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23 April 2008
21:56:00 o'clock BST
Feeling Quiet
When Alan Sugar rings that doorbell at 7.30am, you can guarantee that he isn't expecting it to be answered by Andy Capp's missus. Whoops! Sorry, my mistake – it's Claire in her British Home Stores dressing gown, her hair in rollers, one fag in her mouth and another one singeing the curtains. What a welcome. I bet Sugar doesn't get that at home. After all, the man has been in business for 40,000 years and has made twelvety billion pounds out of flogging substandard electronics to morons. The man is loaded. I bet his housekeeper looks like Jessica Rabbit.
Eventually, the bedraggled candidates haul their bones out of bed and line up for inspection. Big Grey Al is so horrified at the sight of them that he forgets what he came round for, gives them a Cornetto each and tells them to go and play in the countryside.
This week's task is to develop some ice cream flavours for two different independent farmers and sell them to vendors in London. Claire heads up Renaissance, a team comprising Michael, Kevin, Jenny, Alex and Sara. Team Alpha, meanwhile, is project managed by Minnie the Minx from the Beano.“I don't believe you have to be a bitch in business to succeed”, Minnie says, as it dawns on you that she's actually Lucinda in yet another outfit that Gwen Stefani wouldn't touch with a barge pole. “Project [pronounced 'prohhh-ject'] managers are there to facilitate teams, not necessarily dictate,” she continues. “Working together and having fun brings outstanding results.”
Lucinda, then, seems to think that she'll be spending the next two days recreating Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. And, to be fair, the ice cream flavours her team comes up with do sound appropriately wacky. The ingredients mentioned initially include goji berries, wheatgrass and gingseng – all healthy, all even healthier when whipped up with a pint of double cream and frozen. Mmm.
“Everybody thinks Lucinda's a bit eccentric, a bit of a fruitcake,” says Helene, as Lucinda obligingly starts to suggest taste sensations such as blue cheese and cranberry, and dandelion and wildebeest. To be fair, though, I think blue cheese, cranberries and ice cream are the three most delicious things in the universe. And, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense – they all go down the same hole y'know! The campaign to get Lucinda on Celebrity Come Dine With Me starts here!
Sadly, though, the team settles on try-outs of three flavours: 'cosmopolitan', toffee apple, and, er, avocado. And, as Heston Blumenthal phones his lawyers, Lucinda, Helene and Lee start making their desserts. Two hours later, Lucinda and Helene are actually starting to enjoy each other's company. “Lucinda has a good manner with managing her team”, says Margaret Mountford. “I think she's doing quite well.”
I pause, a second, to make sure the world hasn't spun off its axis.
Meanwhile, Lucinda's sales team – Lindi (who is second in command), Raef and Jennifer – are cold-calling. “My name is Raef!” he brays, like he's at the world's poshest meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. “I'm CEO of Alpha luxury ice creams!” Sounds delicious, Raef! I've often thought that Carte D'Or missed a trick by not borrowing their name from the Greek alphabet. Jennifer tries a different tactic. “Oi really waaant to come and see yers”, she honks down the other line.
That evening, Lindi orders some smock-wearing villagers to stop ducking witches and come and give her an opinion on their 'cosmopolitan' ice cream. And, after one of them says that it tastes like Smash, it's decided that the toffee apple and avocado flavours will be the ones going into production. “We're going to mix the teams up tomorrow if that's all right with everyone”, says Lucinda, once they're back at the house. The icy silence that follows indicates that it's not all right with anybody at all. The teams stay unmixed.
Team Renaissance, meanwhile, cook up some equally far-fetched recipes. Chocolate orange sounds hideously sweet and sickly; cider and elderflower sounds less like an ice cream and more like an afternoon pick-me-up for Asbo grannies; and 'Berry Mania', which includes strawberries, blueberries, logan berries, holly berries and Michael's Blackberry (Whoops! Butterfingers!) should probably be renamed something like 'Berry Low Level Mental Illness'.
