The Apprentice UK 2014

More polyester trousered 'entrepreneurial' middle management twuntwits to hate:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/DtbQhp3GLWfgscn7BnnD9S/meet-the-candidates
Starting tonight, 9PM, BBC1, with after match analysis on BBC2 from 10PM.

paris miper

Tomorrow episode 2

Edgy hotdogs

trendy crap

http://i.imgur.com/BG1OycF.jpg

the tall bloke who wears colourful clothes and couldn't give a crap about what others think about him really doesn't know his audience. sugar is so anti all that that i don't think the guy is long for the world. (after all the minorities, obv)

is alan sugar the only person in the whole world who still uses the word 'yuppy'? (and in relation to edgy, exciting shoreditch too)

female team lead was delusional to levels that i cannot comprehend. but then all the personal statements were solid gold alpha bullshit, as usual.

i think i like the 20 candidates thing and the way that the potential multiple firings per week stops terrible people surviving by being only the 2nd worst in the team.

Has any team name been so staggeringly bad that Sugar has told them to change it? What a bunch of total fucknuggets they truly are.

However, lanky colourful bloke (who I hated on sight due to him wearing white loafers) was due a minor break due to being the victim of Sugar busting out "I don't want to hear about this edgy trendy Shoreditch stuff, just tell me why you poshed up your hotdogs" bullshit when it was the edgy trendy Shoreditch stuff that was *WHY* he poshed up his hotdogs.

It's going to take me about six weeks to remember any of their names.

controversial...

and two firings ruins the dara aftershow imo.

Internet channels.

Comedy vs Fitness

Every time they've attempted funny in the advert challenge, it's been woeful. Fitness usually hit or miss but at least that's a better chance.

We shall see...

BRUTAL

Not really, there's 20 candidates to start with, and she brought in the two most likely to get knifed the first opportunity AlSug got.

I know he had to thin out more than usual, but it really feels like he's got rid of everyone that is even vaguely useless at the first chance he was given. Which makes you wonder why he sifted them in in the first place.

Oh wait, ratings. Which makes you wonder why he doesn't keep them in.

I have no idea why anyone with any level of higher education ever goes in for this thing. Sugar seems to rubbish anything that even remotely references theory or learning.

He's basically like the Dave Bassett of business. Everything that involves planning or thought is too much fannydangle for him.

(also never need to hear Sugar making jokes about Nick Hewer's sexual inadequacies ever again, kthankxbye)

Also, this Sarah lass is a dunce, but his routine dismissal of PAs as a whole (I think this was his reason for getting shot of Helen and his underlying distrust of Stella) is a bit wrong. I wonder does he have a PA, and do they hate him?

and two firings ruins the dara aftershow imo.

I want to say hopefully this is the last time they ruin it with three, but the blessing is that you don't have to listen to any of them for so long

Oh, we've just watched Dara. No Ella-double-forename. A bad thing, because more Steven. Has there ever been a candidate where Sugar had nothing positive to say to them and not wish to wish them good luck?

Also, A CARE HOME? STEVEN? REALLY? WTF? WTactualF? REALLY?

god forbid a mainstream primetime tv show should care about ratings. or *spit* entertainment

if you're still watching this show for an insight into the true mechanisms of business and industry then uh

the ep was the best one ever btw, top drawer lols and the best no-holds-barred ending ever. it's wwf in suits and long may it stay that way

I know *that* but if it was about entertainment they'd keep the cockfarmers in for hilarious japes and mocking, surely?

No entertainment if the 'bad' candidades don't get what's coming to them.

(Also, entertainment if the 'good' cands get dropped thanks to the 'bad')

yeah it has to keep the facade of sugar being the serious arbiter of business acumen, within this quasi-comedy reality tv show realm. (wasn't geared at you ailsa, sorry. it was the pissy "Oh wait, ratings" comment that got me)

"The world is as big as my oyster."

(James obv)

Dara's show has Roisin as the winner according to the audience and I can't argue with that. As long as her idea isn't shite,

Yeah, I like Roisib though I think she's going to arse up royally with a week to go and some no-mark like Solomon or Katie will win. As long as it isn't James, I pretty much don't care tbh.

Has Sanjay done anything good/bad/notable yet? He seems to have developed a nice line in laughing at the idiots without actually doing anything himself. I swear I never really noticed him until this week.

> (James obv)

was he the one responsible for "it's not rocket surgery"?

Pretty sure that one's on purpose

I thought 'rocket surgery' was Mark.

I'm convinced James *is* that stupid.

