[Abernathy]

Wait - so Crap Panther's "defence" really was that "I vas only obeying orders." ???????

[Andy McDandy]

More relaying a message. Or not delivering orders. But yes, was upbraided for not pointing out that telling a bunch of people in the fucking desert that they couldn't drink any more water was somewhat twattish.

[Andy McDandy]

Did you all enjoy the gang a few weeks ago designing their cartoons? No? Well, tough. This week they had to design and sell a lunchbox for kids. And an app. Quite why, I'm not sure. But apparently if you want to sell anything to kids these days it has to have an app.

With some of the pace-setting 'faces' gone, the field is thinning out and the quieter contestants are coming to the fore. No Cosplayer, no Ollie, no Perkins-Macintyre Progeny.

The remaining guys are North Yorks Bore, Johnny Merkin, Bodhi Crook, Crap Panther, and Sohail, who I'm naming Bruce Wee, as he's a martial artist and looks pissed off all the time. The ladies left are Siobhan Vinegar, Kerry Catatonia, Kim Cuntdashian, Dani Donovan (hairdresser, the Barber of Saville) and Marnie Swindells (honestly, sometimes this stuff writes itself - anyway, likes boxing, so Punchy McPunchface). Teams? Who cares? Let's call them Team Strapon and Team Fleshlight.

Bruce's team design a lunchbox that looks like a treasure chest. A brown box. They design a pirate character to sell it, and a quiz all about nutrition. You know, for kids! Meanwhile Kerry's team design something shaped like a leaf, and a cartoon hungry caterpillar. Somewhere, Eric Carle is reaching for his lawyer. Both teams record some fucking atrocious voice-overs and pitch it to industry experts. The leaf design proves to be slightly less hateful, and that team wins.

Throughout it all, nobody seems to be either listening to anyone else, or showing the faintest signs of self-awareness. In the end Bruce Wee shuffles off, his dreams in tatters.

Thing is, if this were anything like reality, if you were asked by your boss to do something completely outside your comfort zone, you'd tell him to get lost. Or hire someone who knows what they're doing. But this isn't reality, which may explain why everyone leaving looks so bloody relieved.

[mattomac]

Did that Joe go, he is rather nice to look at on instagram.

[Rosvanian]

The Mailites are utterly convinced that all the NHS needs is better management, oddly enough by getting rid of the management and letting matrons run the show. I'd therefore like to see the Apprentice tackle some issues in the NHS. Give them a scenario -it's 8-30am on a Tuesday morning, the hospital's full, A&E's rammed, the hospital's MR scanner is broken and can't be fixed until 10pm that evening, there's no consultant cover in Cardiology because of sickness and the agency wants £140/hour to provide a locum, supplies say that there's only enough infusion sets left to last until tomorrow morning and the supplier says the next delivery won't be until the following day, it's been raining all night and there's a seriously leaking roof up on Ward 22 which might have to be cleared but there's nowhere for the patients to go, and just now the main patient record system has developed a glitch and is offline so everyone needs to revert to paper documents for the time being. Meanwhile a massive brawl has broken out in outpatients and someone has posted some shocking pictures on Facebook of what looks like a porter punching a patient in the waiting room. So candidates, you're the CEO, what would you do?

[The Weeping Angel]

I see the show hasn't changed since the days when Harry Hill took the piss out of it.

[Andy McDandy]

I went into this week's episode with feelings of dread. The teams were sent off to sunny Shrewsbury to sell and run immersive events. For the uninitiated, and Abers, these are things like murder mystery evenings and interactive plays where the audience actively participate. As a keen LARPer, and with friends who run just these sort of things, there was some apprehension and just as much curiosity.

Team Aspartame, headed up by ex-soldier turned ratcatcher Johnny Merkin planned a tour of Shrewsbury prison. As soon as this was mentioned, both me and the SO were going "Stanford prison experiment" (an infamous 1970s roleplay exercise in which the "warders" got a little too into their roles). They came very close to not disappointing. The event was sold to punters as a tour of the prison, with actors in costume and a magician. What they got was Crap Panther bellowing in their faces and shoving them in cells.

Thankfully, after the initial disorientation, they all loved it. Not that it mattered, as due to the cost of the event, Merkin's dismal ticket selling, and novel approach to pricing, it was impossible for them to make a profit.

Meanwhile on Team Binomial Theorem, Bodhi Crook insisted on running the team, as he once ran an event for "up to a hundred people". Punchy McPunchface points out that she has run multiple events for hundreds of people, but concedes that she won't have a tantrum if Bodhi leads (Bodhi can't guarantee the opposite). Bodhi turns out to be an utter prick as a manager, treating everyone - teammates, clients, punters - as idiots. He interrupts, asks inappropriate questions, comes out with gems like "for me, profit is revenue minus costs" (prompting Karen to snark "I think that's what profit means for everyone"), and seems on the verge of fucking everything up. His team put on a day out at a Victorian village, which sees him and Punchy getting very into character as a cruel schoolmarm and a naughty pupil. Which is just fucking bizarre to be watching on the BBC, it's like Pornhub as an amateur dramatic production.

And you know what, those fuckers won. Merkin gets his marching orders.

