The kitchen adviser's unconvinced but Kevin assures him that he's seen the like "a number of times in Italian restaurants". That's right, bank manager Kevin has been to an Italian Restaurant cos he's that cosmopolitan. It was probably in Swindon. And called Pizza Hut. Next Kevin magically invents prices, without having the first clue as to what the ingredients will cost. £4.25 for a bowl of soup and £9.95 for spag bol? Blimey I feel provincial. So does Michael who questions the sanity of such expensive soup (Ian(shocked): "That's what I would pay...in Guildford!"(snigger!)), and eventually Michael simply over-rides the pricing ("I'll take responsibility") and makes everything cheaper on the expensive poncy menus that the marketing side of Team Rennaissance (Michael, Alex, Raef and Lee) have paid for. Does anyone see a flaw here? Lee's so worried about the pricing that he's started referring to himself in the third person ("Lee McQueen is CONCERNED". Ha!), and confuses the issue by asking Kevin awkward questions about profit margins until the bank manager's chubby little cheeks goes red and he has a head chef hissy fit. Simon's not helping matters by demanding that people deal in "fact, fact, fact" (Ian (flapping): "Simon, what facts do you want right now?"). Ian takes his boys to some poncy market in Islington to attempt to buy vegetables, and Simon again attempts to talk reason into the team by suggesting that they buy tomatoes in bulk for a discount, but oh no he's interrupting Kevin who's trying to work out exactly how many tomatoes he would need for 100 bowls of soup and getting more and more hopelessly muddled ("Shhh Simon I'm working it out"). You can tell that Simon's ex military by his discipline in not punching Kevin's twattish sulky tomato counting face deep into the floor. Instead he takes to calling Kevin "head chef" with a slightly concealed air of contempt. I like Simon's no nonsense approach, especially when he's trying to record the ludicrously over-wordy answerphone message for the Italian night and keeps messing the words up (to be fair  "A taste of Italy at the Duke of Hamilton" is a bit of a mouthful) - until he eventually just records "Leave your name and number - we'll call you back".

For some bizarre reason (oh yeah - being rubbish) the boys end up buying most of their food in the supermarket. I have no sympathy - especially when they spend nearly £400 (!) buying jars of Dolmio and packs of pizza bases (If they'd watched the Apprentice they'd realise that every project involving pizza is DOOMED). Once the kitchen lads are back however they realise that they've forgotten ciabatta and tin-openers. Apparently it's SirAlan's rule that if the team splits into groups, the groups MUST stay together (hmm new one on me that) so Ian tries to phone the sales team to ask them to complete the shopping, so that the lads can get on with cooking. This doesn't go down well with Lee McQueen and his anger issues ("Fucking tin openers! You avving a laff or what?" etc). Ian loses it whilst his group-mates berate him (Kevin: "If we don't have the food ready it's YOUR fault". Oh arse off you bullying little crybaby).

The girls however have bought all their food for less than £100 - although the kitchen adviser points out that Sara hasn't got nearly enough spices (be fair though - it is a PUB curry!). Sara's undettered:"If it tastes good I don't think anyone will notice". Uh oh! She whisks up a traditional Indian curry, which the chef grimaces at suspiciously ("The chicken looks er cooked, but the sauce looks crap"). It is indeed, so the girls waste 5 hours trying to magically fix it. Come on girls, even the rat in Ratatouille was quicker! Claire's not smug at all, and she hates "to be one of those people who says 'I told you so'". Shame she can't stop smiling triumphantly when she says this.

