The Apprentice Episode 1 – OH MY GOD WE’RE HAVING A FIRE SALE

Things can only go up from here, Dan.

First off, happy 10^th anniversary to The Apprentice and thank God you’ve returned for another series. Even though it’s got to the point where Lord Sugar is dangerously close to being able to field a football team full of previous winners, I’m still glad this series has returned again so I can get angry and laugh at a new batch of big headed tits in suits. Looking at the candidates so far there’s only a few memorable ones purely because they’re the loudest and more of an arse than everyone else but it’s all a pretty standard group of candidates this year; ‘woman with big eyes', 'egoistic moron', ‘man with ridiculously bad one liners’, ‘bitchy loud woman’ and 'smug arseholes' with a sprinkle of normal sounding businessmen and women here and there. One big change to the format this year is the change from 16 candidates to 20, perhaps this is to just to shake up the tried and tested (But very tried) formula that the show has followed for so many years and to give Lord Sugar a trump card to whip out whenever he’s feeling more fucked off than usual and fire a load of them but we’ll see how it pans out there.

Oh have I missed a Nick Hewer cringe cut away moment

In simple terms, the pitch for this series’ opener was quite frankly 'sell a fuck load of stuff in one day', which included t-shirts, fruit, potatoes, coffee, sausages and their dignity all to win Lord Sugar’s approval for another week before he eventually gets fed up with all of them. So being a new series and all, it kicked off with men v women and with spicy new team names. The female group played on the word decade (oooh topical) and came up with “Team decadence” even if it’s often associated with decline and falls of groups and possibly in this case the decline of their relationships together and their multiple fall(outs). Team badname appointed Sarah who basically just told everyone “sod strategy, show off your legs and chest and we’ll stroll this” even if there were cuts to some female candidates pulling their ‘We’ve made a huge mistake’ faces. The men instead went for something more mighty with “Team summit” to be all heroic and number one and went ahead and appointed Colombian Felipe to lead their group who was a bit of a clumsy oaf but hey, at least he works hard for the sugar.

Nothing new if you’re a seasoned Apprentice viewer – early wake up call at 4am, rush around to get ready for supplies and think of ideas, on the spot confusion and arguing all packed in before the 35 minute mark. Sarah being team leader thought it would be a totally amazing to slice lemons up and sell individual lemon slices for profit because she’s really keen to address that niche market of lemon suckers which basically set the tone for another episode of hapless and typical Apprentice style cock ups by both teams. This ranged from the men printing £500 worth of “BUY THIS T-SHIRT” t-shirts and leaving them at the shirt printing shop all day whereas the women didn’t have enough time to sell their “’#London” t-shirts because they were too busy arguing about who should be making coffee and also forgot to give their sub team the money to pay the shirt shop. No wonder Nick Hewer looked like he should have stayed with Rachel Riley and hosted Countdown instead.

 

“It’s not going to be just a potato, it’s going to be an experience” Steve – you’re selling a potato, not a vibrator.

More highlights included Mark who was very persistent about leading a sales pitch to a children’s party shop and got annoyed that James for butting in with his own pitching attempts, causing Mark ended up repeating James’ name like he had Tourette’s and apologising for his behaviour “because he’s Northern”. Yeah like that isn’t at all patronising and won’t at all cause friction within their group. Sarah and her sub team aggressively sold cleaning products to some bewildered penguin handlers for £250 (deal of the century, that) who probably only paid them to go away so security didn’t get involved.

With all the mishaps and amazing sales pitches, Team Pretentiousname won by £50 after being able to sell their t-shirts (albeit for a massive loss) at the last minute where Team Summit didn’t sell any at all because they were so keen on selling potatoes to an annoyed chef. Team Pleasethinkofabetternamenexttime went off to a VIP booth in the London Eye to point at London landmarks where the men instead pointed the blame at each other in a generic rundown café. Man, this really was a paint by colours Apprentice episode.

After some more finger pointing within the group and Lord Sugar looking more and more like football with an angry face drawn on it, Chiles was fired, a man who was effectively pointless because he couldn’t make any sales and generally sat around doing nothing. Oh and he left the shirts behind at the store, proper balls up there, Chiles. Suppose what didn’t help his case was his depressing haunting looks at the table throughout, making this an easier decision for Lord Sugar to make than who to bully on Twitter, Piers Morgan or a Children’s charity.  Felipe and Robert live on to fight another day until they inevitably get scapegoated and booted out of the series and back to their cushy day jobs.