Now on Facebook

A group for Bill Cullen fans everywhere…and there are quite a few of you…I’m sure of it.
A group for anyone who has read the bible according to Bill “It’s a long way from Penny Apples”
A group for anyone who’s fond of a plate of coddle and a penny apple.
A group for anyone who finds a Saturday afternoon isn’t complete without a trip to Hector Grey’s.

If you fancy a bit of coddle, head on over and join “If I meet Bill Cullen my life will be complete” group.

Looks like you might be a new visitor to le craic. If you like what you see here and fancy some daily diversions delivered to your favourite feed reader, why not click to join Club le craic. Go raibh maith agat! Thanks a thousand!

Keep an eye on this site - might become a useful source for Irish Apprentice related news - or not, as the case may be. The domain owner is hidden, so it could very well be the bould Bill himself taking his first foray into the world of blogging. That would be great altogether.

Linking to the Welcome page to alert the owner of the domain that they need to do something about the home page which is displaying some sort of “come all ye hackers” welcome mat.

Welcome to the Irish blogging community whoever you are and especially welcome if you can dig out lots of juicy Irish Apprentice related news over the coming months.

After the day I’ve had, I found it hard to keep my eyes open to watch the final outing of this years search for the “best business talent in Britain”. All I wanted to do this evening was retire to bed after my soup and crackers dinner. I’d probably have given it a miss only for the fact that I started blogging about and so, it would be totally unforgiveable to miss the wrap up party. So here I am in my jim jams for one final fling with my take on tonights episode

I was quite disappointed to learn that I am in the minority when it comes to buying fragrances. Apparantly, 80% of fragrances are bought by women for their men. That leaves me in the 20% minority of independent men who like to smell like they want to smell, and not what a woman wants them to smell like. Ok, well actually in my case it’s the fact that I don’t have a woman to buy me fragrances, but that’s not important right now. For those who want to know what I smell like - it’s alternating on a daily basis between Hugo Boss Pure and D&G The One - go out and smell them for me and tell me if I made a good choice.

Back to the Apprentice though. Our Jennifer was the last one picked for the team, poor girl. I had flashbacks of my own primary school experience of being picked last or second last for games. Used to hate that - if teachers still subject kids to that, I’d like to give them a swift kick up the you know where and tell them it does nothing for a kids confidence to be picked last every time. Anywhoo, I digress once again.

The pairing of Alex and Helene was a match made in hell but I think Alex paired with anyone else would have produced similar results. Claire and Lee started out positively and maintained a good relationship right to the end.

Reading a piece in the Daily Mail today about all 4 finalists, Helene said that she is totally different “in real life” (my words in quotes there). The Mail reporter also said she was very positive and sunny. Where the hell was this sunny and positive aspect of her? She couldn’t have been more dour and negative is she tried. At least Alex gave some effort to be positive. They were damn lucky that the designer came up with the idea of the dual bottle, otherwise their presentation was heading for disaster and total embarrassment.

Initially, I thought that the Roulette idea from Claire and Lee was promising. When I saw the ad and how they decked out the presentation area I changed my mind. Lee got a little bit carried away with his directions to the models during the film shoot and there is obviously a career for him as a porn film director if things don’t work.

Comedy moment of the night was Lee telling the assembled perfume experts that his target market was the man “who wanted to smell like a man”. I swear Sir Alan had tears in his eyes and was trying his hardest to maintain his stern exterior.

From the very severe editing of the presentations, I did think Claire handled herself very well. Lee did ok too but clearly wasn’t comfortable at all. Alex was as wet a lettuce and inspired about as much enthusiasm as that most pointless of all vegetables. Helene might as well have had a straight jacket on for all the emotion she showed. They did get positive feedback on the bottle design though, which was a plus, and I thought this was a sure sign their team would win.

Into the boardroom for the final showdown and all I will say is that if there was any justice in this whole 12 week jamboree, Simon Shaw should have got the job. A genuine and decent chap who didn’t get a fair crack of the whip because he’s too decent. I hope someone has hired him and I wish him well in the future.