The boy's food looks SO SHIT. If your bolognese sauce is greyer than John Major's corpse, then someone hasn't counted their tomatoes properly. Kevin's "yeah but no"ing before the service has even started, pumping out pointless platitudes ("I'm the chef and that's what chef's do") through his porcine mouth. Strange, I thought chefs were meant to take responsibility for ordering ingredients, but the boys run out of food again and spend ANOTHER £100 at the supermarket. Meanwhile only bulimics are enjoying the spag bol, whilst most sane diners declare it "disgusting" or, less damningly, "bland". Lee delivers the bad news to a flushed and sweary Kevin (now that IS what chefs do!), who's still harbouring delusions about his abilities ("If customers have any specific issues come to me and I'll see if I can accomodate them"), before pointing out his special skills ("If you ask me if the pizza is ready I can say 'yes the pizza is ready' or 'no the pizza isn't ready'"). Michael makes a satisfyingly camp waiter with a nice line in Frankie Howerd'isms when asked how big the pizza is ("Well it fills a hole"). Sadly the pizza's about to be rapidly depleted in size as the boys run out of ingredients AGAIN, and Ian decides no-one will notice if they halve the pizzas and artfully arrange the slices over a larger area of plate. Amazingly this fails to fool the eagle eyed customer, who sadly for Michael is a rather large skinheaded gentleman (Big skinhead bloke:"Is this a full pizza", Michael (without missing a beat): "I apologise. I will get you a proper pizza").

The girls save on costs for sari material by consigning pie-snorters Helene and Claire to the kitchen, but meanwhile Lindi's still obsessed with passing on her special (needs) customer service skillz to the other waitresses. Linda suggests that they offer the customer an "intimate, personalised service". In fact she suggests that madJenny gets "personal with them". Terrifyingly madJenny then proceeds to all but lapdance her customers whilst wearing a scary Basil Fawlty rictus grin. Jennifer ushers in their secret weapon, some bloke from the local Indian restaurant who claims that he can do Bollywood dancing. Sadly, he doesn't turn out to be a stripper (although Lindi nearly has a turn when he flings his jacket off), but he and his choice of tinny techno bhangra are amusingly shit, and Nick watches the performance all folded arms and stony face of disapproval, although he could be watching madJenny flinging her arms around like a twat which is what counts for dancing in the mind of a 30something mental who probably thinks of herself as a "free spirit" or something.

Back in the boardroom SirAlan asks the boys how Ian was as team leader and is met by SILENCE. SILENCE that is ultimately broken by a defeated looking Ian mumbling "don't all speak at once guys". SirAlan turns his attention to Simon, who describes his role in the task as "the bus boy" (you can take the boy out of the army). SirAlan cunningly traps him by complimenting him on his onion chopping ("They should call you Chopper Smith") but whilst Simon glows in pleasure, SirAlan suggests that he only adds muscle, rather than inspiration, to the boys team. "I'm not just physical Alan...OOPS SirAlan I beg your pardon" gasps Simon in protest, before summing up why the boys were shit concisely and intelligently (SirAlan:"I'm glad I asked". I reckon he's got a soft spot for grafter Simon).

The girls are equally quiet in their support of Sara, although Claire must have sussed out that the boys are toast as she damns Sara with a little faint praise, suggesting she was rubbish at first but then stood up to the plate or something. SirAlan compliments the girls on their good marketing ideas (mostly Jennifer's - she's shaping into this season's potential Celtic Tiger), before dissing Sara for missing the chance to sell lunch as well as dinner due to her curry still being slurry at that point. The boys actually sold £844 "worth" of slop, but they spent Five hundred and Forty Three (!) pounds, so made £301.97 profit. They're duly bitchslapped and taught a lesson by the girls who actually sold less food (£795 takings), but spent only £190, so made a £604 profit. Sara's got the big win she was hoping for and they all get sent to a posh cookery school in the country where they get to bitch about Sara being rubbish behind her back (at least Claire and Helene do) and learn how to make a fucking fruit crumble, like primary school kids.

In  the bridge cafe of DOOM, Ian looks completely devastated as he has to add a new word to his vocabulary. His attempts at a pep-talk really fail to reach ("um we lost..um sorry lads.. really", and Kevin eyes him with only-gay-in-the-village disgust. Lee's close to thumping a hole in the table, he's that "gutted we took that money and lost grrrrr".. Kevin's not worried though, as he admits to camera "I did a GREAT job" (ehh?), "Simon's shitting himself!" (You what?) "and Ian's absolutely crapping himself" (Oh ok you can have that). SirAlan attacks Kevin as responsible for the costings, and the complete and utter banker reddens and gurns whilst claiming "I never wanted to be head chef" (no. he wanted to be a lumberjack!) and that he prepared food "to a high standard", before pursing his lips petulantly when SirAlan mentions all the customer complaints. However Kevin's scored a point by claiming that Ian is shirking responsibility as when Ian correctly blames Kevin (oh for being a cock) SirAlan snaps "You keep bouncing it back to Kevin". Ian's second blunder is to claim that throughout the task he struggled against "Simon's difficult communication style" (not wise when Simon comes across as one of the sanest blokes there). Simon points out that he had to "hammer things home with a sledgehammer" to Ian, who was being totally over-ridden and controlled by the sales team.

