Shopping. If there's one thing teenage girls are meant to be good at, it's that. Right? Well, apparently not. For last night on Young Apprentice, Lord Sugar?s minions proved that particular stereotype spectacularly wrong.
The task they were set was simple enough; they just had to buy stuff. That's it. Not buy stuff and sell it on, not buy stuff and brand it, not buy stuff and make an ad for it. No. Just buy stuff. Specifically, they had to buy 10 items for the waxwork figures at Madame Tussauds.
we're not sure if the Sith Lord was intending to use the task to smash gender stereotypes, or if he's just recruited a particularly useless bunch this year. Either way, they were utterly hopeless.
Before the children could fail at buying stuff though, there was the usual team rejig. Which now seemingly exists to try and get Posh Harry out of the competition, for he was moved over to be on a team with Lizzie, Hayley and Zara. Other Harry, Irish James and Heya meanwhile, formed their own little miniature team. Lord Sugar tried to use their original names, but frankly there's been more swapping of members than even an average day in the Sugababes, so we've lost track of who's meant to be who.
What we do know is this; Other Harry made the most pathetic attempt of all time to put himself forward for project manager. He said he'd be alright with giving it a shot but he didn't know London, so maybe Heya should do it. AT LEAST A HUNDRED TIMES. Eventually, Heya said she'd do it if she really had to. And so began the most disorganised shopping trip of all time.
It turns out that Heya had no actual plan at all, just a vague list of places in London that she might?ve been once. She muttered some stuff about sort of knowing Camden, and then her team all got into taxis and just went off to try and look for things.
Heya stayed with Irish James ? presumably to stop him from using his ?negotiating skills? to tell people that they were utter cockmonkeys ? and embarked on some ridiculous lying to try and get a cheap guitar. Apparently, at the tender age of 6, these children have already worked out that lying is the way to get to the top in corporate life. And so they went around guitar shops saying they needed one cheap for Heya?s brother?s birthday, the lying bastards. What would the Occupy London protesters say?
Unfortunately for Heya, once she'd tricked people into giving her a cheap guitar, it became apparent that she'd forgotten to actually work out who was looking for what. Or even what they were looking for. They?d been told to try and find a Dashiki, which they couldn't even pronounce, let alone find. Other Harry took to roaming the streets of Shepherd?s Bush asking passing strangers if they knew what it was. Which they didn't. Although maybe they did, and just didn't fancy telling a besuited infant with a film crew in tow. Find it out the hard way, Other Harry!
Unbelievably enough, the other team actually did manage to find out what a Dashiki was, but were utterly shite at everything else. Project manager Lizzie decided that maybe some organization might be a good thing, and got her team to ring around before the set out. Which seemed like a good idea. Except it wasn?t.
Because it turns out that ringing around isn't enough to stop two teenage girls ignoring all logic and reason and heading off to Croydon to try and buy a pocket watch. Croydon. That place which is best known for Kate Moss, Ikea, and being on fire. Sod all the jewelers of London, Hayley and Zara really fancied a nice little day trip and a ?130 pocket watch. Who doesn't?
Posh Harry, meanwhile, was busily ignoring everything everyone ever said, and was trying to buy a child?s suit in an adult?s tailor on Savile Row. It didn't matter how many times Lizzie yelled at him to try a kid?s shop, he wasn?t having any of it. It's almost like he can't hear anyone whose household income is less than ?250,000 per year. Which means even if he sees this, he won’t be able to understand it, so we can be as horrible about him as we like. The cockwhore.
Which is a good thing, because clearly everyone thinks he's a total dickwad. Everyone, that is, except for Lizzie. After her team lost the task by spending a whacking great ?500 more than the others and not even getting all the stuff, she decided to let Posh Harry go back to the house, and brought Zara and her pocketwatch and Hayley and her manners back into the boardroom with her.
After some debate about whether or not Zara is an evil, domineering bitch from hell, Hayley found herself sent home for being just too quiet. Which really, was missing the two most important lessons of this week?s show. Firstly, Zara really needs to find a new boardroom outfit. And secondly, it turns out shambolic disorganization IS the way to win at life. Which is great news all round.
Tim says
This whole task was a bit of a shambles, particularly for the girls. Lizzie needed to be a bit more organised, Haya thought that peering out of the window of the car was a good search strategy, and Zara had ZERO common sense in deciding that they just had to go to Croydon to buy the pocket watch.
Surely a boy has to win now? Harry H has been consistent, but does he have the spark? James has been steadily improving. And Harry M, the winless wonder, is horribly inconsistent but he does possess more entrepreneurial flair than the rest of them put together. I still wouldn’t count him out yet, despite that 0-6 task record.
http://slouchingtowardsthatcham.com/2011/11/29/young-apprentice-pocket-watch-leaves-atomic-out-of-pocket/