Last week on Junior Apprentice: Art, arrogance and arseholes.
The task opens in Amsterdam, which leads the teams to consider all the things that they’d do over there: Tim puts on a rubbish Dutch accent and Emma would sell windmills and clogs. If Adam hadn’t been sent home the other day, he’d probably have gone on a three-week drugs and hookers binge culminating in a vomiting experience over the Anne Frank museum and a hasty cover-up with Nick Hewer to prevent a diplomatic incident.
They arrive in a Dragon’s Den-esque warehouse to be confronted by a serious looking Hewer, Karren Brady and a video recording of Alan, because he can’t be arsed to fly out. Who can blame him, KLM are rubbish. In fact, their first class bit is the same as the rest of the plane but with a curtain drawn across so the snobs don’t have to look at the plebs.
Six designers each demo two products for them, hilariously including:
A hat made of human hair
“Just a dog bed on legs”
A cutlery set for one person, which comes in a box “with a small story about the cutlery”
Organic baby comforters that can be tied into a rabbit or an elephant
Each team pick two, which they’ll then sell on to some English shops, in a sort of “y’know, you don’t have to actually buy them, you can just pretend you’d buy millions and we’ll win the task” way.
Both teams pick a set of bikes made by Batavus, who, if you weren’t such a scummer, you’d have heard of. Kirsty and Tim win it by giving away their first choice – the mad cutlery. They end up with the bikes and a dog walker and bed combo. Arjun, mad lipstick Zoe and Emma Walker, 16, sells eggs and sweets, have the cutlery in combo with with some lamps, and those shit baby cloths.
Time to make some calls to companies. Tim is asked “where are you calling from?” to which the literal tit says “Highbury.” “And which company…”
Zoe is a massive arsewipe again, whining when project manager Arjun asks her opinion, and whining when he doesn’t. The poor guy can’t win. If he asks her to do something, she kicks up a fuss because he’s not being decisive, but if he tells her, then her problem with authority kicks in, and she becomes an eye rolling Stone Cold Steve Austin.
Both teams pitch to House of Fraser, who are inexplicably deliberately not mentioned by name, but their logo is launched onto the screen. Their purchasing team are arseholes, saying that the kids’ toys looks like dishcloths, and dismissing Tim with a quick “Where do bikes fit into our stores?” “They don’t”.
Tim pronounces the name of the bike wrong, calling it a Bratavus, which is probably Freudian. He’s ace though, stumbling through the doors trying to carry both bikes at the same time while Kirsty watches on gormlessly. He tells us of his negotiating strategy, which he’s proud of, because he uses it to win at Monopoly. Nice one Tim. Just buy the orange ones, everyone knows that. Monopoly is even more boring than bloody backgammon.
When Arjun is asked about the cutlery kit for one, he says that it’s for people who like to live alone. Brilliant. A cutlery set for serial killers. Yeah, let’s sell them knives. He manages to sell 60 baby cloths though, at which he runs along and does that jumping-heel-clicking thing that probably has a name. This was the moment we absolutely loved Arjun and totally wanted him to win.
Kirsty takes the dog tat to a pet shop called Jumanji, which they’ve definitely bought the naming rights for, and the rights to the logo, which they rip off completely. Ah, if you don’t care about copyright infringement, may as well go all out and do it on the telly.
Back to the boardroom, where the two stores they pitched to have made pretend purchases, which are totalled up with their personally made sales.
Team Tim pull ahead ?2,700 to ?1,100 based on personal sales, but from the knobs at House of Fraser, Team Arjun make another ?9,000 to Tim’s nothing. Arjun’s wee face lights up like a kid at Christmas or, alternatively, like Arjun at Christmas. Finally the other store, whose name we missed, but the woman was really nice. Arjun got nothing, so Tim needs ?7,500 to win. And somehow, he pulled off ?37,000 worth of sales – an Apprentice record.
Arjun’s face falls, while Tim and Kirsty go back to the house. There’s no prize for winning this week, but they have the evening alone together to do whatever comes naturally to them. Table football, it seems.
Zoe and Emma Walker, 16, sells sweets and eggs turn on Arjun (in both senses, probably), and whine again about him not asking their opinions. They take the tried and tested Blame the PM approach, which is in-keeping with Alan’s arbitrary approach to saying either “you are the project manager, you should have kept her in check” or “you should have done the negotiation, it’s your fault”.
In Emma’s version of the task, she told Arjun repeatedly what to do, and he ignored her because he’s a crazy mofo and that’s just the way he rolls. Humbly, he says “I’m not the best businessman in the world”, which is refreshingly honest compared to Zoe, who would argue that she’s the best businesswoman in the universe of all time, ever and then roll her eyes when Alan dares to smile.
Emma realises she’s going, and warns that even though she’s “not the best seller” (of anything that’s not sweets and eggs), she “really wants this”. Ah, the X Factor defence. A classic. All she needed to add was “this means so much to me” and have Dermot O’Leary hug her while Cheryl Cole sobs. Instead, Alan gives her the “regrettably, you’re fired” niceness.
He also sticks his boot into Zoe repeatedly, pointing out what a horrendous turd she is, the domineering, eye rolling ball of makeup. This gets lost in translation back at the house, where she claims he said “lots of positive things.” Mm-hm.
So, poor Emma won’t be in tonight’s final, which is a shame, because it’s a task selling eggs and sweets.
This was brought to you by Nik Johnson from Shouting At Cows, whose name we’ve decided to spell correctly this week.
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Abhinay says
Unfortunately missed this episode, but that was one of the best reviews of anything that I’ve read in my entire life! Massive props to you Nik! It was my first visit to hecklerspray and you’ve now got another regular reader.
Shaun says
Nik Johnson, you are brilliant!
As a firm hater of zoe, i loved the comparison between her and [the legendary] stone cold.
Looking forward to your review of the final
Vicki says
Fantastic stuff, cant wait to read the final coverage tonight!
Jesse says
Great stuff as always, hope youll be covering the adult version as well.
Mark says
“Buy the orange ones…” classic strategy!