It transpires that that sales team managed to blow £270 on their over-priced menu ("a terrible waste" as Nick succinctly points out), and Michael to his credit does take responsibility for dropping the prices of their meals. SirAlan's had enough of giving basic business study lessons to this bunch of clueless bumclowns; "You haven't got a BLADDY CLUE. Not a bladdy clue!" he rants. To prove his point Ian misses a trick and brings Simon instead of Michael into the boardroom along with Kevin. Lovely Margaret blames Kevin the most, but SirAlan hardly ever listens when Madge is making sense. The boys troop back in, with Ian apparantly on the verge of tears (although they couldn't make him any wetter). He's asked why he bought Simon in, and wibbles on about Simon only pointing out problems without offering solutions (um wouldn't it have been your job to try and get the team to think of solutions?). Simon easily destroys Ian's argument, chucking in this rather nifty little hand grenade: "It says something about Ian's management style that he's bought in the two people who were under his direct control". Oooh nice! Kevin 'Pollard's and 'Brent's on about having come up with "the concept of Italian". Ooh Kevin how did you think of that? "I eat in Italian restaurants". Oh yeah. He then boasts about a "motivational chat" that he gave to the team (I just remember some short fat bloke talking bollocks but there you go), and Ian unwisely denies that this happened, only to be contradicted by Simon. "I'm proud of that team" protests Ian, "Well they're not proud of you" retorts a rather bored sounding SirAlan. Simon points out that he's a grafter, "Yeah I know" sighs SirAlan, prompting Simon practically begging for the chance to step up to the plate. SirAlan definitely likes our Simon, as he gets away with interrupting the grizzled geezer twice and only getting a gruff "I'm talking!" in retaliation. After questioning Kevin's credibility ("You talk a great game" (yeah but no!) "but I wonder whether there's some smoke and mirrors there" (clearly entrepeneur speak for "a big steaming pile of bullshit"), SirAlan duly fires Ian ("this was a total disaster and quite frankly I think you lost it" - which is unfair as Ian clearly never had it, before loving up Simon "Chopper" Smith some more ("I think it's unfair you're in here..but I'm looking for more from you than chopping onions" (a blowie perhaps?).

The survivors return to the house, Simon correctly assessing the situation ("Ian was a dead man walking"), Kevin bigging himself up like a prick ("I just nailed him to the floor".). Ian's philosophical in the "taxi for Mr L word" ("there'll be no tears.. no anger... I'm an achiever.. sniffle").

Next week the teams get to photograph people in a shopping centre and Lucinda throws a glorious looking strop at Helene (Lucinda "How DARE You!!!", Helene (bored) "Oh for christ sake Lucinda"). Here's hoping that Kevin gets mistaken for a paedo and burned in a giant wicker penis like on Brass Eye. 

Liking: Chopper Smith, Sweary Sara, Lee "Anger Management" McQueen and oddly enough Raef
Respecting his opinion on the price of soup: Michael
Still unsure about, but she's got chances: Jennifer
Disappointed by: Alex, Lucinda, Lindi
Disliking: Claire, Helene
Biggest twats in Twatville: Kevin, madJenny

2:08 PM - 5 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

Apprentice 4: Part 2. My Mutey Filled Laundrette
Current mood: bitchy
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

Wahey it’s week two, and my first opportunity to view this seasons intro, which whilst filled with SirAlan’s grumpy Nookie bear face gurning grizzled platitudes like "I’ve been in business for forty years, your prize is working with me", "You have not a BLADDY clue" and "I dahnt give a shit" (ooh!), but sadly from the assembled besuited wannabes there’s no intro soundbite to rival the brilliance of Tre Azam’s "You’re nothing to me" from last year. Helene’s "Don’t use me" and Lee’s "We having a larf or what?" just don’t cut the muster I’m afraid.

