THE APPRENTICE
This week Siralan called the teams in and said “poisoned chalice for two!” – yes, one woman had to go and lead the men’s team (Toyota Alexa, pretty much having no choice after last week) and one man had to go and lead the women’s team (Mani). The task was to run a themed restaurant/food stall at the Thames Festival for a day.

Toyota Alexa and the blokes decided to do pizzas and have a lame Italian theme, while Mani and the girls had a hilarious brainstorming session that showed off Mani’s cockfarmery to a very high degree (“We’re just throwing out ideas now! Say a word!” “It should be easy to prepare” “Easy! Yes, I like that! What else!” etc). At first they decided to do crepes but had trouble thinking of a theme to go with them, so Mani changed his mind at the last minute and said they were doing noodles and having an oriental theme. Cue lots of eye rolling and moaning from Ruth Badger, Michelle and the Scottish One (btw, Jo was pretty much in the background this week. Phew). Later on, one of them had a bratty fit and stomped out, accusing Mani of not listening to her after he had squawked “We’re in the convergent phase now! Convergent not divergent!” to her about fifteen times. Shut up, Mani.

Each team would be given help from a catering firm but had to buy their own ingredients and do all the prep and cooking themselves. Tuan and Syed said they had catering experience and Toyota Alexa said she used to work on the pizza counter at Asda (ha ha ha, I bet you wish you hadn’t mentioned that now Alexa), so they went off to get the food based on their estimates of what they need. Unfortunately the wholesaler was closed so Syed had to place a telephone order on their answerphone for 100 chickens etc etc. That sounds like a great idea. Not.

The girl’s team got the food and Mani left them to chop up three million peppers and shred the meat off loads of chickens for hours while he ponced around buying soft drinks and napkins etc. People on the interweb have criticised him for this but someone had to do it and he seemed to do a pretty good job when the final restaurant was unveiled. In the end he went back to help the others and there were some comedy shots of slightly forced bonding as they all shredded chicken while singing and dancing like cretins in an advert.

Alexa was trying to get some leaflets printed when she got a phone call saying that the food had arrived – as the wholesalers hadn’t been given very specific instructions they had sent 100 of the hugest chickens known to man! Syed had also managed to order hundreds of £££ worth of cheese. (If I ever I am on Apprentice I will never buy cheese – it is always someone’s downfall) so basically they had about 50p left for everything else. Back at the kitchen, Nick (wearing an adorably dorky food safety hat) wondered why they had bought 100 giant chickens when they only planned to make 100 chicken pizzas. Alexa just sort of shrugged and ignored him. Ruh roh. For some insane reason they decide to make their own pizza bases from scratch and, of the 500 they had planned to make, managed to make just 90! This is turning into a monumental fuck up and we are shown no evidence that they tried to turn it round (by say, thinking of ways to sell the left over chicken somehow). Samuel had a bratty fit and moaned that no-one was taking charge to sort out the problems while Alexa just stood there and ignored him. In the end the catering guy who was helping them told him to just shut up and chop up a pineapple. Heh.

They set up the stalls and Mani’s team’s looks inviting and classy and has buddha’s etc scattered around. Margaret tried some of the noodles and made a surprised “Mmm, this is actually nummy!” face. They do an “early bird special” cost reduction and soon the stall was packed. Alexa’s team’s stall looked like a tacky piece of shit with cheap red, white and green balloons and a v amateurish looking “Taste of Italy” sign. It was completely deserted, so Alexa spied on the other stall and cuts prices. There was a funny scene of “economics graduate” Alexa failing to correctly calculate £20 minus £9 at the till. Three times. We got various clips of the most dickish men – Tulip and Syed - moaning that it was a disaster, but not doing anything to sort it out. At one point Alexa asked Syed to go outside and drum up some trade and he was all “I’m not sure what to do. Please demonstrate”. What a dick – I have quite recovered from feeling a bit sorry for him last week. Presumably they were hoping that Alexa gets the chop but it didn’t look good that they were so apathetic and Siralan will take note, I’m sure.

At the end of the day, they were desperately trying to sell off their old stock for knock down prices. This worked better for pizza than it did for noodles. There was a hilarious scene with that hateful c*** Tulip telling a woman customer “It’s only costs a pound for sexy women and you just about scrape through” and the woman telling him to fuck off. Ha ha ha. What does Tulip actually do except to make snide comments and make me hate him? I can’t wait until he is put in a position of authoritay and makes a complete hash of things. (Me saying that probably means he will win now…). Alexa’s team ended up throwing away tons of perfectly good food – if they have won it will be a miracle.

Oh look they lost. Mani’s team made a profit of £300 and Alexa’s team made a loss of £800! (We get the Siralan line about “pissing money up the wall” around now.) I’m not surprised when they bought a giant cooked ostrich for each of 100 chicken pizzas and then only made 18 chicken pizzas. The winners get to have a meal at Oxo Tower and watch fireworks (Siralan pops up, drunk, to say hello!) and one of the losers is going to be fired.

In the boardroom, Siralan asked the blokes if they thought that Alexa was a good leader. Cue deafening wave of silence. Siralan: “Ansell, so how was Gretel?” Yes yes, very funny. How long did it take him to think of that? Ansell said something tactful but negative. Everyone else said she is a bit shit. Nick uses the magic of basic arithmetic to show that they had to sell each slice of pizza for over £4 to break even and obv they were selling them for a lot less than that. The budget (based on 500 pizzas – they would have had to sell a slice every 9 seconds!) was incredibly overambitious and they bought too much food even for that. Alexa decided to bring Tuan and Syed into the boardroom as they were in charge of the budget/purchasing. Tuan says he just suggested 500 as a benchmark (500 slices or 500 pizzas?) and no-one had a better idea – I think he is fairly safe. Alexa tried the “I will learn from my mistakes and go on to be fantastic” spiel that she tried last week. Oh no, that is completely the wrong approach. If she had been more specific and said she had trusted Syed to be vaguely sensible re the purchasing then she might have had a chance. Siralan said that he is not running a training academy for dumpkopfs (heh, he is on good form this week) and then gives Syed a good grilling re the ridiculous overpurchasing. Syed smarmily keeps going on about how is a winner and will give 150%. Siralan accurately points out that he was actually a big loser. He says he blames Syed “100 percent” for the disastrous result but that Alexa is fired anyway for being so rubbish. As he leaves the boardroom, Syed smarms that he is grateful for the opportunity to be a dick for another week and Siralan calls him a cocky bastard. In the Taxi of Finality, Alexa says that she will learn from her mistakes and that everyone could see that she is a good manager. Well, if you call “standing around ignoring things that go wrong” being a good manager, I suppose you’re right.

Nest week: they have to make an advert about aeroplanes. Oh, I hope it is as good as the CD player adverts last series, with Rachel’s “kick off your shoes and dance” comedy standout moment. We see a clip of a 70s looking actor getting out of a car and looking at his watch. Tulip does a presentation (FAIL!! FAIL!!!). Siralan is not happy about something surprise surprise and someone is going to be fired.