The Apprentice is back with its 4th installment, and as usual, Sir Alan Sugar is returning to the boardroom with his aides Nick Hewer and Margaret Mountford, along with 16 candidates competing for a £100k job.
The show starts off with a boardroom meet and greet in which Sir Alan tells the candidates his expectations. First of all, they should be nervous. Unlike previous seasons in which he questioned why people would be willing to come to work for him for what was sometimes less than what they were making already, he says the money doesn’t mean anything. It seems now he gets the point. He tells them he’s not Mary Poppins and they’re on their own two feet. It’s not time to go to the luxurious surroundings in the house he’s setup for them. Rather, business starts right away.
The first task is to sell fish on the streets of London. It’s boys against girls.
One of the first things they’ll have to do before selling is to pick a team name.
The girls pick the name Alpha, a decent name even if it’s a bit boring. A couple of the people who identify as salespeople would rather be out there selling than leading. Claire steps forward to be their project manager.
The guys come up with the name of Renaissance. I don’t get it. Raef is asked to be the proect manager, but he says he’s not really a manager. Won’t be able to use that excuse for long. With that said, Alex, a regional sales manager who oversees about 40 people, steps up to be the project manager for the boys.
They have a choice of four markets. The girls head to a local fishmonger to get his opinion. Sara takes this as an opportunity to complain about the other girls, saying she doesn’t like being interrupted. I suspect we’ll hear more of this from her.
Unlike the girls, the boys are standing around trying to figure things out on their own. They finally figure out that they want to go to Islington, where the girls already are quickly surrounded by bargain hunters before they even have time to get everything unpacked, priced, and labelled.
Lindi gets fed up with all the discussion and just starts selling, pricing be damned. Others follow this lead. The reason they needed to take their time pricing, though, was that now they’re selling below wholesale price.
The boys stroll in around noon. Alex wants to actually get setup before they start selling. Rather than wait for Nicholas to figure out pricing, Alex wants to copy the local fishmonger’s prices, then undercut him slightly. Nicholas takes the pricing and runs with it, as apparently at some point during the communication process there was a misunderstanding of the difference between kilos and pounds. One of their customers feels guilty for robbing them.
The girls are still trading two hours later… and still haven’t labelled their stock properly. Claire finally stops them to get organized and figure out what is they’re actually selling and at what prices.
Nicholas, who priced the lobster at £4.90 per unit, heads over to spy on the girls and see what they’re using for pricing. He finds out that they’re charging £23 per kilo. Rather than worrying about just fixing things, Alex quickly places the blame on Nick and wants everybody around him to know that it was Nick who screwed up.
After they’ve sold 3/4 of their stock, Sara takes the time to count the money and finds out they’re at 440 pounds, a pace that if kept up would be enough to maybe break even. They don’t want to figure out what went wrong, but Claire takes half the team to go to a more upscale market.
The boys discover another mistake. Expensive monkfish tail is mislabelled as turbot. Raef says he consulted people, including Alex, who were unable to identify it, so he pretty much just guessed. Of course, Nick, who was told it was turbot, is dragged into this for pricing it as turbot. Since it’s close to closing time, Alex splits half the team off to go to stores and sell.
Claire’s team selling at a posh market unload all of their stock for £125.
The boys find a business to buy a bunch of fish from them, which project manager Alex waiting for them expects to go for a similar amount as that. They get bullied by a guy who refuses to even budge 5 pounds, so they’re only able to get £50 on this deal. Michael says this horrible trade is on his head, but the others who are with him back him up and say they didn’t think they’d be able to sell it for more since the day was almost over.
Nick’s concerned that the guys are split into two groups competing against each other. Alex quickly backs up this point, saying that the shining stars were Simon, Lee, Ian, and himself to some degree.
Lindi is already lining up her excuses as to why Claire was a weak leader.
Sir Alan says the girls sound like a bloody mess.
About half the team for the boys say Alex was a good team leader. Rather than just sitting back and not nodding, Nicholas says Alex was a bad team leader, that he was too negative. He’s backed up by Raef and Michael, and Sir Alan quickly notices a split in the camp. Raef says it was schoolboy tactics based on friends, even though they’ve only just met each other earlier in the day.
The boys returned with £632.69; the girls returned with £753.98. Alpha manages to win in spite of their performance, not because of it, and Sir Alan’s not particularly impressed with either side.
The winning team gets to head to their home for the next 12 weeks, where they get a dinner prepared by an award winning chef.
Raef believes he got one box wrong. Margaret points out that he actually mislabelled three boxes. Then comes the question of pricing, which was Nick’s responsibility. He acknowledges the mislabelled turbot and then goes into further discussion about the lobster. Then Michael again takes blame for the final deal of the day.
Alex brings Nicholas and Raef back into the boardroom. He sends them back to the house and asks them to return in the morning.
Nicholas’ guess is that the team is split between educated versus gritty salesmen, which Alex takes offense to because he does have a business degree. So then Nicholas backtracks and says he’s really cultured and into art but finds it difficult to have conversations about football. Regardless of what happened at the task, this boardroom is where Nicholas is really damaging himself. Sir Alan is confused why that would actually matter as to why they couldn’t work together. Raef chimes in and says he gets along with prince or pauper. So who’s the prince?
Sir Alan tells Raef that if someone mislabelled one of his products, they would be fired without question. Nicholas only had to price things, and with all the qualifications he’s bragging about, he should have done it well. Alex, who runs sales teams, only had to run a very simple selling task here. Ultimately, the decision is that Nicholas is fired. Sir Alan is only happy with Alex because he took the risk of being the first project manager, but Nick was impressed that he defended himself well.
The rest of the team is happy to see Alex return.
Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another recap of The Apprentice UK Series 4 episode 2.