Category Archives: Specials

For when something huge is on and we go to town waxing lyrical about our love (or hate) of the series.

The Great British Bake Off begins

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It is sad to think that we are back to our normal television schedule now that the Olympics are over, but we now have something arguably better on our screens — The Great British Bake Off. Bakers from up and down the country are ready to do the seemingly impossible, impress judges Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry, the only people who spend all day eating cake and look disappointed about doing it.

This is now the third series of the baking competition. Last year the show became must watch television as we were treated to stunning cakes, biscuits and bread. But there were also a number of dramatic moments such as one of the contestants dropping his cake on the floor while decorating it and an inappropriate shot of a squirrel. So this series has a lot to live up to, and in one episode it did not disappoint.

Cautiously the contestants attempted to show off their skills making upside down cakes, rum babas and a hidden design cake, with presenters Sue and Mel to calm anyone down. The successes include a beautiful nursery rhyme hidden design cake and a toffee apple upside down cake. Whereas some of the less successful bakes included a rum baba with a light dusting of salt instead of sugar.

At the moment there are too many cakes and contestants to have figured out who the best and the worst bakers are, so here is a brief summary of all the people taking part this year.

Brendan

Brendan’s speciality is bread and is currently attempting to bake every bread in the world.

Danny

Danny is taking part in the Great British Bake Off to test herself and her skills.

John

A passionate baker he made the first major mistake of the show by using salt instead of sugar.

Peter

Peter put the Great British into Great British Bake Off with a detailed Union Jack flag cake.

Sarah Jane

She is a vicar’s wife so uses her baking hobby as a chance to feed her husband’s congregation.

Stuart

Stuart baked his own wedding cake, but so far has been too ambitious on the show.

Cathryn

Cathryn looks worried all the time while in the kitchen, but enjoys being a creative person with her cakes.

James

James is the youngest baker this series, his granny started off his hobby.

Manisha

Her passion for baking comes from her Mum, and enjoys making classic English biscuits and cakes.

Ryan

He likes to experiment with different flavours that he has found out about while travelling.

Victoria

Voted star baker in week one, Victoria added the story of four and twenty blackbirds to her hidden design cake.

Natasha

She struggled with week one’s tasks as she boiled her rum babas.

It may seem harsh but before even the contestants can remember who everyone is, one person has to leave. This week Natasha made too many simple mistakes for Paul and Mary to forgive. However, the rest of the bakers go on to take part in next week’s challenge, bread making.

If you missed this week’s return of The Great British Bake Off then you can catch up with it over on BBC iPlayer here. You can catch next week’s show at 8pm, Tuesday on BBC2.

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The Apprentice reveals its winner

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Twelve weeks of tasks, boardroom tantrums and rubbish business talk has led to the final of The Apprentice. The four who made it this far are: Jade, Nick, Tom and Ricky, and all that is between them and becoming Lord Sugar’s business partner is the gruelling interview stage.

Each have their own business plan and they want Lord Sugar to help fund their business venture. This, of course, means it should be an idea that Lord Sugar will actually like.

Nick wants to create some software that allows you to buy all the ingredients for recipes that you find on the internet with one click, Tom has a wine hedge fund plan, Jade wants to create a massive call centre and Ricky has a plan for his own recruitment agency. All a bit underwhelming.

Margaret Mountford returns for the interviews, alongside Claude Littner, Mike Soutar and Matthew Riley. Jade is immediately counted out of winning the competition as she intended to spend the entire £250,000 awarded from Lord Sugar in six months to cover the costs of the business, this didn’t go down well. On top of that her business plan, a giant call centre, is called unethical as nobody likes being disturbed by call centres trying to sell you stuff. There is further embarrassment as she tells Soutar that she has bought all the web addresses for her business. Turns out she hasn’t so Soutar bought one instead. Quite clearly Jade is out of the running.

The interviewing panel do not understand Nick’s idea which would allow people to buy recipe ingredients all at once from your supermarket of choice online. “Why would people buy things off the internet? Who plans their meals for the week?” ask the panel, which I think shows how far from reality business people actually are. So they resort to telling Nick he is odd because he grew up in Switzerland and didn’t watch television until he was 16.

