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A fishy start for The Apprentice

Posted in Media, Marketing, Latest reporters' blogs, Lucy Tesseras March 27th, 2008 by Lucy Tesseras

The Apprentice is back and as good as ever, making power, fame and money hungry people perform silly tasks in a bid to win a place on Sir Alan’s coveted business team.

The new crop of hopefuls is as delightfully irritating and selfish as the last lot with car trader Sara Dhada and entrepreneur Raef Bjayou already starting to grate.

In true Apprentice style, last night’s fish task saw the contestants selling something they knew nothing about, to an audience more than willing to take them for a ride.

Despite mixing up expensive monk fish with turbot and selling whole lobsters for a quarter of what they were worth, both teams managed to make a profit, albeit a very small one, Sir Alan looking as unimpressed as ever.

They seem to have found the most argumentative and self-righteous contestants yet, all ready to fight to the bitter end, no matter who they stab in the back on the way there.

Not surprisingly tempers are already fraying, so much so that a rift has already formed on the boys’ team, who to add insult to injury lost the task.

It was nice to see project manager Alex Wotherspoon, as useless as he was, being let off the hook. Sir Alan said it took guts to step up to the task when no one else would, but perhaps that’s because he fired the first two project managers, followed by a further four in the last series. No wonder they were hesitant.

Last night’s evictee barrister Nicolas de Lacy-Brown (who, by the way, added the de Lacy bit to make himself sound more fancy) was the right man to get rid of. Just looking at him conjures up feelings of anger. He was made a bit of a scapegoat for the team’s failure, but you’d think someone as pompous as he is, would know a lobster costs a hell of a lot more that a fiver.

What really put the nail in his coffin however, was telling Sir Alan in a very disparaging manner that the team had divided into two very distinctive groups “the educated and the more… kind of… gritty salesmen”. Not exactly the best move when talking to a multi-millionaire who prides himself on being a self made man. Know your audience Nicolas.

What was most strange about the boardroom though, was Sir Alan’s chair. In a bid to feel slightly more superior it seems he has adopted a high chair to address his hopefuls. He now towers over his aides Nick Hewer and Margaret Mountford and looks like a spoilt child sitting between his mum and dad at the dinner table. Little man syndrome if ever I saw it.

Well, that’s me hooked for another three months. And by the looks of the viewing figures from last night, it seems 6.4 million other viewers will be too.

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