The Apprentice: Week 3

CAUTION! CONTAINS SPOILERS AND BADLY EXECUTED FOOD RELATED PUNS AND JOKES.

Setting the Scene

The wake-up call came at 6.30am this week. A lie in for the gang, although after last week’s awful products I’m not sure they deserve it. The cars arrived at Lord Sugar’s childhood stomping ground St Catherine’s Dock which also happens to have a very, very, loose connection to this week’s task: creating a new condiment. (Ships came to the dock, the ships carried spices and condiments have spices in them. Or something like that.) Lord Sugar wants them to be innovative in creating a completely new brand, hopefully slightly more innovative than the task itself which bears a loose resemblance to a previous plotline on Dragons Den. As usual, whoever is the least rubbish wins.

The Task

Before they begin, The Sug shakes it up a bit. Seen as the girls “haven’t actually performed very well” over the last couple of weeks, he decides to move Duane ‘Jager’ Bryan and Nick ‘Insert-Clever-Nickname’ Holzherr over to the dark side in exchange for Katie who joins the boys and is reliably informed by Adam that they do things a little bit differently over there “like winning”. Oh Adam! Following the bitchy suit, Gabrielle tells the newbies that the only problem they’ve really had so far is Katie so they should be fine now. Let the games commence!

Duane wins the battle for Project Manager of Sterling. (It seems we’re back to team names this week.) He decides they will make chutney, ignoring the advice of Jane, a food manufacturer, that the chutney market is “over-saturated”. It’s a dilemma I know I’ve faced on numerous trips to the Tesco chutney aisle. Eagle-eyed Nick Hewitt tells the camera that if they’ve made the wrong decision, they could definitely find themselves in a “bit of a pickle”. Pickle, chutney, see what he did?

PM Katie of Team Phoenix opts for ketchup. Ketchup? I hear you scoff. But this is not just any ketchup, this is Phoenix ketchup; passionate and Mediterranean-y according to resident Italian “speaker” Stephen. Belisimo, therefore, is the perfect name because it means passionate or marvellous or something. He’s not 100%.

Next came the tricky task of actually making the condiments. The nation’s favourite ever Latino-legend-Apprentice-candidate Ricky Martin headed up the Phoenix production team. The sample tasted great. According to them, unfortunately my sample hadn’t arrived at the time of writing. However, when it came to making the big batch, something went wrong. Adam provided the fateful warning that too many cooks spoil the broth. Fortunately, with Ricky Martin’s quick thinking and some motivational music from the sound guy, they managed to correct the mixture. For “Katie’s Ketchup Boys, time to ketch-up” the narrator added. LOL.

Unfortunately, there was no appropriate food-related analogy for Nick Hewitt to describe Sterling’s Infusion chutney, resorting simply to “vicious”. Duane was unavailable for comment as he was retching in another corner of the factory.  Luckily, the sound team managed to pull through with some excellent “busy” music to help sort the problem but it meant there was no sample to send with the sales team for their pitch at a high-class deli.

Although Phoenix arrived con sample, they were astounded to be informed the name was spelt incorrecto. Two ‘Ls’ Stephen! Karen and the deli owners were “not impressed”. However, Stephen didn’t let this get in the way of enticing potential customers. His shouting “ciao bella” ensured women bought some Bel[l]issimo to shut him up. Over at Sterling with no Italian, people didn’t really seem interested in being hassled on their lunch breaks. However, both those selling in the shopping centre and those selling to traders ended up doing alright.

As always, one had to do better than the other. In a shock turn of events, the girls made a profit of £1028 leaving the boys far behind with just £586. Must’ve all been Katie’s fault after all.

The Boardroom

Ricky Martin looked particularly disappointed after finding out he’d lost – especially when the sound guy used the Blues Brothers theme tune to make Duane look really cool in the prize-winning montage. All the good stuff that happened with Bel[l]issimo was down to him he claimed. He sold, he managed the production and won a Grammy, three Latin Grammys and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Despite this, he found himself facing the Lord with Katie and Michael.

It was a case of poor production vs. poor sales. Not enough was produced but they didn’t manage to sell what they had made anyway. I hope this makes sense to anyone else. Katie struggled to see where the blame lay in production. So did Lord Sugar. He probably confused himself with his own argument.

Who was fired?

In the end it came down to neither production nor sales but gut feeling. “With regret”, Michael was fired.

The Verdict

Neither teams were completely rubbish this week but rules are rules and someone had to go. Bad luck Michael. However, I think we all know the real winner this week was the music guy. You smashed it mate.