Claire and Lee emerged as the victorious team sending Alex off to cry and Helene to fade into the wallpaper. At this point I figured it was going to be Claire who got the job. Lee managed to string a fair few coherent sentences together which he must have been “PWACTICING” for a long time to get right. Claire wouldn’t need to practice any lines because she was born with a lump of Blarney Stone lodged in her throat. According to the Daily Mail article today, this runs in the family. I can only imagine how mind blowingly annoying her family get togethers must be.

Confounding my prediction of either Claire or Alex winning, Sir Alan pointed to Lee and crowned him the Apprentice. I’m pwetty sure he wanted to cry, but that would dent his hard man image. Instead, he held his head down and then embraced Claire. I don’t think he said thanks to the man who made him his Apprentice, which was very odd.

I’m relieved it’s all over and thoroughly depressed at the outcome. I’m struggling to see what Lee has that makes him the Apprentice. I’m struggling to understand what Sir Alan sees in him. But then, I’m not a multi-millionaire businessman. I’m just a fraction of that, but I tell you what, I still think I’d have made a better choice if it was me doing the hiring.

So, that’s it then. The journey is over and we can reclaim our Wednesday nights and ponder over all those business lessons of the past 12 weeks. But hey, we’ve had some laughs, and tears haven’t we?. We skipped the light fandago, turned cartwheels ‘cross the floor…

Nighty night folks, and thanks for reading/commenting over the last few weeks.

It is slightly redundant for me to now post details this late in the day on how to apply for the Irish Apprentice, given that Jazz Biscuit has already covered it, but I think I should anyway as I mentioned it on Sunday and got great amusement making up the graphic and coming up with the “First one to mention penny apples is fired” line I don’t think Bill Cullen should bother with the whole competition though. Instead he should just hire me for my amazing ability to come up with amazingly funny lines like that.

That isn’t the end of my talent though. I could also make posters and things for his garages or take photos of him at various society events and photoshop him for public viewing (double chin no more) or I could set up a blog for him and make it look nice or I could video him at his seminars and create the DVD’s. Yes Billy boy, if you’re reading this I can do lots of things like that and a lot more but you won’t be seeing me at the interviews as I just couldn’t perform with a camera shoved in my face. Your loss is my sanity.

Dirk Diggler types (he had no problem performing in front of the camera) can apply to become Bill Cullen’s Apprentice and bag a €100,000 salaried job for a year on the TV3 website. Just fill in the form. Make sure and read the terms and conditions and be comfortable that if you get through to the televised stage, you will be the production company’s bitch and they can do what they want with you, allegedly (just thought I’d throw that in there á la Have I Got News for You).

I predict there are going to be a lot of Estate agenty and buildery types applying for this show. The show will air in the autumn.

As you’re no doubt aware, tomorrow night is the finale - it’s the one where someone (hard to believe this year, I know) gets hired. In 24 hours time we shall know who the mighty Sugar will crown as his Apprentice. But before all that, you get one final pre Apprentice show Apprentice bits.

Paul Groves looks back over this series ahead of tomorrow’s show and can’t pick a winner. Not because he can’t but because he doesn’t rate them. I tend to agree and think this series doesn’t have any stand outs like previous ones.

Trey Azam has the same opinion - but he IS going to say that isn’t he. Clever guy though.

The editor in chief of Reader’s Digest magazine has a very interesting take on reality TV and why Lucinda was never going to be the Apprentice.

‘Entrepreneurial expert’, Guy Kingston believes the Apprentice could lead to poorly run companies. Don’t see it myself, you would want to be a pretty naive individual to think running a business was anything like the Apprentice.

Previous apprentice winner, Michelle Dewberry has a new boyfriend who is a very well heeled friend of Prince William.

Claire and Lee dating apparantly, unless they are just perfecting dinosaur impressions together.

I didn’t get to see the programme “Why I fired them”, where Sir Alan gives his reasons for firing the candidates this series. Britishtvblog has a review of the programme. The only person Sir Alan regretted firing was Lucinda :

“He acknowledged that she was very intelligent and if she could settle down would run a division for him incredibly well. But he doubted she would ever settle.”

A fair enough comment I think.

That’s a full lid for this weeks bits. Don’t miss the final now…