Category: apprentice uk series 5

In The Apprentice UK Series 4 Episode 2, Jenny was obnoxious. Then she was obnoxious some more. Then she added a side of obnoxiousness to this. Despite her miserable leadership skills, though, she survived the boardroom, and Shazia was fired for her mistake on the task.

The task is to boost pub business by putting on a food service. Unlike Donald Trump, who makes a “suggestion” in cases like this, Sir Alan comes right out and tells teams he’s picking the team leaders. Ian and Sara are the project managers.

Sara says she’ll be a strong leader but is worried that she may be too strong, so she tells her team to tell her if they’re having problems. The first thing she needs to do is switch to decaf and slow down a bit.

Now that they’ve won, the boys seem to be united as a group. Ian refuses to say the word that’s opposite of winners that begins with l. They agree on an Italian theme.

Sara decides to do a Bollywood night because “everyone loves a good curry.” I’m gonna have to take her word for that. They take a vote, and the traditional English food idea gets shot down. Claire, who came up with the English theme, is most vocal against the Bollywood theme because of the cost involved and the lack of a wide appeal. They head to an Indian restaurant to get an idea of how to set everything up.

Both teams get a kitchen advisor who won’t cook but is there “so they don’t poison anyone.”

Kevin’s the head chef for the boys but doesn’t really know what makes for an Italian menu. Once they figure it out, half the team heads to buy supplies. Lee expresses a concern about the pricing, but he can’t have an answer right now because they don’t really know.

The boys go for expensive printed menus; the girls make a deal and get them for free in exchange for advertising. Alex does manage to cut the price in half to £1 per menu, though.

Sara believes that Claire is creating drama because they ignored her English food idea.

Sir Alan’s given the teams a list of cut price wholesale dealers, but the guys opt instead to just buy vegetables locally. While they’re shopping, Michael calls to complain about the soup pricing, which they agree to lower to £2.95. Kevin says the £4.25 is what he would pay, and Lee doesn’t understand the reasoning behind the call.

The guys are giving away their pamphlets, but the girls have come up with the idea to sell theirs for £5, which will be given as a discount on the meal, a concept that will ensure that the people that are getting these are actually interested.

More bad news for the boys. They’ll have to pay supermarket prices since they were unable to get to the wholesalers. Despite the massive expenses, though, they forgot something and must stop food prep until they’re able to go shopping again. Kevin wants Ian to know that if they don’t have the food ready, it’s his fault for not insisting that the other group go and get what they need.

The girls have bought meat locally for less than 1/4th what the guys spent, but Sara bought the wrong spices and not enough to begin with. She’s unconcerned when the advisor tells her this.

Bollywood’s going about as well as could have been expected. Nobody knows how to cook Indian food, and they don’t have the right ingredients even if they did.

An hour into lunch, the boys are starting to run out of key ingredients, meaning another trip to the supermarket. Those who are eating already are unimpressed. Lee brings this information back to Kevin, who’s not happy with the feedback.

5 hours late, the girls finally have their food ready to go. Claire was concerned that lunch customers wouldn’t be interested in curry. The good news in that regard is that they were unable to get the lunch crowd anyway.

By this time, the boys have their act together better. Kevin wants to take the time for a pep talk. The others aren’t thrilled with this. Just get on with it already. They run low on supplies again, but Ian’s got the solution for this: cut the pizzas in half. That doesn’t go over well for one of the customers, who expects to receive a whole pizza.

This is an interesting one. The boys had trouble controlling their costs. The girls had trouble controlling… everything else. A win will come in spite of their performance, rather than because of it.

Nobody answers when asked how Ian was as a team leader. Sara gets more support from her team than he does.

Renaissance took £844.97 but spent £543, for a profit of £301.97. Alpha took £795 and spent only £170.93, for a profit of £624.07. They realize that they would have lost if the boys were better at controlling costs.

Sir Alan wants to know who was in charge of pricing. Ian points the finger at Kevin. His response is he never wanted the responsibility of being head chef. Margaret questions why they set the prices before they even knew what it was even going to cost. Ian also blames Simon’s difficult communication style, who says he didn’t stay positive because he had nothing to stay positive about.

In addition to buying too much food, they spent £272 on marketing, for margins that weren’t good enough to begin with. Michael steps in and says he made decisions on pricing because they had to get the menus done.

