Nine junior horrors, one job (not actually a job, because even Lord Alan’s not mental enough to hire a foetus to work on whatever Amstrad do these days) and just a couple of weeks to pick one out to be… the Junior Apprentice.
Previously on Junior Apprentice: Cheese. Sales. Puns. Tears. Jordan De Courcy.
Zoe, played by Robyn caked in lipstick, answers the phone while the camera hovers for an uncomfortably long time staring at her arse. It follows her upstairs as she wakes the boys up, who are already dressed in suits. They’ve probably been in them all night, waiting for the Lord Sugar batsymbol to appear in the sky, calling for them. It’d be in the shape of a barrow.
But what’s this? Wellies? Where could they be going that would require wellies? A field! Of course. Alan takes assembly on the grass, and tells them that this week’s task is to design a camping product and pitch it to retailers. Thug-in-braces Adam sells camping equipment on the internet, so he’s all over this. Hannah also decides to do it, but she doesn’t sell camping equipment on the internet, so Adam will definitely win this. They swap teams, so the boys are led by – get this – a girl! How wacky.
The boys, pushed around by hairy man-child Tim, who appears to be on a combination of every caffeine stimulant going, manage to cobble together an idea for a sledge on wheels. The sledge bit comes off, so you can slide or wheel your stuff around the campsite. In fact, they call it ‘Slide Stuff’, a name one step less generic than calling it a ‘thing’. Rhys is thrilled by it, and astutely points out that it “looks like a sledge”.
The girls try pitching a portable whiteboard at a bored-looking family, clearly having a shit camping holiday somewhere just outside the M25 – but when that doesn’t go over, they take all the ideas they’ve had in the brainstorm session: Cardboard box, games table, shoe storage. Let’s just make it all of them. So they do. A cardboard games table, featuring cheap and nasty chess, snakes and ladders and backgammon boards.
Seriously, a backgammon board. Does anyone other than 60-year-old alcoholics that have lived in pubs since the 70s know how to play backgammon? Hasn’t the generation that liked backgammon long since died off? Or is it part of the authentic camping experience – abject misery and tedium.
Back to the product. Muddy shoes, wet grass, cramped environment. Three things that people pretend to not mind about camping, but will cause the ?20 cardboard box to self-destruct like a Liverpool FC title challenge.
Photoshoot time, and Adam can’t build his tent. Despite being a camping expert with a camping website and a slightly camp demeanour. He points out that he’s only been camping twice in his life, but in the car he said he goes twice a year. Caught in his pathetic lie, he stutters out, “I went camping twice a year last year”. Obviously. He asks if the models, along for the shoot, can help. The camera gets switched off and probably a tutting cameraman and Karren Brady do it all for him, while he sobs.
Arjun, who looks the least likely of anyone in the world to have ever been to Glastonbury, runs the pitch, while he probably can’t even pitch a tent himself. By which I convolutedly imply that he’s young and can’t get an erection, not that he’s too small to actually put a tent up. But that’s true as well. The product ‘Slide Stuff’ is married with the best slogan ever: ‘Why carry stuff when you can slide stuff?’ They could even condense that down into ‘move things’. Or just a grunt.
Robyn runs the girls’ pitch, dressed like an air-hostess with bandaged legs. Her lipstick appears to have been applied in the manner of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, with a haphazard approach to caking her lips, teeth and cheeks in as much crazy redness as possible. She emphasises that it’s not a cardboard box, but reinforced cardboard, and therefore definitely worth ?20 a pop. A cardboard camping storage unit sounds like it came from the same school of witty sayings as a chocolate fireguard. It’s a crap idea. Rubbish. They’re idiots for even thinking it would work.
Unsurprisingly, the various companies pitched to agree, and they get a grand total of zero sales. The plebs.
The boys fare better, with catalogue peddlers Argos offering to buy 3,000 of their sledges – approximately one per shop. But it’s enough to win, so yay. They sod off for some horrendous firework show that is ‘just for them’, showing that Alan doesn’t really understand the concept of ‘looking up’.
Adam bursts into tears as he brings back Robyn and Hibah. The massive queen. He still looks a bit hard, like, but we reckon we could take him. He runs a camping equipment website, you know. In fact, his website says “Weaponry, an area where were we will 100%”, which is reassuring.
Clearly Adam was dreadful at the task, not bothering to say no to anything, ever. If Jeanette Krankie lookalike Kirsty had popped up and suggested they smear dog shit over their faces as part of the pitch, he’d have gone along with it.
But stupidly, Hibah is an academic, and therefore the enemy of Sir Sugar, and so she’s sent packing. Cheeky Cock-ney wideboy Adam lives to fight another day. In tears.
And then there were eight.
Next week: Will Arjun stand next to Alan to see who is taller? Will Emma say something? Will Karren Brady resist [actually, that’s libellous] and will Tim Ankers mock Rhys Rosser‘s surname? (Incidentally, Rhys is the second stupidest first name they could have given him, after Ross.) All that and less, next week.
This was a guest post by Nik Johnson fron Shouting At Cows. HOORAY!
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Michael Crane says
Re Backgammon: “Hasn
Derooftrouser says
I only really check HS for the Google News-lead ‘OMG Why RU such a h8er, u losser’ comments from fans, but now you’ve got one about backgammon I think we may have reached the peak.
john says
Actually the funniest article i’ve ever read ……cracking stuff !
“Alan doesn