As Alex, Kevin and Sara start getting their hands creamy, Claire, Jenny and Michael head off to a local cider brewery. Claire staggers back into the kitchen six hours later, three sheets to the wind, leaving the teams with just two hours to finish making their products. Meanwhile, Michael tries to drum up some interest in a taste test. However, the only people this side of the coffin that he manages to find are a group of old biddies at the village yoga class. Imagine half a dozen Tubbses from The League of Gentlemen, all farting away in the lotus position, and you're not too far wide of the mark. None of them want any ice cream. Possibly because Michael is not local.
Eventually, the team decides to drop the chocolate orange flavour after receiving some threatening letters from Dawn French.
The next day, Renaissance has only two sales meetings booked in. “I think three people calling non-stop all day could make more than two appointments”, moans Alex. Come on Alex, if you think that's bad, you should see Lucinda, who is trying to flog her wares to an Italian ice cream vendor that's somewhat less than keen. “I-a mak-a it-a my-a-self-a”, he confirms, as Helene reaches below the counter and switches off his freezer.
Meanwhile, Michael and Jenny attempt to sell their products door to door. “Very berry?” he offers, blithely infringing all sorts of copyright. Jenny mentions that their ice cream is good for you as one serving is the equivalent of one portion of fruit and veg per day. What a swell idea, Jenny! I'm going to stop buying apples and broccoli and just eat your ice cream all day instead. Ooh, I can't wait to be slim!
Things take an even bleaker turn when Kevin tries to tell a potential customer that his ice cream is “sexy”. Bleurgh. That's the last thing you want to hear from him. Not only because the last person who applied a big dollop of cold cream to any part of his anatomy was probably the acne nurse.
Anyway, the teams aren't just selling to individual shops and restaurants; both of them have plans to snare business from a chain of cinemas. Alex starts to believe it's in the bag for Renaissance when he sets up a second meeting with somebody from the Clapham Picture House, but Jennifer - who always struck me as being several degrees cooler than any room she's in - whisks it away from under his nose by organising an appointment with the men directly in charge. “If you make an order today, and I'm confident you will, you will have exclusive rights to sell this ice cream”, she confirms, as Lindi gazes on vacantly and Margaret Mountford chokes on her Solero. A deal for 100 litres is promptly signed. Claire is not pleased. “Sh*t!”, she cries, after somebody off-screen asks her what her cider and elderflower ice cream tastes like.
Sorry. Too easy.
Only two further big deals are made, and both of them are at restaurants. Taking her cuefrom Jennifer, Lindi secures a 130 litre deal with a gastropub chain by throwing in a three month exclusivity contract. “It just doesn't get any better!”, she shrieks, as Lee gets over-excited and starts doing Tim Westwood impressions in the back of the car like he's on Pimp My Ride: The Moorgate Years. On the other side of town, Jenny, Michael and Claire throw themselves back into the game at the last minute by selling 200 litres to a trendy wine bar. Frances, send them into the boardroom, please...
Jenny and Kevin are full of praise for Claire, their team leader. And, even more astonishingly, Lee and Helene have equally positive things to say about Lucinda. “She pulled her finger out her arse”, Helene confirms, as if she were leaning over her garden fence and not in the war room of a multi-million pound electronics company. Even Alan Sugar praises Cindy for her idea of jumbling up the teams so that each one included somebody who made the ice cream in the first place.
I've never seen anything like it on The Apprentice. Surely Lucinda's team has got to win this one...
No?
Oh.
For the first time in living memory, both teams turned a profit to be proud of. However, as Claire's lot took £200 more than their competitors, Team Renaissance is packed off to a country house to go a few rounds of archery and shoot some peasants. Jennifer, meanwhile, starts sticking the knife into her project manager for wanting to change who was in which team.
Lee McQueen, it's fair to say, is concerned. “Not once did you say that there was an issue with teams”, he shouts, as Jennifer slits her eyes and purses her lips. “And as soon as you're in the boardoom there's a f***ing issue”, he continues. And with these words, a twenty-minute game of pass the buck begins. “Can we bring this back to business?” sighs Margaret Mountford, after Lucinda undoes all her hard work in making the world like her by accusing Helene of saying that Jennifer is a snake. Oh dear. She's got a point, of course, but I wish she'd made it privately.