Ricky gets a bit of a bashing in the interviews because in his application for The Apprentice he called Lord Sugar an old dog and said that he would be able to teach him new tricks. In his application he also referred to himself as the Thor of business. Soutar finally asks what everyone else has thought for the past 12 weeks — “Why do you call yourself Ricky Martin?” Turns out it is just to be remembered through association with the singer Ricky Martin. Luckily his business plan is impressive.

Tom’s wine hedge fund business idea is similar to what he already does now, which has made a healthy profit. The problem is the interviews make Tom look as though he is a bit of a daddy’s boy because he is in business with his father, who also wrote him a reference letter for his Apprentice application. Tom is also young, at 23, but Karren and Nick rush to say that shouldn’t count because you too were young businessman once, Lord Sugar.

Eventually the embarrassing interviews are over and Lord Sugar has to make a decision. Jade is out of the running first, Sugar does not want his name associated with a business that calls you up on a Sunday afternoon trying to sell you something. Nick is the next to go because Lord Sugar cannot see how he can make money out of his idea.

This just leaves Tom and Ricky to fight it out. Lord Sugar has to make a decision between the safe choice of Ricky’s business or Tom’s risky plan. And in the end Sugar chooses Ricky, after he promises that he will no longer talk like an idiot.

So that’s it for this year, if you want to relive the series then it is still all on iPlayer. But it is important to add that Lord Sugar isn’t bored or business yet as applications are now open for series nine.

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Who should win The Apprentice?

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As the eighth series of The Apprentice comes to an end, Lord Sugar is now left with only four candidates to choose from to make one his business partner.

On Sunday the remaining contestants will have to pitch their business idea to the board and go through a number of excruciating and embarrassing interviews. So let’s take a look at who is left and has a chance of winning.

Jade Nash

The business development manager likes to get the job done but sometimes doesn’t really think about the best way to get the job done. For example when she had to do the maths for the Groupon task she couldn’t add numbers together unless they ended in a zero.

She was maybe a bit annoying at the beginning because she wouldn’t listen to anyone, but recent successes in the tasks have shown that she might be alright.

Nick Holzherr

The technology entrepreneur has been quiet throughout the series. During the final task Nick spotted when their chocolate company was going off track but didn’t do much anything about it.

However, when he is in charge he is quite calm, collected and knows how to get the best out of his team as he did with the selling tat to the people of Essex task.

Ricky Martin

The recruitment team leader with the most inappropriate name for a business man is in with a good chance. His inspiration is Alan Sugar and throughout the series enjoyed having the chance to show off. He even referred to himself as “the reflection of perfection”.

My Ricky highlight from the series has to be watching him force lumpy, horrific looking tomato sauce into glass bottles so that they didn’t waste any of the mixture in the condiment making task.

Tom Gearing

Tom is the youngest contestant in this year’s final, aged 23, and is the director of a fine wine investment company. He was also the only person brave enough to stand up to Adam when he wanted to make top quality food using the cheapest products available in the street food task.

He has quite an artistic approach to the competition and when he doesn’t like the direction that the task is going pulls a face like he is sucking a lemon.

Head over to our Facebook page and vote for who you think should be the winner.

The winner will be revealed on Sunday when Lord Sugar points his finger and says “You’re gonna be my business partner”, which isn’t as catchy as “You’re hired”.

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The Apprentice finds its final four

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As we gear up to the final of The Apprentice, the candidates’ latest task was a chance to prove to Lord Sugar that they’re worthy of becoming his business partner.

If you just want to know who didn’t make it into the final four, then click here.

Show spoiler »

Adam Corbally was fired by Lord Sugar.

Last week The Apprentice had the first double firing of the series. Stephen Brady and Gabrielle Omar left the show after a disappointing result on the task.

This meant that Ricky Martin was all on his own, yet he was hopeful that Lord Sugar would allow him to stay as a one man winning team. That did not happen and Ricky is now working with Tom, leaving Adam, Jade and Nick to make up the other team.