I think the biggest problem is that as the weeks have gone on it's become clear that whoever gets to the final will only have deluded idiots to work with, and a large number of them (Sanjay - even though I think he was right for complaining about James criticising his work in Luton because 'he was an expert', which clearly meant he shouldn't have gone to the States - and Laura in particular) are spiteful vindictive twats when things don't go their way and they don't get to do exactly what they want.

Skeleton shenanigans are not going to end well

Did they not watch the last one when people bought oud oil and it turned out they wanted the instrument the oud?

Not sure I agree with that.

SRALAN might want to learn something about requirement setting.

Thinking about it, the 'real' Skeleton's are also just models, they won't contain real bones.

House sequence there was awesome, the silence as Daniel came in but especially the final Daniel/Katy exchange.

We wondered about the oud/oil thing too. Actually we walked past that shop in Westfield earlier this year and made some Apprentice-related gags about the oil for sale and the actual ouds hanging up in the window. Yes, we're sad people who watch too much telly, what of it?

That skeleton thing was a load of arse. Though initiative and intelligence and logic are concepts alien to SrAlan so it's unsurprising really.

Daniel really is a two-faced rat.

And yeah, everyone happily cheering Katie's return then the immediate fall of silence when Daniel walked back in was awesome, as was Mark's face.

oh, that was editing.

Anyway, the unspoken question for this task is: Is the item fit for purpose?

A previous year had them searching for items for a posh hotel. The 'cloche' foxed them at first : a hat? No, a glass bell like thing to put over food. Also, they could have gone to Oxfam and bought second hand, but nobody did because that would have been wrong.

If the spec said 'anatomical skeleton' then a flatpack cardboard 'make it yourself' is wrong.

oh, that was editing.

orly.jpg

I can see the point that there was an expectation that it would be a skeleton looking skeleton, but they delivered a full size anatomical skeleton of greater than the minimum size of 1m80 - the only shortfall was arguably that it wasn't assembled but that wasn't specified. Expectation isn't the same as defining and all SRALAN's examples of other things, like birthday cake were just plain wrong but 'good television'. I've been on the wrong end of contracts before where people have thought everybody knew what they were asking for but the interpretation was different but within the requirements.

If the requirements weren't open to interpretation then how did the winning team get away with buying a scratched and dinged-up sink and claiming it would be OK and "usable" with a bit of cleaning up and restoration but ultimately they would have used it so it would have counted?

Also, oud. Now, this would have had an interesting effect - the penalty was SRALAN's 'market value' plus a factor so it might have actually REDUCED Sanjay's overall spend if it had been disqualified and the losers would definitely have been Daniel's team. Would have been worth the lols to say to Sanjay he was late coming back having not even made the detour for the right thing.

SRALAN should know all of this better than anyone - when the requirement was for a device that could make phone calls and send/receive emails, and the entire world knew the solution obviously was to install Skype on the receptionist's computer he invented the E-Mailer.

Because, at the end of the day (cliche used with full provenance), Sir Alan Never Makes Mistakes and is Always Right. Especially when he's wrong.

The only time I can recall him backing down was on a TV selling task, first series (or one of the first ones), where he lambasted one guy for picking a very high cost item for selling, but the guy said "Yeah, but we made a massive profit by selling two" at which point AlSug said "oh. Right."

And made a mental note to always have the full plot details before any boardroom shenanigans.

Finally a candidate notices that the tasks are merely a way of staying out of the boardroom and that it's only your business plan that will save you. Well done Mark.

Ricky Martin joining the interview panel next week! I see the edit seems to show Claude doing his usual trick of making ladies cry.

The problem with the current format is that you know the winner has been preselected. So, last night, there was no mention of Mark's business plan, just the other two, so it was obvious he would be staying in. Fundamentally, most of the candidates are only there for their televisual value.

It was most obvious in the first year of this format, when Tom the Inventor was clearly the worst at the tasks, week after week after week, but stayed in because his business plan was the one that made the most sense, and Sugar wanted to invest in.

But Sugar didn't invest in his plan. His plan was about ergonomic chairs, and the investment was in his existing nail file invention.

It was still his business he wanted to invest in, though … More proof this format is even more bollocks than the previous one.

It seems to me this is purely a "get your face known" enterprise.

Roisin is gorgeous.

I must admit, she has had very good bedhead in the mornings.

Calm down.

As soon as that ready meal was put on the desk then Roisin was toast.

So there should only be one choice of anything in a supermarket? So why do I see whole aisles of bottled water?

The world obviously needs another seo expert.

Thought right up until the last minute that Daniel had done enough.

I think the point was that her business plan would take much more than the initial investment.

but that was easy to fix though, just start smaller.