Just before last night?s Young Apprentice started, the BBC?s voice-over man promised us that it was like the Generation Game. He lied. It was absolutely nothing like the Generation Game. There were no cuddly toys, and no poor attempts at pottery, and definitely no Bruce Forsyth.
It turned out that he just meant that the teams had to try and sell things to the over-50s market, the lying bastard.
Before this week’s task started, Lord Sugar met his child-slaves at the Natural History Museum. They all thought they were doing something to do with old stuff, which was a joke that was dragged out for about 20 years. Really though, we were just amazed that the Dark Lord made them go all the way there and then didn't let them even go see the animated T-Rex. Does he not realise he is dealing with CHILDREN? And that everyone loves the T-Rex?
Once Lord Sugar had finished really labouring the ?old creatures? point, he smushed the teams around and sent Heya and Hayley over to Atomic. Where Heya became team leader purely because she's spent some time with her gran. Over at Kinetic, James became team leader because he was a grumpy old toad.
If there was one thing that James didn't want the potential suppliers to realise though, it was just how grumpy he is. So he instructed his team to be insanely cheerful at everyone, and tell all the suppliers that their products were fantastic. Which led to some cringe-inducing acting from team Kinetic, who pretended to love everything that crossed their path.
They could’ve been met with a genocide corpse harvester and they would have grinned inanely, talking about how innovative and wonderful it all was.
Team Atomic, meanwhile, was busily becoming a vehicle for Lewis to continue to make a complete tit of himself. Not content with leaving his phone on in last week?s pitch, he spent this week?s product meetings asking questions like ?is this bag any good in the wind?? and then blithering on incoherently. And yet nobody tried to sew his mouth shut at any point, which really, was just cruel.
Heya?s excuse for her lack of mouth-sewing was that she was too busy declaring war on Posh Harry. He wanted them to sell an inflatable pillow, but Heya was determined to ignore everything he said and went for a pie maker and ?designer trolley? instead.
Unluckily for her, Kinetic also wanted the trolley and since they weren't dragging around a verbally incontinent scouser, the supplier decided to go with them. And so Atomic were left with the pie maker and a wanky bird box, whilst Kinetic had a mini-hoover and the oh-so-prized trolley.
And so, the teams went to some over 50s show to try and sell things to old people. Which was mostly unremarkable, except for the fact that Atomic couldn't seem to decide on a price for any of their products. At all. The bird box was ?100. And ?125. And recommended to go at ?150. And the pie maker? Depending on how much they liked the pensioner?s face it was ?29.99, or ?19.99, or ?14.99.
Inevitably enough, this complete inability to decide on a price meant that Atomic lost the task. By about ?300, which according to Lord Sugar was something of a massacre. And so Kinetic were sent off to the London eye to look at some magic tricks, whilst Heya dragged Hayley and Lewis back into the boardroom. Where Lewis truly excelled himself.
Not content with having asked a series of idiotic questions earlier in the process, Lewis promptly demonstrated a total lack of understanding of what the hell was going on and declared that he deserved to be fired. That is not how this works! You sit there and tell the Sith Lord that you are a thing of wonder and majesty and pin the blame on someone else, you fool! He should?ve said Hayley! She's quiet! She's a great victim! Or best of all, maybe he should?ve JUST STOPPED TALKING!
Alas, Lewis ignored both our advice and common sense, and so Lord Sugar sent him home. He spent the journey saying that he was happy and had done his best and it was his time. we're not sure he even knows where he'd spent the previous few weeks.
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Tim says
Lewis deserved to be fired on the basis of constantly speaking at 300 words per minute, none of them sensible. Poor kid – he seemed nice enough and was enthusiasm personified, but he was just useless when it came to business. I still cringe at the way he couldn’t even read his notes from his book properly at the pitches in the baby products task.
Haya and Hayley were lucky Sugar opted not to do a double firing. There are three tasks before the final and I assume we will have four finalists, so … four to go in the next three weeks? It’s about time we injected a bit more drama into the boardroom …
http://slouchingtowardsthatcham.com/2011/11/15/young-apprentice-selling-to-the-over-50s-isnt-as-easy-as-pie/