The Apprentice 2012 Thread

I've just caught up with last night's episode on iPlayer.

I have to agree with Natasha "Chairman Mao" Whittam and Sluffy. No justification for not sacking Jade. For about the third or fourth time out of seven shows, the sacking seemed to have nothing to do with the task.

The thing that annoys me about this task is the smugness and self righteousness with which Alan Sugar says it is easy to make money by going out at the start of the day with £150 and converting it into £800-£900.

In real life, even if you had the capital to buy a van, you would then have to pay for a trade card for the wholesalers, fuel and running costs for the van, pay 5-6 people minimum wage (£6.08 per hour per person), pay the market and the shopping centre a pitch fee (they were in Lakeside FFS - that pitch on a Saturday afternoon would have cost hundreds), and then pay tax on your profits.

Oh and if you're there the next day or every day of the week you will get returns, complaints etc.

It's easy to look at gross margins and think "oh wow, £150 becomes £900 just by buying a load of shit and knocking it out", but it's not that simple.

Another problem with The Apprentice is that winning the task seems almost random. This week the winning team screwed up pretty badly (having no stock to sell at one point) but still made more money by selling lots of over-priced fake tan.

It gets even worse when the teams pitch a product. How could Virgin Leisure seriously think the team trying to sell them exercise classes which entailed buying a lot of space hoppers and other crap represented a viable business proposition? The other two leisure outfits saw that storage would be a major issue and were not prepared to buy the space hoppers (even at made up below actual cost prices). In the real world they would never have given them any money.

The best example of this kind of nonsense occurred in a previous series when the team pitching the weaker product simply lied at their final pitch and said that there was a major tv advertising campaign. Result the supermarket ordered thousands of this non-existant product and they won.

What's more difficult is predicting who will win or not - the editing is absolutely ruthless and geared to creating the idea in viewers minds that it's on a knife edge. They present criteria all of which could be a reason to sack any number of candidates and ultimately it comes across as a random decision. Watched this week's gripping instalment last night and both teams were shit, and any of the 3 losers could have been sacked. Bum information, weak and easily swayed PM, doing SFA - - surely they should have sacked all 3 and fessed up that the candidates couldn't run free pie shop in Wigan.

Reebok Trotter wrote:I missed it due to a pressing engagement elsewhere so I didn't see all the dynamics.

Watch it here RT -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01h8qt6/The_Apprentice_Series_8_Flip_it_in_Essex/

Love this intelligent thread. Not sarcasm. Also not sarcasm. I am so impressed that people are on here having a decent chat. Oh until I just posted this.

Anyone still interested? I will watch tonight because they are going to be selling modern art which is always good for a laugh, but somehow I don't really care any more who wins or gets fired. Even Adam only annoys me a bit.

Of course I'm interested, my whole Wednesday is geared around it.

Laura needs a smack across the face, I'm hoping she gets the punt tonight.

Nope, this season has bored me senseless!

Now they are art experts. Adam has done well for a fruit n veg seller.

Just caught up with this week's helping of The Apprentice.

It's not been the most interesting series so far, but this week's was a really left field task. It is good that they're trying to do something differently.

The conversations with the artists were very interesting. In conversations between people on deeply artistic and aesthetic matters, there is an incredibly fine line between a dialogue between two passionate, enthusiastic people sharing a vision for the nuances of creativity and a conversation between one such person and another who is trying to sound knowledgeable, but is unfortunately blowing smoke up the other person's arse. The conversations between Tom and the artists were just like this.

I've known a lot of arty-farty people over the years. When there's something I don't know anything about being discussed, I use my ears and mouth in the appropriate proportions. I listen, learn, try to ask pertinent questions and try to relate it to fields with which I am familiar. What Tom sought to do was to have a 50/50 conversation and fill in the natural gap in the conversation with an A to Z on everything he knows about art.

I thought the interactions with the general public were a grade above the usual level of embarrassment, I went through a whole episode without cringing, which makes a pleasant change. The highlight of the episode was the conversation between one of the female candidates and two lads who had wanderered in, with a beer in their hands. "Do you like any of the works?" "No". Brilliant. This would be me if I had wandered in. "I'm not spending £175 on any of this shit, but I will drink your lager" type attitude.

The right person got fired. The problem with Laura is that she is Scottish, she is full of shit, she fancies herself, and she failed on the task. She had no defence in the boardroom scenes. Sugar got it right.

4 weeks left, I am still backing Adam/Jon Voight as my favourite candidate. Not to win, but the one I would most like to win.

Adam from The Apprentice






John Voight as Joe Buck in the seminal film 'Midnight Cowboy'

largehat wrote:

The right person got fired. The problem with Laura is that she is Scottish, she is full of shit, she fancies herself, and she failed on the task. She had no defence in the boardroom scenes. Sugar got it right.

That pretty much sums up the last episode. I hope Adam wins it.

I've hated Laura since she announced she was an attractive businesswoman. She is neither.

My personal favourite is Gabrielle, but she won't win as she's not ruthless enough. Bug eyes is now bugging me and must go next. Ricky Martin is ok, I think he will win.

There can be no winners in this game. Fact.

wanderlust wrote:There can be no winners in this game. Fact.

Why do you say that?

We have Bug eyes and Cod eyes ( Ricky Martin ).

Natasha makes a salient point about bug eyes. His brainwave about having a live art show where people can't see the artist, because it would "be like Banksy" was nearly as retarded a phone call as when Katie phoned up and suggested trying to charge £7.99 for the meatballs outside Tyncastle.

Cod Eyes ( Livin' la Vida Loca ) is giving it big licks in the English sparkling wine challenge.

Jenna's accent is not helping matters. I think it is her turn for the brown finger.

It's the eyes versus the mouth versus the voice.

Jenna's Preston patois let her down.