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From the opening moments of last night's Apprentice it was clear that we had another bunch of jumped-up, arrogant, cringeworthy know-it-alls battling for a job with Sir Alan - in other words we are in for another excellent series.
Ian can't even bring himself to say the word 'loser', Jennifer rates herself as 'the best salesperson in Europe', Claire says she likes to crash through everything like her family's german shepherd dog and scary Sara doesn't like to beat her opposition, she likes to thrash them.
The first task saw the group split into male and female teams and given a load of fish to sell at a London market. Easy? Well, no. The teams struggled to tell their Monkfish from their Sea Breams and ended up selling the fish at a fraction of the actual value.
Other highlights of the first episode included sulky Ian pursing his lips and declaring that he hated losing, Lucinda's kooky dress sense (do health and safety regulations allow people to sell fish wearing a purple woollen beret?) and, of course, Raef's hair - what's that all about?
The award for best line has to go to Sir Alan's sidekick Nick who asked the boys' team "Did it strike anybody that a £5 lobster is bloody cheap?"
The boardroom showdown saw the girls triumph and drippy boys' team leader Alex chose to take Nicholas and Raef back into the boardroom with him.
Things quickly escalated into a class war with Nicholas declaring that the group had split into the educated and the non-educated. Alex was quick to point out that he also had a university degree which led Nicholas to point out more differences between the boys - he likes to talk about arts and culture and they like to talk about football apparently. The writing was really on the wall for Nicholas at that point and Sir Alan rightly fired him.
What did you think of the first episode? Who are your favourites and which of the candidates are getting on your nerves. Let us know...
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well the jumped up prat got what he deserved .. god help us if he were to defend us in court
Posted by: tonytts on Thu Mar 27 11:40AM | Report abusei am glad he got fired its pepole like nick give us hard working .. dare i say it working class a hard time we cant all be born into money. at lest we earned to get where we are not just because mummy and daddy had money
Posted by: bevdinsley on Thu Mar 27 01:04PM | Report abuseThese "well educated" people are our future. God help us
Posted by: annmarie.fountain on Thu Mar 27 01:04PM | Report abuseThese idiots wouldnt last 5 mins in the real world with their arrogant attitudes. They need some cognitive behaviour coaching and a reality check.
Posted by: jon.rawson on Thu Mar 27 01:06PM | Report abuseTrue, he was out of his depth but he was also scapegoated. Raef should have gone though - couldn't identify fish with pictures provided, very disruptive and talks s**t - but this whole show becomes not about who is best for the job but who makes good telly.
Posted by: topcat63 on Thu Mar 27 01:07PM | Report abusevery surprised any of them have the sort of jobs they say they do ! no pricing, no labelling, 8 people on a stall... trying to sell the last of the fish in desperation to an office.. no foresight no planning .. id sack the lot of them
Posted by: peterhillocks on Thu Mar 27 01:08PM | Report abuseThe whole lot should be fired for their lack of common sense, lack of business sense and naivete. Haven't they watched the series before or researched it? Identify the fish, price them competitively with fishmongers in the locality and drop prices slightly towards the end of the alotted time if all not sold. Similar tasks have been given in previous series and similar mistakes have been made. I am always amazed that the people picked came from 20,000 or so applicants. OR, is the show not about the job at all but purely sensationalism for yet another reality TV show? I'll bet in the interviews to come many of them have omitted to research Sir Alan and his life/businesses. Duh!
Posted by: peter.harris310 on Thu Mar 27 01:08PM | Report abuseIt just goes to prove that all the qualifications in the world wont be worth anything if you don't have any common sense to go with them, not to mention a few basic inter-personal skills.
Posted by: hijackme on Thu Mar 27 01:09PM | Report abusefire the lot of them. Not once last night was there any evidence of humility; only humiliation by Sir Alan and rightly so.
Posted by: c.latter285 on Thu Mar 27 01:09PM | Report abuseWhat a load of prats, where do they find them, I thought people like this just stayed at university for all of their lives, students first then teaching other prats just like themselves, for it is clear that when you let them out into the real world they are quite dangerous as they do think that they are above the rest of us.
Posted by: john.powell8cu on Thu Mar 27 01:10PM | Report abuse