The Apprentice UK is back for its eleventh series, with 18 hopefuls who claim to be amongst the best business brains in the country. Tom Beasley reviews the first episode, in which the teams must flog fish-based snacks to Londoners…
It’s back! The cavalcade of entrepreneurial incompetence that is The Apprentice has finally returned to our television screens. Lord Sugar made his intentions to shake up the format clear from the first moments of the new episode, in which he introduced Claude Littner as his new adviser and ditched the traditional boys vs. girls approach to the first task. After the usual parade of gloaty business speak &ndash’ “disgustingly ambitious”, “swiss army knife of business skills”, etc – Lord Sugar tasked both teams with heading to a market to buy the ingredients for two fish-based snacks, which they would then sell the next day. With its combination of selling, negotiation, manufacturing and margin-focus, this was a quintessential Apprentice task.
The team names were as excruciating as ever, with Versatile and Connexus soon winning over quirky Dan’s bizarre suggestion of Sugababes. Me neither. Food blogger April took the helm for Connexus and immediately made the decision to sell salade nicoise and fishcakes, without really consulting anyone. Meanwhile, events specialist Selina was strong-armed by her team into stepping up to the plate and promptly allowed everyone to shout over each other for hours before eventually choosing fish fingers and calamari. Neither team really looked like they had a chance.
April continued her baffling desire to appear uber-decisive by wandering straight into Billingsgate Fish Market and buying the first seafood she came across, regardless of price. Meanwhile, Selina drove down prices and bought some dreadfully nasty-looking squid. It was the cost that came back to haunt Connexus as, after Dan and Vana spent about an hour fiddling with a calculator, the team decided to try and flog small Tupperware boxes of salad for £9. Even in London, that was a stretch and a half. Under the guidance of Brett, who cannily hid the fact he had a history as a chef, Connexus took an eternity to get out of the kitchen and were far too busy constructing fishcakes the size of apartment blocks to hit the lunchtime rush.
Meanwhile, Selina ushered her cheap and nasty snacks out of the kitchen as soon as possible and her team was split via the issuing of the worst job titles in business history. Charleine probably won’t be adding “Fish Finger Team Leader” to her LinkedIn page. Versatile’s cheap street food flew off the shelves, but the same couldn’t be said of Mergim’s mobile sales team, who decided to try to flog their seafood stock to a vegan restaurant. A spoiled batch of calamari teased a potential banana skin for the team, but Dan’s terrible sales technique and runaway train pricing sealed Connexus’s fate. In the boardroom, Versatile’s modest £200 profit was enough to best Connexus, who scraped to a total less than £2 in the black.
April immediately earmarked kitchen boss Brett and numbers man Dan as her targets for dismissal, with the added bonus of Dan not having sold so much as a morsel of fish throughout the entire task. Dan chose a bizarre tack to defend himself, admitting to all of his failings and proving completely unable to pass the blame onto everyone else. It’s a solid tactic in the real world, but not one that works in the cut-throat environment of The Apprentice. There was potential in Dan, who showed promise as a tech entrepreneur, but selling fish proved to be his undoing.
At this stage, not a single candidate has stuck out as being worthy of praise. There is, however, Hugh Hefner enthusiast Joseph Valente and the mouthy Mergim, who lacks even the smallest vestige of common sense. They are currently battling with April for the title of the series’ chief villain.
The next task is tonight, with an advertising and branding task in which the teams try their best to sell shampoo. These tasks always go the same way, with one wannabe Spielberg coming a cropper as they try to turn a TV advert into Citizen Kane. Sounds like a recipe for success.
Tom Beasley – Follow me on Twitter for movies, wrestling and jokes about David Cameron.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng&v=Hmyh_bg7NJc
Originally published October 15, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
