April Fool's Day and The Apprentice is on. Perfect scheduling. The traditional catering task is upon us this week: so, can the candidates make sandwiches to tempt city workers on their lunch-break, before feeding businessmen fresh out of an evening meeting, all to a satisfactory and profitable standard? Is Sir Alan a clean-shaven bundle of fun?
21-year-old Geordie sandwich entrepreneur "Northern" Rocky is the obvious choice to lead Empire for the boys; likewise restaurant-owner Yasmina for the girls' Ignite. Has a task every suited two candidates so perfectly? This bodes very well. For about five minutes.
Empire decide to give their catering an Olympic theme to tie into London 2012, meaning each sandwich will represent each of the five continents: chicken tikka for Asia (ookay), ploughman's sandwich for Europe (hmm, arguable), peanut butter sandwich for America (hehe -- but can you think of a quintessentially American filling?), etc. In typical Apprentice style, they also decide to over-complicate matters by dressing up in sports-themed costumes and making their evening function a Greek-based event -- forgetting that this means pale, hairy men will effectively serve cheese-on-sticks in togas. Classy.
Ignore settle for a much simpler Mediterranean theme and win two lunchtime office contracts, enabling them to sell their wares to city workers at their desks. Well, the less picky ones. It's not long before customers start spotting hairs in their sarnie, or an absence of any actual chicken in a chicken wrap. They could be done under the Trade Descriptions Act! A breakdown of quality control, it seems.
Still, aren't customers on The Apprentice always too damn picky? Yes, they are. And that's because there's a camera-crew around, so they know that a good, funny moan might get them on telly: "Look, here's the bit where I say there's no chicken in my chicken wrap, but I'd actually taken the chicken and thrown it out the window beforehand. I'm famous, me. You can call me the Chicken Wrap Man Off Of The Telly from now on. Can you put this clip on the company intranet? Result!"
So I have some sympathy with the candidates. And how about that embarrassing meeting where the boys are forced to admit to a stern- woman that they're a "fledgling company" with no experience? Doesn't she know they're part of The Apprentice? Look, woman -- there's Nick in the corner, making notes! There's a cameraman filming you! Sheesh. Give them a break. How would you fare being plucked from your cozy office and told to manage a rugby team overnight, say?
There's a certain artifice to The Apprentice, naturally. Would any of these company's allow such an obvious shower of cretins to cater for their clients, if it wasn't going out on primetime BBC1? How much do the Beeb pay them? I bet the clients get an apologetic heads-up about the likely terrible quality of the vol-au-vonts when their meetings hit the A.O.B moment, too. Oh well, I suppose it can't be helped.
The embarrassments stack up: the boys suggest £65 per head for their evening of finger-food to a potential client, who is gobsmacked and has them revise that figure down to £15; people are seen abandoning vol-au-vonts in nearby plants; others complain that the food's stone cold; the variety of food is considered poor; the girls have no idea why certain sandwiches are classed as "hot" (are they grilled?), etc.
In the end, Ignite make £750, but because of various mistakes their client only pays them £500, resulting in an overall profit of £651.43. Empire's negotiated contract of £750 is slashed to £375 because of the poorly-received food and their tacky togas , meaning they make a loss of £160.76. So, Ignite are victorious and the girls gallop off to play polo together. Whoop!
That leaves Project Manager Rocky to take Howard and motormouth James into the boardroom with him, then prove he doesn't really have any compelling reason to blame them for the disaster. James (the kind of man who says he wakes up in the morning and "tastes success in his spit" on his CV) almost talks himself into getting fired by interrupting and getting too animated, but fortunately Sir Alan can't get past the fact sandwich magnate Rocky actually made a loss -- despite the task being in his comfort zone. So, Rocky is K.O'd by Sir Alan's jabbing finger and leaves for the ignominy of a taxi cab home. He was "just too young", adds Nick in voiceover -- making me wonder why The Apprentice production team don't just select over-25s to save a lot of bother.
Should Rocky have gone? There were so many boxing-related puns just waiting to be used, so that's a shame. Even Sir Alan couldn't resist mentioning "round three" of the boardroom bout -- "adlibbed" from his BBC crib sheet of "amusing things to say". He's memorizing a script seconds before he enters the boardroom, didn't you know? And do you agree with Rocky's assessment that Sir Alan's biased to southerners, as the only northern apprentice so far has been Michelle Dewberry (who was "let go" after a few months)?
1 April 2009
BBC1, 9pm
