Previously on Junior Apprentice: Cupcakes, cock-ends and crap cupcake costumes.
The children of the damned arrive at the David Beckham Academy for the most tenuous of reasons: the academy is there to spot the talent of the future, and that's what they?ll be doing. With art. ?I wonder if David will be there?, muses one contestant. She's disappointed. There's no David Beckham. Instead, there's a crotchety old midget in a suit, there to bark orders at them like a pissed off hedgehog.
Tim, the wolf-man that shirks responsibility at every opportunity, is project managing midget Kirsty and eerie blonde Hannah. He's not happy about being PM, and later complains that he was forced to make all the awkward decisions. The poor sod.
The other team is led by Emma Walker, 16, sells eggs and sweets. She's alongside mentally-lipsticked Zoe and midget Arjun. Approximately 0.000005 seconds into the task, Zoe has mentioned 15 times that her parents are both artists and oh god she like totally loves art and was brought up on it and totally understand what the artists feel, man.
The teams wander off to check out some artists, each picking two to display their work. Highlights include a mad lady that cat-sits for people, then is photographed in their home, with their cat, WEARING THEIR CLOTHES. That's not art, that's mental illness.
Kirsty, sent out on her own so that Hannah can hide behind Tim, doesn't impress the artists. It's like she has every single word she needs to say stored in her mouth and when she exhales, she accidentally lets them all out and bellows uncontrollably in their face. Unsurprisingly, when confronted with a choice between Kirsty’s OHMYGODARETHEYYOURPAINTINGSCANWENEGOTIATEONPRICE and Zoe?s pseudo-stoner love of the meaning behind the art, the artist picks Zoe.
Tim Ankers, deprived of the urban prints that were snatched by Zoe, takes on some landscapes and ?4k modern art, which looks like someone left MSPaint open and let a cat play with the mouse for a bit. Honestly, they were just random brushstrokes. Four bloody grand. For what? They could use the canvas as a board to play backgammon on or something.
Sales day.
Hannah is unimpressed with the residents of Brick Lane, which if you live in London is like a famous street or something. She watches the street sellers flogging tat on the floor, and wonders aloud ?Do you think we can sell art to these people?? As it turns out, the answer is no, she can't.
Tim?s team is late for the opening and still sticking up pricing. He actually gets bollocked by one of the artists for being too laid back. At one point, he even says ?it's cool, innit?, like the un-cool jumped-up little gobshite that he is.
An elderly, probably mad, art dealer wants 30% off the price of the print. She owns a gallery, you know. I think she's important, in her own mind. Her gallery has Damien Hirst and David Hockney in it. Tim goes to the artist to tell him about the dealer, and casually mentions that it'll be hanging next to Damien Hirst and Anthony Hopkins. The tit.
Zoe, whose parents are both artists, you know, singlehandedly dominates every attempted sale by her team. As soon as a question pops out of anyone?s mouth, she dives in to offer the wisdom of her years of experience. You know, the experience she got watching Grange Hill while her mum fannied about drawing some apples. Admittedly, she does have the bullshit lingo down, telling a prospective purchaser to ?get intimate with it.? While he looks at a mirror. A bloody mirror.
Her self-awareness levels are way out. She tells the rest of the team that it's amazing how well they all get on, an opinion She'll revise approximately eight seconds into the board room. Which is coming up any moment?
The Board Room
Zoe?s team-mates instantly pick on her faults, her domineeringism, her interjecting and her lipstick application methods. They haven't even been told who won, and she's rolling her eyes like a professional ceiling-starer.
As it happens, all that was premature, as they won ? taking ?6k to Tim?s team?s ?2k, which included a last minute ?1k sale. Off they go to have bespoke suits created. Arjun will unfortunately have grown out of his in six months, but it's a nice memento or something he can use if he ever buys a ventriloquist?s dummy.
Tim decides he was just unlucky, and the wrong people walked through the door. Which is fair enough, and I'm sure Lord Sugar of Clapton would be fine with that in real life. Art isn't his ?thing?, along with camping, wind and everything else he's been annoyed with.
Unfortunately, Alan bottles it. Kirsty was clearly shit ? her bellowing at the artist meant that he picked the other team. Tim is a laid-back shirker that coasts his way through stuff, and has been in the boardroom three out of four times. Hannah is inoffensive but quiet, so he boots her out for the flimsiest of reasons. Oh, waah waah, she doesn't apply her knowledge. Nurture her, help her, she's only a kid.
Tim?s a cocky arsewipe with nothing functioning behind his smug little grin, and Kirsty doesn't seem to have done anything other than bellow and alienate. But they're more interesting characters or something, so get rid of the one that doesn't make you want to launch knives into your TV.
Two more weeks, five more children of Damien.
This piece of outright majesty was a guest blog by Nik Johnson from Shouting At Cows.
Follow hecklerspray on Twitter
Michael Crane says
“They could use the canvas as a board to play backgammon on or something.”
:-)
Arthur says
This is such an immature view – how old are you? 12?
Formalhaut says
Personally I think Hannah deserved to go. She practically hid behind Tim in the majority of the tasks, and even when she was forced to go out by herself she was still rubbish. Did you see her with the flyers? She was terrible!
I think Kirsty did deserve to stay. Granted, she was pretty poor this task, even if she did her best trying to interview artists on her own with no art background. However, she did do better on the other tasks. Whilst she was in the boardroom 3 out of 4 times, she was usually the best member of that team. I thought she was the best out of the losing team in the cupcake task.
Tim is really weird. not just because of that beard. He always seem to duck out of tasks, yet Sugar seems to end up letting him pass. This task, Tim did do better, he at least tried to delegate the two others, and showed some passion to try and win the task. Still, he was not great, but I still don’t think he lost the task.
The failure of the task was without doubt the loss of the artist. Kirsty was the person who failed to impress, and Hannah jumped at the chance to repeat this. Now, Kirsty was to blame, because her sales technique went suprisingly down the drain, however I cannot wholely blame Kirsty because she was up against Zoe. Zoe is god in sales. No wonder Kirsty couldn’t get the print, because “My parents are artists and that automatically makes me one too” Zoe used all the lingo she knew to ass lick the artist’s paintings. Also, Kirsty simply was not a artsy person. I did however think she went straight to buisness. She spent almost no time actually wandering around taking the time to talk about the painting, instead she took enough notes to write an essay, leaving the artist hanging.
In the end though, over the weeks Hannah simply was just there. No offering much in ways of ideas, and not really doing much except when told to or when with her “boy – friend” Tim. And if not Hannah who would go, then I would go for Tim.
Tim is on shacky ground. Let’s hope for his sake he doesn’t fall through.