APPRENTICE: TWO FOR ONE OFFER (BUT ONLY IF YOU BUY FROM THE BLUE TEAM!!)
My lurve for this show has diminished slightly after a couple of average episodes. Also I am finally realising that it is not quite as good as the last series, though there’s still time I suppose….

Last week they had to sell second hand cars in “Britains Largest Car Supermarket in Slough” – which sounds like a whole new circle of hell to me but there you go. Shahh-run led one team, despite seeming to not exactly know what a car is, and Ansell led the other (btw I have decided that if Ansell ever took his scary glasses off then laser beams would shoot from his eyes like in X-Men. It is the only logical explanation). That hateful c*** Tulip bleated that “people often say I should be a used car salesman!” Yes but they were insulting you, you cretin!!

Team Shah-runn don’t seem to do very well as Shah-runn and Michelle don’t know what they are doing, Tuan is meek and quiet as always and Syed spends three hours boring a couple to death before they buy a car – probably just so they can get in it straight away and drive off, far away from Syed. He is then told off for lying during his sales pitch. Hate levels reaching critical! Alert! Alert!

Ansell’s team did rather better as Ruth turned out to be an excellent saleswoman. Samuel came up with some gay idea to wear coloured sashes or something, Ansell seemed a bit rubbish as PM though and Jo actually scared people away by running up to them and laughing like a mentalist. The latter two are both told off by an angry car supermarket man for leaving a car marked as sold when the sale fell through at the last minute and it was actually still available. This is apparently a big no no in the world of selling things! Who would have guessed (clue: everyone!)

Editing shenanigans lead us to think that Ansell had won. All of Shah-runs team members started practicing stabbing her in the back but then they win anyway by about £50 for selling more warranties and pots of Scotchgard. Nooooo!!! (Syed was still told off for having the business ethics of a rat though. Ha!) They won a dull prize (trapped on a party on one of those pleasure cruises on the Thames and had an inexplicable row about talking about each other behind each others backs or something. I don’t know. They all end up hating Michelle anyway.

Ansell took Samuel and Jo into the boardroom. Siralan said that the angry car supermarket man thought that Ansell was the rubbishest of them all (even worse than JO??) but that didn’t really come across on telly so who knows? He had a go at Samuel for being vaguely useless as usual but it was Jo that finally went!! Siralan said that he likes her but he could longer ignore the plain fact that she is crazy and rubbish. Jo begged to be kept on (oh shut up, please Jo! Where is your dignity?) but no such luck and she stomped off to the taxi and cries a bit while saying that she just tried to be herself. No comment. I can’t believe she even lasted that long, personally.

This week they each had to run a concession in Top Shop Oxford Circus and try and sell the most stylish-yet-affordable clothes. Michelle came over to Badger’s team as PM and Tuan led Team Cockfarmer. They had four lines to choose from and could only have two each. They also had chance to chat to some schoolgirls to see what was hot (Military jackets, apparently!)

They went off into teams and talked about what lines they wanted. All the cockfarmers ignore Shah-runn, even though she is supposed to be an expert in fashion (hmmm, she was also supposed to be an expert in advertising…) and then shout at her when she tells them to stop ignoring her. Ruth Badger slaps down Samuel when he tries to voice an opinion but otherwise the team gets on well. When they have to negotiate for their two lines, Badger walks all over Tuan and leaves him done up like a kipper. It was hilarious to watch.

They set up their little corners of the shop. Shah-runn has an amusing passive-aggressive strop and pretends not to have any ideas and to need constant supervision, but then snaps out of it and gets everything sorted out. Samuel comes up with more weak-as-a-kitten marketing ideas (trying to lure people into top shop with bottles of water, giving complimentary massages but not advertising them, etc) and Michelle goes into Sex and the City fantasyland and decides that she is going to spend the whole day in the dripping VIP Dungeon being a personal shopper. Oh that is just a terrible idea.

When the shop opens, they all have to wear clothes from Top Shop. Ansell wears a hilarious pink t-shirt/pink intifada neck scarf combo and Ruth puts on some lippy and does her hair up a bit and actually looks pretty in some shots. Samuel still looks like an engineering student though. They all run around selling stuff while Michelle spends like three hours in the VIP Lounge trying to get some French girls to buy loads of clothes. In the end they buy one skirt for £30. Doh. That dude who owns Topshop (a close personal friend of Siralan of course) comes round and offers to buy an outfit for £100 but Ruth can only grab £66 worth of clothes. Double doh. At lunchtime Michelle’s team are 25% behind Team Cockfarmer, so Ansell gets Michelle to get her arse in gear and stop messing round in the VIP Dungeon. There is a mass selling overdrive, with Tulip accosting women in the street in his typically hateful manner and Syed letching over some girl in the dressing room and making comical faces because it is the first time he has seen a real live woman’s naked skin. There are no editing shenanigans to make us guess who has won but it turns out to be Team Cockfarmer by about £100. Noooo! I hate that they keep on winning. They get packed off to a luxury hotel for the night and someone in Michelle’s team is going to be fired.

It is obviously going to be Michelle or Samuel. Michelle also brings Ruth in as she messed up with the boss bloke but otherwise didn’t do anything wrong. Michelle is bollocked for not spending enough time on the shop floor and Samuel is bollocked for not bothering to advertise the free massage thing. Samuel tries to defend himself by saying he wanted to pick other clothes lines and was ignored (Ruth goes into her ultra aggressive “Why are you being so aggressive? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah? Whatever bitch!” routine – this behaviour is the only reason I can see for people not liking her, to be honest. Badger to Win!!) Siralan says “as long as I’ve got a hole in my arse” at one point. Thanks Siralan. I did not ever want to have to think about the hole in your arse. It seems obvious to me that they would have won if Michelle had not wasted all her time in the Dungeon and Siralan agrees, but Samuel is still fired for being a bit useless. He puts on a hilariously awful flasher mac to get into the taxi (and is it just me or does his hair grow between being fired and getting in the cab?). Oh well, Samuel wasn’t hateful like some of the contestants I could mention (Syed! Tulip!) but I did say he was the new Raj and I was pretty much right.

Next week: Siralan shows up in the small hours of the morning like some kind of evil slumlord and shouts at the contestants while they are still in their pants! They have to “sell to trade”! Ruth thinks someone is a “wanker”! A tradesman thinks that one of the contestants is like a used car salesman (Syed? Tulip?)! Someone is fired! (Syed??? Tulip??? Pleeeaase!!!)