And this encapsulates the issue I have - it's all about profit. You can be as much of a fuck-up as you like, as long as you make one penny more than the other guys. Only if you lose do issues such as timekeeping, accuracy, good customer care, teamwork and so on come into the equation. In fact, you can be great at all of those but if you lose they'll be used as weapons to beat you up. OK, the show needs a simple and easy to understand metric, but the emphasis on profit means everyone acts like a dick, in the hope that the other lot are acting even dickier. I could draw a parallel with recent politics.

Bodhi won't win - he'll get filleted at the interview stage. Punchy, Siobhan Vinegar, and Kerry Catatonia are my picks for overall winner, mainly because they're increasingly the only sane ones left.

[Andy McDandy]

Sorry for the lateness; it's been a busy few days.

OK, last night saw the remaining 8 tasked with designing a new male grooming product and marketing it, all in about 48 hours. Typically companies work for years on product development for this stuff. They've got 2 days.

So, guys, what do you look for in your toiletries? Ease of use? Price? Nice smell? How about ethical sourcing? No? Well, I'm pretty sure your list will not include turning your fucking skin green.

Team Twatbasket (Bodhi, NYB, Cuntdashian, Punchy) have an idea. The North Yorks Bore wants to make a defoliant, sorry, exfoliant and he wants to call it Venom. When it's pointed out that generally snakebites have negative connotations, he graciously changes tack. He now calls it ANTIvenom. Bodhi and Cuntdashian cook up a batch and discover an unfortunate side effect, which is sadly turning your fucking skin green. Even the NYB realises that turning your fucking skin green isn't a good thing. So he decides to market it as a super concentrated version that needs to be diluted before use, only turning your fucking skin green a little bit.

Oh yes, almost forgot. Bore designs a box. Remember his thrilling brown lunch box? He goes one better, and designs something best described as a green turd with a green vibrator poking out. Perfect for that vegan scat market. His team sell nothing.

Team Fuck This Noise (Panther, Catatonia, Vinegar, Saville) play it safe and design a boring but practical face cream. They do an advertising campaign all about adding to your story via face cream. They sell ... quite a few actually.

It all goes predictably, the vaguely sane ones win, and from the others, both the North Yorks Bore and Bodhi Crook get fired.

One thing you start to notice after watching for a few years is that contestants tend to fall into certain "types", or roles to play. Bodhi was clearly the "office junior getting pissed on the team awayday", while NYB was the "fuck it, this'll do" time server. At one stage, his reaction to their exfoliant turning your fucking skin green* was how to cover it up, rather than scrub the task and go back to the boardroom and admit defeat. He'd still have been fired, but as later conversations showed, Sugar and his sidekicks would have appreciated his honesty.

*Maybe market it as an Incredible Hulk dressing up kit? But seriously, this was like that guy in Phoenix Nights with the tiger makeup.

[Andy McDandy]

Due to injury I've not been able to do writeups of the last 2 episodes. Anyway, next week is the final and I'll try to tie it all up.

Hope you've enjoyed these reviews/summaries.

[Abernathy]

Yes. I do very much appreciate you watching it, so that I don't have to.

Hope you're fully mended and back out on the Culture Wars battlefield before too long, bonny lad.

[Abernathy]

Just saw a couple of clips on Gogglebox. Karren Brady interviewing the final Barbie dolls and insisting on being addressed as “Baroness Brady” . Fuck’s sake.

[Abernathy]

Nominative determinism 101 :

I note with some amusement that the winner of Sugar's business-wanker pantomime this year is named Marnie Swindells.

[Andy McDandy]

Yes, quick round up of the last 3 episodes.

Episode 10 - dog food. Make a new brand of dog food. Both teams puree some bits into paste, dogs turn their noses up. Crap Panther gets booted, despite not really doing anything wrong.

Episode 11 - interviews. 5 contestants are left, and get grilled on their plans. What a surprise, they either have impossible pipe dreams, or really don't know what they're doing. Of note is Kerry Catatonia, who has been running a mail order sweets business (think Hotel Chocolat minus the shops, basically). She wants the investment to put into some kiosks to go in shopping malls. Why, if you've got a perfectly good online retail thing, would you want to risk it by taking a massive step backwards? Out she goes. Barber of Saville has a mad plan to corner the market in hair extensions, in a sort of Trading Faeces plan. Bye. Siobhan Vinegar wants to open a pub. Fuck off. So we're left with Kim Kuntdashain (hair salons) and Punchy McPunchface (boxing gym).

Episode 12 - the big launch. Usual thing where some of the axed contestants come back and help the candidates realise their vision. Always interesting to see how many of them actually help and who just sits back and passively-aggressively undermines the entire thing. Some old and familiar faces are back. Bodhi Crook still has no filter and a child's view of the world. Crap Panther comes across as the perfect guy to have working for/with you, but is rubbish at leading. North Yorks Bore is brought back just for Punchy to flirt with.

Big launch promos go ahead, and Sralan is left with a dilemma - the gym is fun, but a big risk. On the other hand, the salon is safe but dull. Given that his investment amounts to probably half the fee the BBC pay him, he takes a punt on the gym.

The end (thank Bog).

[RandomElement]

Thank you all the effort you have put into these descriptions. There are far more entertaining than slogging through the whole programme.

[Youngian]

If this Rory guy first up on the clip isn’t now a Conservative MP or PPC he must have passed away