Apprentice blog: Episode Five

“Never mind Logic, you should be branded Tragic.”

Certainly there was a touch of Shakespearean tragedy about this week’s Apprentice. As the curtain fell, the stage was strewn with casualties, with self-proclaimed-Romeo, Vincent, and reluctant-Juliet, Ellie, both taken out by Lord Sugar, whilst the Machiavellian Jim was left badly wounded.

This week’s task was typical of The Apprentice, as the teams had to create, brand and launch a pet food in a matter of days. A daunting task for most people, but not for Sugar’s gang of world-beating, business-loving, friends-of-Gandhi.

The ill-fated Team Logic, led by Vincent, was tackling dog food, whilst Team Venture, fronted by Glenn, was attempting to enter the market for cat food. As is tradition, the title of Team Leader quickly went to both men’s heads, as they both dismissed their market research and sub-team’s advice and went with their own ‘excellent’ ideas.

In fairness to Vincent, he may have thought his opinion was better informed than most as he had really been trying to get into the mindset of a dog throughout the episode by spending most of it sniffing round Jim’s arse. This meant Team Logic was stuck with Jim’s brand of ‘Every Dog’- which attempted to sell itself to every dog (Jim clearly a fan of the Ronsil approach), despite being told this was an entirely unfeasible idea.

Elsewhere, Glenn had the far brighter idea of basing his whole business model upon a tenuous pun. Team Venture’s cat food was called CatSize, with the tagline ‘See Their Light’. Despite the guffaws of his team mates and having to repeatedly explain the clever link he’d made between Cat’s Eyes, light, and weight-loss, Glenn was sure he was on to a winner (and, against all odds, he was).

The adverts on The Apprentice are always terrible, and this week was no exception. Glenn, for example, settled for what looked like an amateur home video of a cat wandering around. Vincent, meanwhile, had put Natasha in charge of his apparently far more successful advert. The advertising executives, and even Lord Sugar himself, thought that the dog jumping up and down in Natasha’s advert was the greatest moment in comedy since Del Boy fell through that bar.

Despite Natasha’s best efforts, Team Logic lost. Again. Whilst Team Venture’s advert was poor, they were (rightly) judged to have the better product and packaging. This left Vincent and his team-mate Tom on the losing team for the fifth time in a row.

The final boardroom was the best of the series so far. Vincent neglected to bring back bum-chum Jim, despite him being somewhat savaged by Sugar: ‘I’ve got your card marked, son’, he menaced. It seems the Irishman’s luck has finally run out. I had Jim down as a real contender, but I think he may be just as conceited as the rest of the candidates and his days are now surely numbered. Still bloody charming though.

With Vincent dangling by a thread, Lord Sugar unexpectedly fired Ellie. Ellie didn’t really do much wrong, but Sugar suggested that was because she didn’t really do anything at all. But they’re made of stern stuff these northerners, and Ellie took her dismissal unnervingly well. ‘Okay’ was her perfunctory remark, as she acted like she hadn’t just lost her chance to win £250,000.

Thankfully Lord Sugar hadn’t gone completely mad, and went on to fire Vincent. Vincent’s refusal to bring Jim back riled his Lordship, who thought that the Belgian waffler didn’t appreciate the ‘dog eat dog’ world of business - ‘excuse the pun’, Sugar apologised, without a hint of irony. ‘I’m sending back a message’ he informed a worried Natasha, who was frantically trying to remember if there had ever been a triple firing, as Lord Sugar made it clear that he means business.

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