Ian brings back Kevin and Simon. Not sure why he wouldn’t bring back Michael, who’s a much better target than Simon. He explains that Simon’s too much about problems and not enough about solutions. Simon makes a point that the two people who are brought back are the two people under his direct control. Kevin blames the others who aren’t in the boardroom for railroading Ian into changing the pricing.

Ian is fired for losing control of the task. Kevin talks a good game but needs to do something more to survive. Sir Alan is disappointed that Simon seems to be nothing more than a physical worker.

Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another recap of The Apprentice UK Series 4 episode 4.

Sir Alan Sugar returned for another round in the boardroom in The Apprentice UK Series 4 Episode 1. The guys quickly got divided into two sides, which remained the theme throughout the boardroom as well. Ultimately, Nicholas sunk himself through pricing errors, and being pompous in his defense didn’t help him any, so he was the first person to go home.

The teams get a video message from Sir Alan, who tells them they’ll start their own laundry business. They must pitch to get as much dirty laundry as possible, watch it, and return it cleaned.

Raef offers to be project manager for the boys, hoping to redeem himself from last week. Lee’s concerned Raef’s not a natural leader, and Ian’s concerned that Raef’s different than a lot of them. Still split down the middle I see.

Jenny steps up to be the PM for the girls. She seems to have more support than Raef does.

Simon has worked with some laundry equipment in the past, and to go along with that, the guys grab all of the ironing equipment in the house.

Jenny wants to prove she’s a salesperson, so she drones on and on for the first hour talking about sales. Sara’s getting tired of her. Margaret notices Jenny’s taking charge but has her favorites. As with the boys, some cliques are starting to form.

Half of Raef’s team will go door-to-door to hunt for dirty laundry. A few miles away, the girls are also doing the same thing.

The other half of the teams will be meeting businesses and go head-to-head to compete for the business. A large hotel is first. The guys call a laundry business to figure out what to charge. The girls just guess. The job is 1000 pieces of laundry. The manager normally pays £200. The girls bid £4.99 per item for a total of £4,999. On the contrary, the boys price it at £556. Still too expensive but a lot better than the girls. The manager is willing to negotiate, and the guys’ idea of negotiating is merely accepting his price of £200. Show a backbone and try to make a counteroffer at least.

In addition to this deal, the other guys are having some luck knocking on doors, but the girls are having no luck there, so they head to various businesses instead. This strategy works for them.

Sir Alan’s sending them to a fishmonger. The job should cost about £60. The girls bid £10, which they up to 15 when he asks for ironing as well. He repeatedly tries to let them know (not in so many words) that they’re screwing themselves on this deal, but they don’t listen. The boys go in at £49.50 and have no interest in matching the girls.

The girls who were working with the businesses Sir Alan set meetings up with head out selling, but the boys who were going door-to-door are instructed by Raef to head back to the laundromat and start work on the hotel project. They warn the other guys there’s a lot of stuff to do there. Every sheet (of which there are 500) takes four people to feed through the industrial strength presser.

Jen and Lucinda get into a spat. Well, Lucinda gets into a spat while Jen tries to get a word in edgewise anyway.

Simon begs Raef for help. Raef’s in no particular hurry to get back. They want to make sure they get some coffee first. He doesn’t get what the big deal is but admits it’s going to be close when he finally does show up.

At 8pm, half the girls are back at the laundry. Their big concern is making sure the right people get the right things because unlike the boys with their massive hotel order, the girls have lots of smaller orders. The rest of the team has had good success in selling to businesses, but the problem is that they’re cutting it very close. With the 2am deadline looming, they’re down to just two hours by the time they do finally make their appearance. They’ve got a plan. Beat the boys home and grab the irons. Too bad the guys already grabbed them a long time ago.

Here’s the real flaw in this plan. Shazia was the one who came up with the idea to head back, so she left. The other girls were behind and have no idea what’s up with her labelling system that was used to keep the different customers’ items where they should be.

Now it’s Jen’s turn to snap back at Lucinda. She tells her she’s absolutely thoroughly disappointed with her behavior. Excellent motivational leadership. She uses the word stupid more than once. Lucinda tries to defend herself. Jenny doesn’t want to hear it. She would rather continue to tear into hear. Lucinda wants to discuss it in the morning. Jenny still doesn’t want to hear it. She uses the word stupid more than once again and calls Lucinda a fungus that’s destroying the team. Someone else steps in to defend Lucinda, who by this point is crying. I want Jenny fired right now. I don’t care who wins or loses this task. This woman quite clearly is incapable of being a leader.

