Apprentice Watch - Week 6 - The one with the apostrophe

Writing by aj@lecraic on Wednesday, 30 of April , 2008 at 11:29 pm

Cor blimey, it’s 6.30  and I didn’t get much feather and flip last night. It’s that old tart Sir Alan’s secretary on the dog and bone and she wants me down the old ‘ackney road. The ‘addock and bloaters will be ‘ere by 7 bells.

Doesn’t make much sense to me either and you’ll have to do the translation yourself but it’s all in honour of the annual trip down memory lane for Sir Alan. The candidates all met him in Hackney Town Hall right in the heart of the East End of London. It’s Sir Alan’s roots and nobody should forget that he comes from the school of hard knocks.  He told the candidates that his birth and marriage are registered there and that they’ll put him in an early grave, or something. Ha, ha, ha everyone laughed while we were treated to a close up of Jennifer Maguires rather large roman nose in the harsh winter sunlight.

This weeks task – come up with a totally new occasion for greeting cards, design them and then pitch the idea to 3 leading card sellers (Tesco, Celebrations and Clinton Cards).

Michael Sophocles was appointed team lead of Alpha with Matt Lucas (sorry, Kevin Shaw) leading team Renaissance.

I loved Kevin’s talking head piece this week. He inspires devotion and is inspirational – which sounds rather saint like. He had his first house before he was blah and second house at blah and then a porsche before he was 23. He is going to be the most successful businessman the world has ever seen by the time he is 40. That’s a lot to live up to when you have the handicap of looking like Matt Lucas and sounding vaguely like Worzel Gummidge.

Michael Sophocles painted a lovely picture of himself when he said he would screw anyone over to win. Nice trait to have that and very marketable, if you’re looking for a job as a ruthless for-hire hit man.

After what seemed like very little discussion or brainstorming from either team, they came up with their respective ideas for the new occasions. Alpha, led by Michael, decided on a Singles Day event to be held on February 13th. Worzel’s team came up with an environmental theme for their cards…

Singles day was an ok idea, but cards about the environment? Difficult to see how they could ever sell and this was the bright idea of her with the chin (Jenny Celerier).

Alex really showed his hand this week. Oh yes, he’s playing the game alright. He almost chewed the side of his jaw off sitting between Jenny and Sara while they had a bit of a contretemps about god knows what on the way to the graphic designer. There he sat, in all his prettiness wanting soooo badly to shout at the pair of them or possibly poke them both in eye, but he kept it all bottled in. I fear for his mental health, and that he is going to explode at the most inappropriate time and possibly take a flame thrower into the board room with him and unleash hell. I just don’t know what he’s doing on the show – is it to be talent spotted by a modeling agency perhaps?

Back to Michael’s team who spent an impossible to believe 3 1/2 hours trying to decide on where to put the apostrophe in the word Singles. Without looking it up, I would have said no apostrophe needed. Michael went on a hunt for the answer that involved ringing libraries, bookstores, authors, Chris Tarrant, Carol Vordeman and the editor of the Telegraph newspaper (maybe not all of those, but it seemed like it) He never did get a definitive answer.

Then it was on to pitching the cards to the buyers. Worzel did his best, but he’s lighter than lightweight and the person who does pitches for a living (Claire) didn’t seem to relish the idea of showing us all how good she is. In truth, trying to pitch cards about the environment to card sellers was a non starter.  Raef was passable delivering his pitches on Singles day but boy does he waffle. Apparently it is cool to be single and singletons are a forgotten part of society!

Cutting to the chase (as I realise I am now waffling) – Alpha won the task with their Singles Day card. The order of 19,500 cards from Celebrations sealed the deal for them and they were treated to a piano performance from Mylene Klaas. Is there no end to her talent? Didn’t know she could play piano as well as being the most famous mum in Britain and the face of M&S and so many other things.

Boardroom saw Kevin bring in Claire and Sara. I think he thought the ganging up on Sara earlier made her the weaker candidate and I really thought she was going to get fired. I don’t think Alex spoke a word and he managed to keep his jaw chewing habit at bay for the duration. Kevin was shown the door for his stupidity in not bringing Jenny back in to the boardroom. I reckon she would have been fired if he brought her in. I’ll bet he’s kicking the tires of his Porsche had tonight! The stupid banker that he is.

Until next week….

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Category: the apprentice

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