This week’s task is to create an affordable luxury product range. Tom and Ricky both suddenly realise that they like to style their hair so go for male grooming products. Whereas Jade, Adam and Nick opt for chocolate. As research for their chocolate company Adam and Nick go to a chocolate shop, which would be a perfect time to ask business related questions but instead they just eat all the chocolates and sweets offered to them. Adam decides that they should also do jellies as well as chocolates. No one else in the team wants to but somehow they end up being a chocolate and jellies company.

Meanwhile Tom and Ricky are getting along as a team but when an issue comes up that they disagree on they each make a face like they are sucking a whole lemon. As this behaviour continues they both become quite unhappy about their product, but refuse to say anything about it.

To show off their products the teams have an empty room that they need to decorate. As Ricky and Tom go for a bland bluey grey, and Jade, Adam and Nick opt for stands of chocolate as well as a bar, I was reminded of how excellent last year’s final task creation MyPy was.

Back to the current contestants where the teams have to pretend that their idea is a real business for a day. Adam, Jade and Tom seem to impress with nice tasting chocolates, sweets and plenty of alcohol. No one seems to have a bad word to say about them apart from themselves as individually they are all picking faults with the idea. Tom and Ricky’s customers on the other hand behave as though they are walking round a funeral home. One customer decides to have a wet shave, and worryingly Ricky does this.

But acting like a real business for a day isn’t enough for Lord Sugar to see if you have what it takes to be in the final. No, the teams also have to pitch their company idea to a group of industry experts. And if you look carefully you can see Lord Sugar has slipped in as well. Ricky and Tom practice their pitch relentlessly while on the other team Adam writes his notes on his hand and every second word seems to come out as a cough. Once the pitches are over they head to the boardroom.

Turns out there are flaws in both ideas- when will they realise that is what happens when you come up with an idea and make it into a functioning business in a few days? However, Lord Sugar liked the male grooming idea and so Ricky and Tom are through to the final. All this has made Lord Sugar sleepy though. He can’t decide who should leave out of Jade, Adam and Nick and says everyone should come back in the morning.

Once the boardroom has reconvened the contestants start blaming one another. Both Adam and Nick agree that Jade performed best on the task but that she should be fired. They squabble and they back-stab but eventually Lord Sugar stops all this nonsense and fires Adam.

This means the final four are Jade, Nick, Tom and Ricky. That’s it for tasks this series, and all that is between them and becoming Lord Sugar’s business partner is the interview stage. It should be good as Margaret Mountford is back to grill the contestants on their business plans.

The final is on Sunday starting at 8.30pm on BBC One, and if you are suddenly nostalgic for the early days of this series then don’t worry it is still all on iPlayer.

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TV picks: Doctor Who, William Shatner, Huw Edwards and Tim Vine playing the national anthem

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Looking at the television schedule you might be inclined to think that there is nothing decent on at the moment. However, here at TV Talk we watch hours of television to bring you the best bits from the land of TV.

Doctor Who

As part of the preparations for the London Olympics the torch is touring the length and breadth of the UK. Along the way local faces and people who support their area have been nominated to carry the torch and help it to get round the UK safely.

While the torch was in Wales, the Doctor Who actor Matt Smith had a chance to join in as he started the eighth day of the Olympic relay in Cardiff.

And if that has left you craving for more Who episodes from series five are currently on BBC iPlayer.

William Shatner guest hosts Have I Got News For You

The current affairs panel quiz show managed to get US actor, best known for his role James T. Kirk in Star Trek, to be host last week.

Throughout the show Shatner amused by forgetting and mispronouncing names, but the best bit was when he sang the clues to get the panelists to guess the related news story.

Huw Edwards on Would I Lie To You?

The BBC newsreader took part in last week’s Would I Lie To You? where he revealed that he has a ‘evil eye’ that he uses on his work colleagues when he wants them to move on. This truth was demonstrated with the help of host Rob Brydon who played the part of BBC News’ business editor Robert Peston who, even on the wong end of Huw’s evil glances, wouldn’t stop talking.