Week 2 starts like a scary CBeebies show with Alex rushing to the SirAlanphone in his Superman jim-jams. Via a dodgy laptop SirAlan reveals that both teams have to run a laundry business from scratch. Raef volunteers to project manager Renaissance ("I will take you on if you’re all happy", Rest of team "mumble mumble we’re all happy", Raef "As long as you’re behind me One hundred and TEN percent!", Rest of team "mumble mumble we’re behind you a hundred and... eh?"). Meanwhile "Award winning business woman" (according to the voiceover) madJenny ("I don’t mind putting my neck on the line" - that’s why she wears those fecking stupid scarves) steps up to the plate for Team Alpha and brainstorming commences, followed by er more brainstorming and an hour’s pointless mumbo jumbo sales lecture. None of which seems to contribute to team-building, and Margaret notices that madJenny "has her favourites" as she whisks Lindy, Sara and Jennifer into her car of cool, whilst pointedly rejecting poor lost Lucinda to the losermobile. It’s like Heathers remade with some big chinned mental aged version of that warbling woman from Fairground Attraction. The boys leave later, Raef getting all Macheavellian and ordering them to nick all the ironing equipment in the house rather than sharing it with the girls, just in case.

The boys are looking pretty bladdy dynamic already, as Raef for some reason has his "fist at the ready", and ex-squaddy Simon reveals that he has had experience of laundry equipment "in Bosnia", and is used to ironing "as a soldier". Blimey, I knew the British army has had it’s problems with kit, but the armoured twin-tub is going too far. Both teams try some door-to-door pitching, and Simon proves a favourite with man and beast alike ("Hello sir.. ooh hello Mister Labrador!"), whereas the girls have eccentric old ladies slamming doors in their faces shrilling "Nort interested!"

Raef, Michael and Kevin take to the car to pitch to businesses ("We’re gonna hit this road until it BLEEDS money!") and take the radical step of having Michale contact laundrettes with a camp telephone voice to get a clue about pricing, whereas our award winning businesswoman decides to just guess at prices, which leads them to an excruciating meeting with a bemused hotel manager, where they offer to wash his 1000 pillow cases at £4.99 a go. Hmmmm! However, nearly £5,000 for a bit of a laundry isn’t a rip-off explains Lindy, as she and Jennifer would act as "personal account managers". So that’s alright then. Raef offers to do the lot for £556, and is argued down to £200, which, seeing as it’s what the hotel would normally pay, isn’t as shit as it sounds. Not quite sure it’s worthy of the ’boisterous’ group hug that Renaissance engage in once out of the negotiating room mind. The boys start loading dirty laundry into their van, with Raef near swooning at the awfulness of it all.

Whilst the girls fail to tout for trade on the suburban streets, Jenny hides in the car with her cronies, barking sweet nothings like "the domestic market will be where the greatest margins are". Margaret winces; "they really need to get a move on".

Both teams head to a fishmongers in Fulham, where the proprietor appears to have snuck his families monthly wash into a stack of fishy jeans and T-shirts. Mindful of the need to undercut the boys, Lindy makes him an offer he can’t refuse, or even understand for that matter; cleaning the entire load for only a tenner. Fishman pops his eyes back into their sockets and stifles a smirk that comes out audibly instead; "What? You’ll wash it and IRON it all for £10???". Lindy’s no fool, "Er no.. with the ironing as well it’d be £14 or £15". Fishman is almost pained accepting the deal; "fifteen quid? For all that? It’s...er... a good price (snort)!", before rejecting the boy’s offer of £30 in favour of the girls’ "unbelieveable price". Lindi’s a tad worried that she’s got it wrong. "Do you think we went in too high or too low?" she asks Jennifer, who murmurs archly "I don’t think we went too high.". Still at least they beat the boys to that deal eh?