Sir Alan's main beef with the losing team's efforts is that Jennifer and Lindi started offering exclusive contracts when they had no right to do so without consulting their farmer. “If I'd known about this before then those sales would have been void,” he spits, “and you'd have lost big time”. Lucinda takes this as a hint that she should bring Jennifer and Lindi back into the boardroom with her. Jennifer fumes. Lindi smiles vacantly.
Even though Lucinda apologises to them both for bringing them back in with her, she's not so sorry that she doesn't do a pretty fantastic job of defending herself. Jennifer and Lindi are left in the firing line - and the smile is finally wiped off Lindi's face when she's booted back to Brum. “I think Sir Alan didn't see enough from me!”, she smiles, vacantly, in the back of her taxi. “Never mind, I'm off to be a TV presenter,” she doesn't continue. “Want to see my showreel?”*
Yippee! Nice of Big Grey Al to finally start picking off the dead wood, isn't it? But do you think Jennifer should have gone instead, or maybe even Lucinda? Let me know by commenting below.
*Readers of Holy Moly will have seen last Friday's newsletter, which linked to Lindi's personal website. It had the words 'TV PRESENTER' smeared across it in large lettering and featured a clip of Lindi interviewing a reality show dancer. These elements of her site have since been removed. Funny that.
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21:56:00 o'clock BST
Feeling Quiet
The Apprentice - Week 5
Eventually, the bedraggled candidates haul their bones out of bed and line up for inspection. Big Grey Al is so horrified at the sight of them that he forgets what he came round for, gives them a Cornetto each and tells them to go and play in the countryside.
This week's task is to develop some ice cream flavours for two different independent farmers and sell them to vendors in London. Claire heads up Renaissance, a team comprising Michael, Kevin, Jenny, Alex and Sara. Team Alpha, meanwhile, is project managed by Minnie the Minx from the Beano.“I don't believe you have to be a bitch in business to succeed”, Minnie says, as it dawns on you that she's actually Lucinda in yet another outfit that Gwen Stefani wouldn't touch with a barge pole. “Project [pronounced 'prohhh-ject'] managers are there to facilitate teams, not necessarily dictate,” she continues. “Working together and having fun brings outstanding results.”
Lucinda, then, seems to think that she'll be spending the next two days recreating Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. And, to be fair, the ice cream flavours her team comes up with do sound appropriately wacky. The ingredients mentioned initially include goji berries, wheatgrass and gingseng – all healthy, all even healthier when whipped up with a pint of double cream and frozen. Mmm.
“Everybody thinks Lucinda's a bit eccentric, a bit of a fruitcake,” says Helene, as Lucinda obligingly starts to suggest taste sensations such as blue cheese and cranberry, and dandelion and wildebeest. To be fair, though, I think blue cheese, cranberries and ice cream are the three most delicious things in the universe. And, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense – they all go down the same hole y'know! The campaign to get Lucinda on Celebrity Come Dine With Me starts here!
Sadly, though, the team settles on try-outs of three flavours: 'cosmopolitan', toffee apple, and, er, avocado. And, as Heston Blumenthal phones his lawyers, Lucinda, Helene and Lee start making their desserts. Two hours later, Lucinda and Helene are actually starting to enjoy each other's company. “Lucinda has a good manner with managing her team”, says Margaret Mountford. “I think she's doing quite well.”
I pause, a second, to make sure the world hasn't spun off its axis.
Meanwhile, Lucinda's sales team – Lindi (who is second in command), Raef and Jennifer – are cold-calling. “My name is Raef!” he brays, like he's at the world's poshest meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. “I'm CEO of Alpha luxury ice creams!” Sounds delicious, Raef! I've often thought that Carte D'Or missed a trick by not borrowing their name from the Greek alphabet. Jennifer tries a different tactic. “Oi really waaant to come and see yers”, she honks down the other line.