Tim Vine playing the national anthem

In honour of the Queen’s diamond Jubilee the comedian Tim Vine played the national anthem with a chair. It is an odd but impressive skill, and now that Vine has left Not Going Out he maybe even has time to focus on the chair album.

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My Eurovision Nightmare

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Eurovision is something that divides the nation. Charlotte for example is firmly on Team Eurovision – she will most probably watch the competition while dressed in clogs and lederhosen and eating schnitzel. I on the other hand will be avoiding it like the plague, more likely trying to find some proper comedy on the gem that is Dave.

I’ve gone down the route of watching Eurovision before (I wasn’t always such a Scrooge) but it left me feeling puzzled and cross. The seemingly endless scoring simultaneously bored and angered me with the political voting and blonde women waving at Terry Wogan and struggling to communicate via out-of-sync video links.

The niggling question ‘why are countries not in Europe in EUROvision?’ bugs me, as does the realisation that the main Eurovision competition we get shown on Saturday night comprises only the best acts. The idea that there were lesser quality entries is something I cannot get my head round. If these are the créme de la créme of our continent’s singers then God help us all.

Seeing the crazy outfits, hearing the caterwauling and the nonsensical lyrics isn’t something I find funny, just bizarre. One or two might be amusing, 18 at a time, less so. Too many acts are scantily clad beauties clearly not chosen for their vocal abilities and these don’t float my boat either.  And much as I love a bit of tractor gangster party rap (don’t we all?!) it makes me very happy that British music isn’t like that.

But then you see Scooch offering Sir nuts and a pregnant Jordan in a pink PVC catsuit and realise what Eurovision reduces us to.

Scooch, flying the flag...apparently

My personal highlight was when Finnish band Lordi took took first place dressed as monsters, showing definitively that it’s not singing that wins you the competition but gimmicks. If you like gimmicks then fine, enjoy, but if you have even the faintest appreciation of music then it’s not for you. The likes of Bill Bailey and Tim Minchin have shown us how to blend comedy with good music and let’s just say it didn’t end up anything like Eurovision.

The slightly terrifying Lordi

This year the BBC’s desperately tried to make it ‘edgy’ by unveiling Scott Mills and Sara Cox as hosts.  Maybe this is a step in the right direction. But on further consideration perhaps not. This year we are expected to support ‘Team Hump’, coming to us live from that popular European destination Azerbaijan. Sounds promising…

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Discount Apprentice deals a double blow

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As we start creeping closer and closer to this year’s final of The Apprentice, the pressure is beginning to mount which led to the first double firing of the series.

If you just want to know who went this week then click below.

Show spoiler »

Lord Sugar fired Stephen Brady and Gabrielle Omar.

After last week’s botched attempts to kick-start the trend for English sparkling wine, Stephen wasn’t fired because he said he would be the team leader next week and win by a mile. So true to his word, and because Lord Sugar could see that this would be embarrassing, Stephen was in charge of his team, and Jade team leader for the other team.

Their task this week was to get really expensive restaurants and fancy lifestyle places to give their services away with a massive discount. Essentially they had to make packages and discount deals and vouchers for a daily deals website. It was the kind of thing that you would see on Groupon, except The Apprentice used a lesser known company who do the same thing called Keynoir.

The problem throughout the show was that this kind of business model is odd, and the candidates didn’t seem to really understand as all of them barged into meeting rooms demanding to set up deals for people to get 50% off their services. Amazingly the candidates didn’t get slapped, just looked at as if they were mad and calmly told that this kind of business wasn’t going to work.

On top of that the company emphasised that they would only accept deals that were for high-end, aspirational places. This was something that only Jade and Ricky seemed to get as they went through classy restaurants and spas, whilst the other people were getting deals for candles and fish skin eating treatment, apparently everyone has already done that last so is no longer popular.

While Adam and Tom were finding it difficult to get anyone to talk to them at all, Ricky Martin was wined and dined in a variety of restaurants and seemed to have scallops for breakfast, lunch and dinner but wasn’t getting many deals in return. Meanwhile Jade managed to fail at simple maths, and then wasn’t able to use a calculator.