Strangely poshos Raef and Michael end up cruising around in the car looking for more trade, along with Kevin, who’s presumably acting as their fat fag; whereas Lee, Simon, Alex end up working as the laundry muscle, along with Ian, who’s presumably there to stop the others looking too effete. The lads take to the dirty work with admirable aplomb, with Simon and Lee especially mucking in to an astronomical pile of crusty bedding. Back in the car the toffs smirk "there were some seriously NASTY stains on those sheets" (and in this car it seems), whilst Kevin snickers along and warms their crumpets with his buttocks. Back in the laundrette, the boys are snowed under and Simon begs Raef to "draw a line" under deal-broking and return with the cavalry. "Alright - we’re just busy making money...we’re on our way back" condescends Raef, before hanging up and ordering extra frothy lattes all round and a fresh batch of buttered crumpets. Hours later Simon calls again, interrupting a thrilling round of the biscuit game. "Oh alright!" ejeculates Raef crossly, before hanging up and tutting "Absolutely no need making a fuss! I can’t STAND whiners!". Finally Raef and his chums come back and the boys rejoice ("RENAISSANCE!!!!" really doesn’t work as a motivational group huddle chant). With the extra help it only takes them 8 more hours to finish the laundry.

The girls sense they’re fucked and the recriminations start, with Jenny scenting blood and laying into Lucinda over the phone for apparantly no reason, the latter responding like a rather eccentric fluffy bunny with a slight messianic complex ("Please stop using my name in vain!"). Jenny puts the phone down smugly, turning to her car cronies to continue the annihilation in her annoying whiny voice ("I don’t exect a team member to act like some spoilt silly little girl who’s thrown her dummy out of her pram ... I just want to grab it and shove it down her throat!" etc.)

To alleviate the deathly silence at the girl’s laundrette, Shazia has proudly devised a "system" to prevent clothes getting mixed up, which involves sticking labels on the different machines. Cunning eh? Meanwhile Jenny takes her mates out to whore their business on the high street at night ("Did I say a fiver for a soapy tit wank? Silly me! I meant for a colour fast wash rinse and spin". They manage to bring £100 worth of washing back at 11pm with only a few hours to go, and suddenly it’s all systems go. Sadly this includes Shazia’s system, as she heads back to the house (with Jenny’s blessing) to find the ironing equipment (oh oh!), and somehow all her labels manage to fall off the machines. Predictably chaos ensues.

Upon discovering that the girls have no irons, Lucinda tries to shake and fold sheets to get rid of the majority of the creases, but this merely enrages Jenny who launches into a full on attack to Lucinda’s face in the car ("I’m absolutely thoroughly disappointed in your behaviour tonight!") that verges on bullying as she shrieks that Lucinda has been "ludicrous" and "stupid", comparing the hapless poshbird to "a fungus that starts eating away at the positivity of the team" (I know Lucinda’s a bit flaky, but that’s no reason to call her "fungus"!). The normally ruthless Sara is forced to defend Lucinda against an increasingly mentalist tirade and chastises Jenny ("You go on about one thing.. you take one side of the story and you just attack!"). The girls decide to call it a night and get up at 7am for yet another brainstorming session. Lucinda fails to surface at 7am and I for one don’t fucking blame her, although sadly it gives Jenny something else to wobble her wicked witch of the West pointy chin about. Finally the girls get to use the irons, discovering to their chagrin that the boys didn’t use them at all. Genius! The boys skip off to deliver their laundry and pocket the cash successfully whilst the girls stumble around like clueless arsehats and Jenny realises she’s lost an entire streets boxer shorts.  This doesn’t stop her urging the girls to shamelessly beg for tips from their customers. Lindy justifies the 15% service charge to the few businesses they washed for by claiming "we aim to maximise profit". So does a tramp wanking for coins, but they don’t look quite as pathetic. Jenny takes on the door-to-door punters, adding on the service charge without warning and then explaining haughtily (as though it were entirely reasonable) to a bloke whose laundry has been delivered sans two shirts "I do apologise.. we say to our customer if you’re happy with our company would you like to offer us a tip - if  you’re not would you like to offer us a tip". "I’ll give you a tip, if you give me a few quid back" retorts shirtless man, sadly without adding "FUCK OFF".