That evening, Lindi orders some smock-wearing villagers to stop ducking witches and come and give her an opinion on their 'cosmopolitan' ice cream. And, after one of them says that it tastes like Smash, it's decided that the toffee apple and avocado flavours will be the ones going into production. “We're going to mix the teams up tomorrow if that's all right with everyone”, says Lucinda, once they're back at the house. The icy silence that follows indicates that it's not all right with anybody at all. The teams stay unmixed.
Team Renaissance, meanwhile, cook up some equally far-fetched recipes. Chocolate orange sounds hideously sweet and sickly; cider and elderflower sounds less like an ice cream and more like an afternoon pick-me-up for Asbo grannies; and 'Berry Mania', which includes strawberries, blueberries, logan berries, holly berries and Michael's Blackberry (Whoops! Butterfingers!) should probably be renamed something like 'Berry Low Level Mental Illness'.
As Alex, Kevin and Sara start getting their hands creamy, Claire, Jenny and Michael head off to a local cider brewery. Claire staggers back into the kitchen six hours later, three sheets to the wind, leaving the teams with just two hours to finish making their products. Meanwhile, Michael tries to drum up some interest in a taste test. However, the only people this side of the coffin that he manages to find are a group of old biddies at the village yoga class. Imagine half a dozen Tubbses from The League of Gentlemen, all farting away in the lotus position, and you're not too far wide of the mark. None of them want any ice cream. Possibly because Michael is not local.
Eventually, the team decides to drop the chocolate orange flavour after receiving some threatening letters from Dawn French.
The next day, Renaissance has only two sales meetings booked in. “I think three people calling non-stop all day could make more than two appointments”, moans Alex. Come on Alex, if you think that's bad, you should see Lucinda, who is trying to flog her wares to an Italian ice cream vendor that's somewhat less than keen. “I-a mak-a it-a my-a-self-a”, he confirms, as Helene reaches below the counter and switches off his freezer.
Meanwhile, Michael and Jenny attempt to sell their products door to door. “Very berry?” he offers, blithely infringing all sorts of copyright. Jenny mentions that their ice cream is good for you as one serving is the equivalent of one portion of fruit and veg per day. What a swell idea, Jenny! I'm going to stop buying apples and broccoli and just eat your ice cream all day instead. Ooh, I can't wait to be slim!
Things take an even bleaker turn when Kevin tries to tell a potential customer that his ice cream is “sexy”. Bleurgh. That's the last thing you want to hear from him. Not only because the last person who applied a big dollop of cold cream to any part of his anatomy was probably the acne nurse.
Anyway, the teams aren't just selling to individual shops and restaurants; both of them have plans to snare business from a chain of cinemas. Alex starts to believe it's in the bag for Renaissance when he sets up a second meeting with somebody from the Clapham Picture House, but Jennifer - who always struck me as being several degrees cooler than any room she's in - whisks it away from under his nose by organising an appointment with the men directly in charge. “If you make an order today, and I'm confident you will, you will have exclusive rights to sell this ice cream”, she confirms, as Lindi gazes on vacantly and Margaret Mountford chokes on her Solero. A deal for 100 litres is promptly signed. Claire is not pleased. “Sh*t!”, she cries, after somebody off-screen asks her what her cider and elderflower ice cream tastes like.
Sorry. Too easy.
Only two further big deals are made, and both of them are at restaurants. Taking her cuefrom Jennifer, Lindi secures a 130 litre deal with a gastropub chain by throwing in a three month exclusivity contract. “It just doesn't get any better!”, she shrieks, as Lee gets over-excited and starts doing Tim Westwood impressions in the back of the car like he's on Pimp My Ride: The Moorgate Years. On the other side of town, Jenny, Michael and Claire throw themselves back into the game at the last minute by selling 200 litres to a trendy wine bar. Frances, send them into the boardroom, please...
Jenny and Kevin are full of praise for Claire, their team leader. And, even more astonishingly, Lee and Helene have equally positive things to say about Lucinda. “She pulled her finger out her arse”, Helene confirms, as if she were leaning over her garden fence and not in the war room of a multi-million pound electronics company. Even Alan Sugar praises Cindy for her idea of jumbling up the teams so that each one included somebody who made the ice cream in the first place.