Everyone was a bit moany, in particular, Ricky who kicked up a fuss though when Stephen asked him to go to Tring and Ricky seemed to think it was hours and hours to get to the countryside from London.

When the deals were down and everyone was in the boardroom it looked like Stephen had managed to pull it off, his team had made nine deals and they all seemed to be fancy enough to actually be used. While Jade’s team had made sixteen deals but Lord Sugar thought a few of them were scraping the bottom of the barrel.

The deals website only accepted two of Jade’s deals, and took three of Stephen’s. Yet amazingly Stephen’s team made around £6,000 in total, and Jade’s team made over £14,000. It was clear that unless Lord Sugar had gone completely mad Stephen was going home.

Although Lord Sugar did a bit of teasing saying that Gabrielle had seemed out of her depth for the past few weeks so was going home. But, thankfully, Lord Sugar remembered that Stephen had sworn black and blue that he would win the next task no matter what it was and Stephen hadn’t managed to do that. So him and his shiny suit were also sent home.

Next week the five remaining candidates have to make an affordable luxury, I’m sure that will work well. In the meantime you can watch all of The Apprentice so far on BBC iPlayer.

The Voice Live: week three

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So the show continues, and has responded to complaints that it is getting boring by becoming a bloodbath, and also showing off Holly Willoughby’s cleavage. The end of the series is only a few weeks away and we still have 16 contestants to whittle down to just one winner. So this weekend both Team Will and Team Tom lost half their team.

If you just want to know who was voted off the show this week then click below.

Show spoiler »

This week Adam Isaac, Joelle Moses, Frances Wood and Matt and Sueleen left The Voice.

 

The first act was Leanne Mitchell, who makes me think of Karren Brady from The Apprentice. She is singing ‘I Put a Spell on You’ and kept bursting into tears as the song helped her to get back together with her boyfriend. She did well, but she isn’t Ruth Brown who is clearly the favourite from Sir Tom’s team so she doesn’t matter much.

Team Will’s first act to sing was Frances Wood with ‘Show Me Glove’, but she was wearing the world’s largest tutu which sort of distracted from her voice. Sir Tom clearly felt the same way as her performance reminded him of Star Wars.

Third act up is Matt and Sueleen, who have so far gained from The Voice experience that Matt is now known for more than just looking a bit like Gandalf. They performed ‘Everything but the Girl’ and it sounded a bit off; this was put down to them singing without being able to look at one another for the first time ever. Mostly I think it was a poor song choice.

Controversy arose when Team Will’s Joelle Moses revealed that she had started to prepare a Celine Dion song to sing on the show. Will.i.am looks disappointed and urges her to change her mind. Instead Joelle goes for ‘Stronger’ and all viewers of The Voice were happy that they didn’t need to sit through a Celine Dion song. However, when she was walking round the stage her voice wobbled and Will’s only comments were excitable nonsense about the stage.

Next up was Ruth Brown, and no matter what she did it was obvious that she was getting through. She sang ‘Next to Me’ and I thought was very good, but she does manage to slur her words together. No matter what though she is in the final, I bet you.

From now on Will has discovered that the huge studios for the show is mostly composed of screens and so during Tyler James’ performance are several pictures of Tyler’s head also singing the song like some cloned backing choir. Again this really distracted from the song, which was apparently ‘Sign Your Name Across my Heart’ but was a bit too high for anyone to really register.

In a way to add personality to these people, who were only important because of their voice Adam Isaac is now being put forward as the attractive one. However, this didn’t work properly because Adam has a fiancée who they talk to about this craze of random women fancying her man. Anyway he sings a Radiohead song and unfortunately he isn’t significant enough to get much further.

And the final performance of the night went to Jaz Ellington. We got to be with him and his wife as they visited the hospital to find out the sex of their unborn baby, which is an odd way to get to know someone better. When he is up on stage there is a massive picture of him and his wife behind him and soon most of the studio is weeping because of the emotion in the song.