Back at the boardroom SirAlan fines the girls £50 for to compensate the bloke for his shirts (cheapskate), asking the girls how they’d feel in shirtless bloke’s shoes (they’d probably lose them too). Pricelessly, Lindy suggests "I don’t think he’d want us to do his washing again". Inevitably the boys win by £328 to £195.55 (the 55 must have been a tip), and saunter off to the Ritz for posh tea and canapes, lead by Raef who floats into the dining room as though he’s the Crown Prince of Moldova off Dynasty. Thanks to Simon, the class divide in Team Renaissance appears to have resolved itself into military ranking, Simon sighing dreamily over Raef ("he was like the officer and I was like his sergeant major - it was like the good old days". Hmm if war films are anything to go by, Raef will prove Simon’s undoing). Therefore Private Alex serves tea, whilst Simon entertains them with his toff impression ("What ho! Top tea!", Raef "Hil-ario-arse!"). Dance monkey boys, dance!

Jenny’s planning to "get rid of some of the weaker candidates", but back in the boardroom she’s under fire over pricing (Jenny "I’m not an expert on pricing", SirAlan "It’s bladdy common sense, you don’t charge a fiver to wash a pillow case") and met with steely disdain from Margaret and SirAlan over thinking it "legitimate" to beg for tips (given the comprehensiveness of the girls’ fuck-up poor Nick has practically nothing to say in this episode). Next SirAlan pours scorn over Lindy’s "24 hour hotline with personal account managers" scheme ("So a customer’s gonna phone up and go ’Hello girls, how’s my pants doing?’"). The foolish girl attempts to defend this madness with business jargon, but SirAlan’s unimpressed ("I don’t know of anyone progressing their laundry!"). Shazia gets flak with regard the labelling, despite Lucinda pointing out that Shazia was sent back to the house to sort out the irons. A light goes on in Jenny’s eyes and she calls Shazia and Lucinda (surprise!) back into the boardroom as soon as the white noise of girly bickering dies down.

Wise Margaret sees Jenny as the real problem in the team, and defends Lucinda, before the threesome are brought back in and I almost think Lucinda’s fucked it when she claims she shouldn’t be fired because "team motivation is one of my fortes". Despite Jenny’s accusations, Lucinda denies being "deliberately detrimental to the task", but I can’t help feeling she has hidden depths. Shazia rather lamely describes herself as an "opportunist" and a "do-er" (come on love, you stuck flimsy labels onto washing machines), but Jenny accuses her of "lying, complaining and manipulating". A bit harsh methinks. Sadly, every time Shazia tries to answer these allegations, Jenny turns to her with a face like Fanny Craddock having spotted a turd in the prawn cocktail and barks "COULD. YOU. PLEASE. BE QUIET!", before turning to both Lucinda and Shazia and claiming that throughout the task "it felt like I had to breastfeed you both". Feebly, Shazia points out that she "put the process" (labels) in place, but SirAlan’s had the wool pulled over his simian eyes here and suggests that she walked away; "that was in agreement with Jenny" she protests, but no-one’s listening. Smugly Jenny turns to SirAlan and does a Miss Jean Brodie "what can you do?" style shrug at her two unruly charges. "Their attitude is of great concern to me" she confides, and it can’t just be me that’s hoping SirAlan sends this snotty bitch packing when he points out that she was unable to control her team. Sadly he labels (ha geddit) Shazia as "heinous" (what the fuck is going on here?) for leaving her labels unattended and fires her. Altogether now, FFS!

In the cab of regrets, Shazia senses she’s been stitched up. She’s not alone, although I suspect it’s less to do with Jenny’s machinations than the producers realising that having lost a potential ubertwat in week 1, the public needs a reliable hate figure to make it good TV. Right on cue, the editors cut in Jenny’s expression of smug bintitude on her return to the house and the urge to maim is strong.

Next week the teams take on Pub Grub, with the girls having a Bollywood theme and the boys presumably doing Greek judging by the amount of smashing crockery. And SirAlan does the "this was a total disaster, you’re fired!" line. It could be fun, just don’t expect anyone interesting to be fired for a couple of weeks.

Liking: Simon, Alex, Lee, Lucinda
Indifferent to: Ian, Jennifer, Lindi, Kevin, Helene, Claire
Wavering in between liking and loathing: Michael, Raef, Sara
Burn the witch: madJenny

Most cringeworthy nickname of the week "Laurence of ARaefia" (coined by Simon for guess who?)

4:41 PM -