You're Fucked!

Week 8 of The Apprentice! I dearly wish I'd been bothered to start this blog a little earlier so I could fully chronicle the intense HUMAN drama of The Apprentice Series 4. What's happened so far? Loads of loads of bitching, bullying and backstabbing. Excellent! These aren't real people! They're sleazy hate aggravator cut-out dolls! Marginalised and edited into bite size oblivion. Curse them all. Voodoo roast them all. Bet they bleed black and issue green malfunction flames.

Who's left then (during last night's show at least)? Wilting under the aggravated bulldog stare of Sir Alan and his two slender ancient wizard advisers we have:

Alex, a responsibility dodging whinge-bot pretty boy who has a haircut and gets slightly breathless when aggravated. Alex seemed particularly disgusted to be romantically paired in a shakedown vignette with Claire (she's not very thin) last week. What a dastardly cad.

Claire had all the markings of an irritating, overbearing bully in the first few weeks. A stern telling off from King Alan seems to have set her straight, she's let her hair down and is markedly less punchy. She's like a more aesthetically pleasing v2.0 of Ruth Badger - a gurning business bomb from a few series back. I like Claire.

Helene, a squinting lip pursed boxer of a woman. Helene is a kind of sense-talk bully, she quite clearly hates all the other candidates and would like nothing better than to crush their backs over her knee. This week Helene was project manager for Team Renaissance / Bullshitters. A team she was newly dumped in for swopsies with Claire. Team Bullshitters seemed made up of the unproven / aggravator set this week. Set up to fail? Say it ain't so!

Lee, a tall, slightly unsteady on his feet man upgrade on Alex. A semblance of the looks have been retained, with added tongue and modesty. Has a tendency to get overexcited and shout a lot. Lee seems pretty capable, he tends to dissolve into the background and work - a good sign for a last minute victory.

Lucinda, batty beret wearing aunt. Seemingly Katie Hopkins from last year with added decency and integrity. Previous Team Leader experience saw her quietly and precisely lead the team to victory. Another favourite of mine. Mercilessly bullied in the first few weeks by anvil chinned Jenny and boxer-dog Helene, who clearly thought they'd found a simpering little toff-box insult sponge. They hadn't.

Michael, hanging in on a wing and a prayer. Charm-vacuum Michael is like a bouncy little puppy if all is going well, if it ain't though he sinks into a shark-eyed misery shrug and blames everyone else. Often seems to be bordering on physical violence. King Alan seems to like him though, even though he's clearly a thuggy little bullshitter.

Raef, upper class jumper shawling gent. Never seen without immaculate hair and attire. Doesn't even look harassed first thing in the morning when the contestants are dragged out of bed to be ordered about. Probably sleeps standing upright. Raef is nice and competent enough. He defended Sara the other week against a gang assault because she had the bare-faced cheek to not be sacked by King Alan. Despite being immaculately preened, Raef looks like he could start some shit. Raef has a tendency to make slightly inappropriate joke clangers, and manfully tries to cope with the "we've won!" displays of excitement / affection. Watch him if they win! It's like Ahnoldt Schwarzenegger trying to smile in the Terminator 2 director's cut.

Finally, Sara. Sara has enormous eyes and sits about being told not to speak. Frequently the target of middle-management ire, Sara tends to make reasonable suggestions before being shot down in "I'm talking now!" flames. Sara becomes extremely shrill and repetitive when rattled. Could this be her undoing?! Well, yeah it was. It was on last night! This is a retrospective! Keep up. God!

Anyway, TEAM ROLE CALL!

ALPHA!

CLAIRE!
RAEF!
LEE!
LUCINDA-ZORD!

RENAISSANCE!

MICHAEL!
ALEX!
SARA!
HELENE-ZORD!

GO GO GO APPRENTICE RANGERS!

The task last night was to sell Wedding Things at a Birmingham expo. First off the contestants had to flirt their way through a variety of suppliers meetings. Michael (Corleone) used his black-soul bray stare to try and entice award winning super expensive wedding dress chap Ian Stewart. Inter cut with this was Michael boasting about his ability to be dead inside, and yet still project a perfect impression of interest and likeability. Mr Stewart ended up working with Alpha instead.

Helene inspected a selection of wall-hung g-string tat and seemed impressed, unfortunately G-String Tat followed the Stewart train and parked up on the other team's stall. Double fuck and curses! Helene's anti-team were left with a selection of mid-price porno Disney princess dresses patterned after those worn by aspirational celebrities: Jordan and Jodie Marsh (divorced). Helene seemed super pleased! She must've worn her way through the range too, everytime we saw her she was in another powder primary dress. The second also-ran seller was a selection of wedding cakes priced to match the dresses. Michael stropped about bully selling and Sara drowned in a pool of her own desperation "It tastes nice! What else matters! BUY IT!" Alex flirted his way around the brides to be, pulling in decent dress sales. Sneaky win on the cards?

Despite ending up with preferred brand, Team Alpha-Rangers struggled through most of the day not making any sales. It was very tense indeed! Raef looked shit out of luck on his luxury dresses call, whilst Lee sold his way through a variety of lingerie tat. Luckily at the end of the day bored shoppers looking for a purer fix floated back and bought up a few pieces rocketing Alpha into the lead. Claire pleasanted about selling nicely and all was well. As it turned out, the Lucinda-Rangers absolutely twatted the opposition. Bad Lieutenant Nick Hewer even dolled out a few compliments! Sacre bleu!

Nick is kind, but Margaret is cruel. A couple of Michael's ham-fisted damage control attempts were shot down with direct quotes from himself contradicting his current spin. Not even disagreeing, just firing back his own contradictory earlier spiel in full. Cruel but cool, Margaret wants the fahcken lot gone. So despite another round of Michael's lying / pleading, and Helene fawning over Teflon Alex, Sara ends up going. Why? She's like "a bhladddy air raid siren in me ear!" or words to that effect. King Alan even threatens to pound her head in for knife point cake selling.

That's life in the big city!