This week the teams also got to spend more time with their mentors as they had a group performance. Tom took centre stage as his team did rendition of ‘Hit the Road Jack’ and his singers all worked together quite well. Will took a different approach as he got his team in to produce their song. The only problem is he made them wear suits that made them look like referees at Wimbledon, as well as wearing driving gloves that he designed.

The overall problem with The Voice is the suspense is ruined by having to wait until the next day for the results, and the fact that it is very obvious which contestants the judges prefer. This makes this whole charade a bit pointless. This means the only real hope is that next week the same bloodbath happens to Team Danny and Team Jessie, meaning the judges will be left with the contestants they really like meaning the competition will start to mean something again.

In the meantime you can catch up with every that has happened on The Voice over on BBC iPlayer.

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The Voice UK live: week two

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Last week on The Voice saw Team Will and Team Tom compete against one another and resulted in Sam Buttery and Sophie Griffin being kicked off the show. This week it was Team Jessie and Team Danny’s chance to flaunt off their team’s voices.

Just want to know who was booted off this week, then click below.

Show spoiler »

Hannah Bernley and Ruth-Ann St Luce left.

Toni Warne from Team Jessie started the night off with a rendition of Proud Mary. I think she is the only person to have got through who is actually what The Voice set out to do. She has a great voice and is good in the competition regardless of her alopecia. Having said that she is fond of pulling weird faces and odd stances when she is singing, which is slightly off-putting.

Team Danny’s first sacrifice was Max Milner, who is noted for his hat wearing skills. He has a guitar and then the judges talk about him and his voice for about ten minutes when they could have summed it up with “good”. Instead we get to hear about how people will be begging to go to Max concerts and so on. Overall the judges comments need to add something or need to get shorter.

Next up is Jessie’s wildcard choice, Ruth-Ann St Luce. She is the wildcard choice because she isn’t very good at staying in tune, and whenever she sings Will.i.am does the most miserable face in the world. However, Jessie seems to think she can teach the girl something. Sadly her performance was out of tune again and Will seemed very happy to point this out.

Once the judges have calmed down Hannah Berney, from Team Danny, has a go. She sings Cry Me a River and has lots of dancers on stage, which seems to infuriate Jessie because this show is all about the voice, so backing dancers are unnecessary. The judges then squabble about this for ages until the host, Holly Willoughby, tells Hannah to leave the stage to stop them from arguing.

Jessie’s next act, Vince Kidd, has made a brave move — he is singing an Elvis Presley song in front of Tom Jones. Vince does lots of singing the song in a way that you don’t expect it to be sang, but inevitably we lead to Sir Tom Jones talking about the times he worked with Elvis. I moan, but to be honest Sir Tom going down memory lane and name dropping is the best bit of the show.

The theme this week seems to be get your singers to sing songs that you wouldn’t expect them too as Aleks Josh pretends that he is Michael Buble and Cassius Henry goes the complete opposite of his usual style R’n'B by singing a Coldplay song. Likewise David Julien is liked by the judges for his rocky voice so he sings some slow song with high vocals.

The only thing really notable about Jessie’s last act of the night, Becky Hill, is that her microphone had a massive cord and she was then given the task of running around the entire stage.

The final act of the night, Bo Bruce has one of these weird voices where you know that she is singing but you can’t quite tell what she is singing. Also she reminds me of a rebellious version of Clare Balding. Anyway she sings a Kate Bush song and Will.i.am declares that she is what every single version of The Voice across the globe has been looking out for.

So after all that we have to get ready to say farewell to another two acts. Unexpectedly Team Danny is quite strong so he might make a few bizarre faces when choosing who to send home. As for Team Jessie there are a few weaker voices in her team, so we shall have to see what happens.

The results show is on Sunday at 7.15pm on BBC One, and in the meantime you can watch the second live show of the series on BBC iPlayer.

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Smelling the success on The Apprentice

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The budget was quite clearly blown on The Apprentice this week, as the contestants were given a van and £150 and told to make as much cash from selling cheap tat.

