Apprentice Week 1 Review

Week one review by Ian Walsh

So here we have it then, the adventures of Ireland’s answer to Sir Alan Sugar. The search for his apprentice has begun. Week one, task one and naturally when you have 7 men and 7 women, its Boys vs Girls.

Where better to start than the place Bill grew up; on Moore Street selling fruit. €350 for each team, and profit is expected to be made ‘and I am not talking about Moses’ quips Bill.

Ooooh hello? This is new, ahh its Ireland & its TV3….the ad-breaks, no less than 3 of course, but it gives anyone who can’t sit still for an hour a chance to pop the kettle on, which I didn’t do.

Right, team names & project managers are what we need now. The boys go for Dynamo & it is Mark (who sounds like he smokes 40-a-day) from Dublin to lead the lads. Brave man! The ladies come up with Pheonix and its a very confident Joanna who leads them. Lads being lads try to get one up on the girls by raiding the house of all the fruit, a little bit sneaky, but thats the cut throat world of business for ya !

Something that made me chuckle was the sign the boys had for their stand ‘fruits from the suits’ - these boys are well up for it !!

Mark certainly sounded at home on Moore Street while the rest of the troops went off selling to hairdressers. Got fruit to sell? I know, let’s go to the hairdressers!

The task forced me to ask the question ‘what is the price of fruit today?’ €20 to €30 for a box sounds a bit Irish (excuse the pun).

4.30pm, boardroom time, and who do we see? Bill’s very own Francis. Its the girls who win the task, be it by only €15.03, leaving the lads feeling dejected and one of them to be fired. Like the UK show, three people aren’t safe and they are Mark, David & Ronan.

David was without doubt the weakest during the task for me was told by Cullen ‘he lost the plot’ and became the first candidate to hear the famous words ” YOU’RE FIRED”

Joanna stood out as someone who is very strong leader and a good candidate for the job, I also like Mark’s spirit through the task giving it 110%.

I can see Bill is going to be great with the quotes and we will probably fill a blog with his wise words by the end of the series.

So, 13 candidates remain, Bill Cullen’s search for his apprentice has begun. Cue the bitchiness next week!

Rated 4/5 on Sep 23 2008

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LouderVoice review tags: irish, apprentice, week, one, review, bill, cullen, fruit, selling, task

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Phew, the technology worked to make the Apprentice Live Blog earlier this evening a great way to watch the show. Live blogs are normally not interactive, but this one certainly was!  Tricky  to keep up with the show, write some comments and click the “publish” button for all the other comments coming. 

Ian is going to have a review of the show for tomorrow so be sure to drop back to check it out.

A good idea came at the end of the live blog to rotate the hosting of it each week, so next week the torch is passed to Deborah, followed by Lottie and then Gav.

Want to host the live blog ? just raise yer hand I’ll give you a free training course in using Cover it Live.

I will be live blogging the Apprentice Ireland this evening and it will appear right here!

TV3 finally have their Apprentice website live.

So far, so similar to the BBC version in terms of the type of candidate up for the job. Sales, marketing and PR qualifications feature heavily.

Standout quote for me has to be from Avril Daly, a 24 year old recruitment consultant from Cork.

Her quote “The amount of money I have and earn decides my status in society” would make for a very interesting debate but it’s definitely not my philosophy.

I’m going out on a total limb to suggest the winner of the Apprentice will be Mark O’Rourke from Dublin. He looks like a young Bill Cullen, talks like Bill and that will probably appeal to him. I’m saying this having not seen a single episode of course, but there’s no harm in making a wild assed guess

The red tops are going to find it very easy to find embarassing photographs of the candidates. Several of them have bebo accounts which are open for all to view.

Ian Walsh (above) is going to be reviewing tomorrow’s Apprentice, so stay tuned to this channel for the review. Thanks Ian, looking forward to reading what you think!

As previously mentioned, the Apprentice Ireland kicks off on Monday 22^nd on TV3 at 9pm.

The Irish Sun had a little piece today with some information on some of the candidates.

Over the course of the series we will get to know :

“A salesman who flogged cars to the US army, an award winning business graduate, a street smart boss who has no formal qualifications and a ruthless marketing specialist with 10 years’ experience”

Speaking about the candidates, Bill Cullen said : “I think they will make for interesting TV”

You THINK Bill? That doesn’t sound very upbeat does it. Not at all like the positive, gung ho, can do, just do it Bill that we know.

The TV3 website for the show is still not functional. Is it ever going to function?  It’s really a complete fail that they haven’t even updated the page to say when the show starts, or put a promotional teaser trailer on.

It’s coming. The much anticipated Irish version of the Apprentice.

TV3 can’t be bothered to update their website or do any online promotion of it, so here’s me doing it with thanks to Animoto (my new favourite toy).

You’ll notice on the video annotation that I’m looking for someone to help with reviewing it.

If you plan on watching it and either don’t have a blog OR you have a blog but don’t do airy fairy telly stuff on it – get in contact if you’d like to do a review here.

I hope it’s good…

Had an old dear yesterday telling me some “quare fella” was hassling her on Moore Street to buy a banana. There’s nothing odd in that I thought, there must be plenty of quare fellas on Moore Street selling bananas of every shape and size.

“There were cameras there and everything, and they wanted me to sign a form and I wouldn’t”.

“Oh, why not”, says I.

“Ahh, I don’t like cameras, I’m not whatchamacallit, photographic”, says she.

“Ah sure, everyone says that. How much was he selling the banana for?”

“50 cent”

“50 cent? Jayz, that’s a fairly expensive banana - must have been a big one”

“They were just normal size. I don’t know the price of bananas but some other lad told me it was too much. But I bought 2 of them for €1 in anyways”

“Go on, ye mad thing - that’s mad altogether. €1 for 2 bananas. I’d only pay 29cent for a banana myself”

“Ah sure, he looked desperate and I wanted to get rid of him”

“You did right. I wouldn’t argue with some quare fella trying to sell bananas for 50 cent. Never know what trick he’d pull next”

“True. Anyway, I’m off for a cup of tea. The weather’s desperate out isn’t it? Did you bring your brolly today”

“I did. Enjoy your tea and bananas”

“He he, I will love, I will. Might see you tomorrow.”

Jazz Biscuit has the answer as to what was actually going, and solves the banana mystery for me. Thank you JB.

Ah, I remember the good old days. Wednesday nights at 9pm. Keeping my fingers crossed that the TV reception would hold up. Feeling totally inadequate as a business person watching the talented candidates in action. Humming along with the theme tune. Saying the words “the search for Sir Alan’s apprentice continues” along with the voiceover guy. Taking the lift from the entertainment room in the basement to the penthouse level to write the blog post.

Relaxing into the La-Z-Boy with the notebook on my lap. Watching the twinkling of the stars out over the bay. Rachmaninov playing gently in the background as an accompaniment to the clickety clack of the keyboard. Words floating effortlessly onto the screen. Ignoring the calls of my stunning East European girlfriend (who bears a striking resemblance to Cameron Diaz, but with a really sexy accent) to come to bed. “10 more minutes Tatiana, I promise. I hope you’re wearing that red satin corset with the matching thong and stockings that I bought you in Paris last week”…

Wow, what a roundabout way to introduce two Apprentice related snippets… It was a nice dream though.

First snippet:

Nick Hewer has a blog – he’s on the 10,000 mile Mongol rally for charity. He was kind enough to send me an email to tell me about it.

And Lee McQueen calls in sick on his first day. Oh My God….

That is all.