Lucinda oversleeps, perhaps intentionally, missing the meeting the next morning. Jenny picks up right where she left off. Being a bitch.

The guys kept the irons the whole night but didn’t even use them.

At 8:30, the guys leave. The girls are still ironing for another hour. Next they have to figure out what belongs to whom.

Hoping to maximize profits, the girls aim to get some tips. The fishmonger willingly gives them a £10 tip. They’re able to get a couple other tips as well, but there’s a problem. One they should have seen coming a mile away. They’re not going to get tips from people who are missing some of their clothes. Worse yet, if they’re unable to deliver the clothes as they were given to them, they will face fines.

The girls are mixed on Jenny’s performance, but the boys are firmly behind Raef. The girls earned £195.55 profit and were fined £50 for the lost clothing. The boys earned £328.00.

Jenny’s “delighted” to be going back to the boardroom because it will allow her to get rid of what she considers weaker links.

Sir Alan questions the lack of common sense on the ridiculous hotel offer. On the opposite end of the spectrum was the underbilling on the fish shop. Margaret and Sir Alan are unimpressed with Randi’s idea of asking for tips. Shazia takes the heat on the lost clothing.

Now it’s time to beat the dead horse some more. Jenny returns to attacking Lucinda.

Then it becomes a free-for-all in which everybody tries to talk over everybody else. It’s clear they spent too much time arguing rather than executing their plan.

Jenny is bringing Lucinda and Shazia back with her into the boardroom.

Lucinda says she shouldn’t be fired because she can motivate and work within teams.

Jenny’s asked a simple question with a simple answer. Where did Shazia go wrong in the task? Rather than just saying she went home when she should have stayed and helped sort the laundry, Jenny’s response is that Shazia lied, complained, manipulated other people, and didn’t deliver on the tasks that were allocated. Aside from being a dumb, long-winded answer, is any of this actually true?

Jenny has the same plan as she had during the task. Keep talking and expect other people to shut up. Margaret’s clearly getting a headache.

Both Shazia and Lucinda want Jenny gone. That makes three of us. Jenny wants both of them gone because they have an attitude and an inability to contribute anything of any value.

After Sir Alan gives a speech about how it’s not a good thing to have people who violently hate each other on the same team, he fires Shazia for her mistake. While I normally would agree, Jenny’s utter inability as a manager is so blatant that there’s no need for her to still be around, let alone in an environment in which she will be lashing out in this manner again in the future. He leaves both of them with a warning: act more professional in the future.

Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another recap of The Apprentice UK Series 4 episode 3.

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.

I’ve been wondering for a while when The Apprentice UK Series 4 would premiere, and The BBC has finally let the cat out of the bag. The fourth season of The Apprentice UK will premiere Wednesday March 26 at 9:00 on BBC One.

A cast of 16 will be heading into the boardroom to win a job with Sir Alan Sugar. He will be greeting them by telling them what they’re in for. “This is a business boot camp. Mary Poppins I am not,” he warns the candidates. “I’m not going to hold your hand. I’m not going to tell you what to do. You’re on your own two feet.”

The Apprentice – You’re Fired! will be returning immediately after The Apprentice on BBC Two.

Following on the heels of the success of last year’s Comic Relief Does The Apprentice and also this year’s US version, a UK version of The Celebrity Apprentice, Sports Relief Does The Apprentice, will air Wednesday March 12 and Friday March 14 on BBC One to raise money for Sports Relief. Sir Alan Sugar and his aides Nick Hewer and Margaret Mountford will all be back. Teams will be divided into boys and girls and will need to stock their shops to earn the highest profit.

The girls team consists of Clare Balding, Lisa Snowdon, Jacqueline Gold, Kirstie Allsopp, and Louise Redknapp. The boys team consists of Phil Tufnell, Lembit Opik MP, Kelvin MacKenzie, Hardeep Singh Kohli, and Nick Hancock.

As with last year, it is anticipated that The Apprentice UK Series 4 will premiere shortly after the celebrity version ends.