If you just want to know who was fired this week then click below, otherwise we’ll get on to ridiculing the contestants.

Show spoiler »

 Azhar Siddique is the latest casualty after getting on the wrong end of Alan Sugar’s finger.

It is a bit of a lazy day in The Apprentice household, as Lord Sugar calls them at 5pm to tell them to get over to wholesale warehouse in Essex. They meet Lord Sugar in a darkened car park, where he explains that each team has £150 to buy products to sell to the people of Essex, whilst keeping tabs on what is selling and when to get more stock.

Lord Sugar plays around with the teams a bit, bringing Stephen to Sterling and Laura over to Phoenix. He also points out that some people still haven’t been project manager, and hints that this might be the week they give it a go.

Jade, from Phoenix, gets the hint and decides to be project manager. However, Ricky Martin over on Sterling sees a chance to be a bit of a suck up and puts himself up to be project manager even though he has no background but it is what Lord Sugar would have done. Ricky seems quite miffed when Nick puts himself forward and the team go with him instead.

Sterling choose the best places in Essex to set up a stall and start browsing the shelves to see what tat they could sell there. They seem keen on beard trimmers, fake tan and nail kits. Meanwhile Phoenix aren’t off to the best start; they are taking a long time to choose a place to set up a market and manage to find vibrating toys in the warehouse. They also find the fake tan, as well as hot water bottles and little plastic insects.

While Sterling seem to have a plan and are thinking about what is best to sell at their different locations, Phoenix have bought a variety of things and don’t really know what to do with them. Azhar starts to mention that they should have a strategy, but gets ignored. He seems a bit miffed.

The next morning, as preparation for dealing with customers in Essex, Stephen and Ricky try out their best TOWIE impersonations.

The teams set up and start to awkwardly interact with the public. Ricky and Stephen create an odd script for their products to bring in the customers and Nick offers free haircuts for life with a hair trimmer. The most popular product for Sterling is the tan, rather surprisingly. Jenna, in an attempt to sell the beard trimmers, ends up talking to a beardless man who seems to think the only person he knows with a beard is himself. Team Phoenix are having problems with selling their odd mixture of items, yet Adam is doing well on the market and shockingly getting people interested in their tat.

Coming up to lunchtime the teams are running out of stock and plan another trip to the warehouse. As Jade and Adam set off to buy more products Azhar calls again wanting to know more about the team’s strategy. Jade gets annoyed and ignores him again.

Once the stock has been replenished, each teams have their own squabbles, they try to make good use of the rest of the day. They attempt to sell as much as possible before the end of the day and do their best to impress Lord Sugar.

And so we come to boardroom time. Nick explains Sterling’s approach to the task with their Essex kit, Lord Sugar looks horrified as to what they think Essex is all about. Overall Nick is seen as a good project manager, although Alan Sugar says it is “shameful” that they had a period with no stock. Over on team Phoenix Jade is immediately criticised for taking a long time to choose where to go, but she loved the effort of her team and has no complaints about them. Azhar says there was a lack of strategy, and somehow this is the first time Jade seems to have heard about this.

Both teams seem to think they have done well, but based on the figures Phoenix assets comes to £838 and Sterling’s assets are worth £955. Nick and the rest of the team get a night of cocktails as a reward, and Phoenix get to visit Bridge Cafe again.

Jade says that everyone did well, and as they lost the task with her as project manager then she should be the one going home. Surprisingly she does not say this in the boardroom. Instead she goes for Azhar and flounders when having to pick someone else to get the wrath of Sugar. In a panic she brings Tom back with her. As he was one of the best on the project this decision annoys Lord Sugar.

On paper it looks certain that Jade is going; she was in charge of losing the task and she panics. However, Azhar keeps mentioning strategy and wasting time so Lord Sugar decides to fire him. Yet again another silly decision made, I think. We are now down to the final nine, and hopefully some of the candidates who should have gone earlier in the series will be given the boot soon.

Next week the candidates will be turning their hand to modern art, which I am guessing will go very well. Before then you can catchup with the rest of the series of The Apprentice so far on iPlayer.

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