Sir Alan sent the teams to the TV channel's HQ in... er, Peterborough; Yasmina led Empire with Debra and James, while Howard led Ignite with Lorraine and Kate. The first order of business was to actually choose products to sell. It's a crucial element of the whole process, but this was predictably where one team ultimately fell down.
Yasmina insisted that Empire choose cheaper items, so they could just concentrate on selling their hearts out for the win. So, their most expensive item was a "grabasaurus" (a leaf collector) for £24.99, with head scarves and hair-crunches even cheaper. Ignite went in the opposite direction for the most part, with an expensive chip fryer and leaf-adorned leather jackets, and backed it up with an infrared "air guitar" toy and, bizarrely, a plastic cat you attach sequins to! Sir Alan summed it up perfect: "dodgy product, that."
After some rehearsals of varying quality (Kate tongue-tied while demonstrating a sat-nav, Lorraine distracted by the earpiece chatter, Yasmina and James flirting), each team's live hour was upon them. Sadly, Yasmina and James' double-act soured when the cameras went live and they made a bad error in claming a product worth £17.99 was up for sale at £9.99 -- but their effort did inspire a viewer from Lancashire to fire off an email to the channel about their new "comedy hour".
You'd have thought Kate would have breezed through this task with her photogenic looks and personable nature, but beyond picking her team some good products, she was quite stilted in front of the cameras -- although she redeemed herself slightly when rocking-out with the infrared guitar gizmo, to the amusement of the camera crew watching.
Lorraine and Howard were pretty good as a double-act, but their technique put the emphasis on appearing good-humoured to viewers and didn't really push the prices, phone numbers and website enough. Too much chatter, not enough hard facts and selling.
Debra was easily the biggest surprise of the whole task. Everyone expected a dislikeable dragon act to roar in front of the camera, scaring away viewers with her brash attitude, but she was surprisingly well-mannered and quite a tranquil screen presence! Of all the candidates, Debra felt most like a professional TV presenter who could get herself a job doing this. There's always one every year, isn't there!
In the boardroom, Sir Alan was in the rare position of having seen the team's performances on the live TV broadcast himself. He congratulated Howard's Ignite for choosing the more expensive products, as that was the direction to take when selling to thousands of people at once. If even a small fraction buy an item, they stood a chance of winning the task. Yasmina was criticized for choosing trivial items of low value, but the results actually gave them a shock win -- meaning Ignite lost on pure lack of salesmanship. Debra's sterling effort propelled Yasmina's team to an improbable win, really. Interestingly, Yasmina's now become the first person be winning project manager three times in UK Apprentice history!
Howard, Lorraine and Kate were brought back to explain themselves as Empire went off to be given an aerial acrobatics experience (no vomiting, sadly.) Sir Alan zoned in on Howard's refusal to take risks throughout the competition -- having this week been given the option of selecting an expensive animatronic dinosaur to sell (a product championed by Lorraine.) Oracle Lorraine herself was again criticized for failing to act on her gut-feeling (which is often proven right), while Kate was labeled a disappointment in a task that should have spoken to her excellent presenting/pitching skills. She looked the part, but this was an unfortunate blip for my personal favourite to win. Yasmina seems to be pushing ahead of the pack now.
Anyway, Sir Alan decided to fire Howard for being too damn dependable and consistent. In these credit-crunch times, Amstrad need a maverick and a risk-taker, apparently. Isn't that what got us into the banking crisis to begin with? While it's been nice to see Howard step out of the shadows in recent weeks, he was never going to win the show, so at least we've still got the entertainment-value of Lorraine (who should have been fired.)
So, next week it's the excruciating "job interview" task. If you thought you were squirming this week, you'll be a human-pretzel in seven days. I can't see Lorraine surviving this one, as I have a suspicion that James may scrape through on likeability. Kate, Yasmina and Debra will get through, but Kate is less hardnosed than the others girls... she may wobble. It should be fun to see Debra whatever happens -- the superbitch will either turn to jelly in the face of older, experienced businessmen talking to her in a condescending way... or she'll flip the whole situation on its head and leave Sir Alan's henchmen licking their wounds when she launches into righteous ranting.
My prediction for the last week? Undoubtedly an all-girl finale; most likely Yasmina vs. Kate. But possibly Yasmina vs. Debra. It depends on how much Sir Alan wants to risk keeping Debra in play. He seems keen to hire someone with a nonconformist attitude this year, in the misguided belief that's what the business world needs right now.
27 May 2009, BBC1 @9pm