I've never seen anything like it on The Apprentice. Surely Lucinda's team has got to win this one...
No?
Oh.
For the first time in living memory, both teams turned a profit to be proud of. However, as Claire's lot took £200 more than their competitors, Team Renaissance is packed off to a country house to go a few rounds of archery and shoot some peasants. Jennifer, meanwhile, starts sticking the knife into her project manager for wanting to change who was in which team.
Lee McQueen, it's fair to say, is concerned. “Not once did you say that there was an issue with teams”, he shouts, as Jennifer slits her eyes and purses her lips. “And as soon as you're in the boardoom there's a f***ing issue”, he continues. And with these words, a twenty-minute game of pass the buck begins. “Can we bring this back to business?” sighs Margaret Mountford, after Lucinda undoes all her hard work in making the world like her by accusing Helene of saying that Jennifer is a snake. Oh dear. She's got a point, of course, but I wish she'd made it privately.
Sir Alan's main beef with the losing team's efforts is that Jennifer and Lindi started offering exclusive contracts when they had no right to do so without consulting their farmer. “If I'd known about this before then those sales would have been void,” he spits, “and you'd have lost big time”. Lucinda takes this as a hint that she should bring Jennifer and Lindi back into the boardroom with her. Jennifer fumes. Lindi smiles vacantly.
Even though Lucinda apologises to them both for bringing them back in with her, she's not so sorry that she doesn't do a pretty fantastic job of defending herself. Jennifer and Lindi are left in the firing line - and the smile is finally wiped off Lindi's face when she's booted back to Brum. “I think Sir Alan didn't see enough from me!”, she smiles, vacantly, in the back of her taxi. “Never mind, I'm off to be a TV presenter,” she doesn't continue. “Want to see my showreel?”*
Yippee! Nice of Big Grey Al to finally start picking off the dead wood, isn't it? But do you think Jennifer should have gone instead, or maybe even Lucinda? Let me know by commenting below.
*Readers of Holy Moly will have seen last Friday's newsletter, which linked to Lindi's personal website. It had the words 'TV PRESENTER' smeared across it in large lettering and featured a clip of Lindi interviewing a reality show dancer. These elements of her site have since been removed. Funny that.
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This entry has 22 comments: (Add your own)
-
Was not happy when Jenny won, could not wait to see her go. Maybe next time. Have watched both Michael and Lee carefully, and feel that these two may go down to the wire, with my money being on Lee to win through.
Some of the women make me feel ashamed of being female, and I would not trust any one of them in business or personally.
Am I the only one who thinks that Sir Alan has already chosen his winner, and is making his weekly decisions based on what makes a good programme ? -
Lindi - an over inflated airhead.
Jennifer - a complete cow.
Lucinda did a great job and Helene went up in my estimation when she praised her. I also liked the "human" side of Margaret being nice about Lucinda.
I don't know how Claire won, but as long as she and that revolting Jenny (in fact both of 'em) go very quickly, I don't care much either.
It's interesting, but I fear it's more shallow than previous series. -
Lucinda winning would be cute but I'm not sure Big Al would agree - I just loved the way she so casually dropped Helene right in it with Jennifer with the snake comment - got to see those two on the same team again sooooon.
But back to picking a winner - please somebody tell me who... I wouldn't employ any of them, let alone on a salary of £100k -
I was starting to like Helene again right up until the last five minutes when Lucinda dropped her in it! Ice cream queen Jennifer is vicious, and her and Lindi were SO arrogant and up themselves when they got some deals done. Lucinda to win!
18/05/08 12:04
Neverless it's still very entertaining, but God help Alan Sugar, if he actually ends up employing any of them. I suspect on camra all will be well, but after a short interlude the winner will quietly leave the Company, by mutual agreement.
Meanwhile though let's all enjoy watching these people cock it all up then stab each other in the back....excellent.