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.
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.