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"What I've forgotten about bullshit, you haven't even learned yet."
In this week’s enjoyable episode of The Apprentice, the candidates had to launch a ‘Freemium’ Magazine’ - a magazine that relied solely on advertising for its revenue. Lord Sugar set up three agencies for the teams to pitch to, with the team that sold its advertising space for the most money being declared the winner.
Sugar decided to pick the team leaders for this task, which saw Natasha leading Team Logic, and Jim put in charge of Team Venture. Pushed for time, both managers quickly settled on an idea. Jim chose to target his magazine at the over-60s, whilst Natasha and her crew decided to create a lads' mag.
“Lads' mags... are about lads, yeah.” Natasha revealed to her team; Melody, at least, was taking mental notes. Natasha was similarly annoying throughout this week’s episode, as she went about with her sleeves rolled up, punctuating every line of manic speech with endless ‘yeahs’ like some kind of coked-up, cockney hack from the 1980s. Jim’s team weren’t fairing much better. Unsurprisingly, their focus group didn’t want a condescending magazine called ‘Zimmer,’ full of knitting patterns and crosswords: "Don’t stereotype us,” they pleaded, from their lawn bowling clubhouse.
Venture eventually settled on ‘Hip Replacement’ for their magazine title. Glenn, still riding high on the success of ‘CatSize,’ was happy to stake another task on a terrible pun. It beat ‘Coffin Dodgers’ at least. Their photo shoot was equally terrible with their cheesy shots looking like something out of a commercial for bladder weakness. Natasha’s mag, ‘Covered,’ was a far raunchier affair, mixing business and pleasure. The ‘How to make a £1000’ feature would be handy when the readers used the premium phone lines in the back of the magazine, and the nineties-style laddishness, especially the ‘How to blow your load’ article, certainly divided the advertising execs.
Team Venture’s pitches went slightly better, until they revealed the magazine’s title. And cover. Jim’s refusal to negotiate in the first pitch certainly didn’t help matters either. This showed in the boardroom when the figures for this first pitch handed Natasha and Team Logic a comprehensive victory. Natasha was über happy.
Once again, it was the subsequent boardroom battle that provided some of this week’s best moments. Jim’s hero complex reached new levels when he insisted how much his team ‘loved’ him and how he had done all the work. All the work on their crap magazine that is. Jim was determined to make Susan this week’s scapegoat. He wasn’t “just shooting Bambi,” though; the young and defenceless Susan was simply “marginally worse than Glenn.” “It was actually Bambi’s mother who got shot,” Lord Sugar corrected - the man knows his Disney.
Things got steadily worse for Jim. First, he started arguing with Nick over who said what during the task. The fact that Nick had a transcript of the conversation apparently made no odds to him. Then Susan suddenly found her voice and made a good case to stay – and Jim to go. But then Sugar started brandishing Glenn’s CV. As I said last week, once that happens, it can only mean one thing: Sugar wants you gone. In fairness, Glenn didn’t put up much of a fight – “I was social secretary at a football club,” he offered. West Ham’s Chief Executive Karen Brady didn’t appear threatened.
So, for the second week in a row, Lord Sugar performed a last minute U-turn. Glenn was sent packing and somehow Jim, the passive-aggressive control-freak, survived to fight another day.
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