Young Apprentice - Week 5 verdict

It is with great pleasure that we can announce that Harry Maxwell is the worst project manager in ‘Apprentice’ history.

Only someone like Harry M could alienate and annoy an entire team within minutes of starting the task - and with only a handful of words. It was David Brent style management at its very worst, luckily for us viewers.

This week’s task was to come up with a new brand of deodorant and make an advert to sell it to a teenage market. Then, with the help of some industry experts, Lord Sugar would decide the winning team.

Creative tasks provide some of the best ‘Apprentice’ episodes and this was no different. Unfortunately, despite early signs, Harry M didn’t slowly go insane with power, but his ineptitude in basic human interaction was still thoroughly entertaining.

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It turns out that brandishing your management title around and shooting down all ideas you didn’t come up with yourself is bad for your workers’ morale. Who knew?

James was visibly unhappy being lumbered with the blonde nightmare, and to his credit did fight back a few times, only to be shut down by Harry’s barrage of inane rambling. Fellow team mate Lizzie kept quiet despite being clearly annoyed and Gbemi disregarded everything anyone said.

Team Atomic consisted of Haya, Hayley, the other Harry and their PM, Adele look-a-like Zara. They were a much more coherent team and did the job, even if it wasn’t a spectacular effort. Zara has an authority about her that worked for her management role. She wasn’t afraid to listen to other people and make U-turns where necessary.

The nice Harry stood out, delivering an impressive pitch to the experts. Bonus marks as well for the “no sweat” line (puns get you far at Yahoo towers). Hayley and Zara’s sterling efforts storyboarding and filming the advert helped round off a great team performance.

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Team Kinetic’s advert on the other hand was overseen by Harry M and James, who arrived at an underground bar with only a vague idea of what they wanted filmed and not a storyboard in sight.

“Sometimes it’s possible for two directors to jointly create a masterpiece,” said future Countdown presenter Nick Hewer, who was in fine form. “You’ve got Gilbert and George and the Coen brothers in film, so who knows what little gem will emerge from this particularly dark and smelly place.”

The experts openly laughed at the advert, and not for the right reasons. Their opinions of both teams were relayed to Lord Sugar in his car by phone, who  clearly there was no-one on the other line and he was reading lines off an out-of-shot notepad.

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In the boardroom Kinetic were asked whether Harry was a good PM, to which Gbemi and Lizzie wasted no time voicing their opinions. James, sensing defeat, decided to cover his tracks a little and declared Harry a good manager despite his protests during the task, all in the hope that he wouldn’t be brought back. It didn’t work.

After Atomic’s deserved victory, Harry M, James and Gbemi were left with Lord Sugar to see who would be fired.

According to Lord Sugar it was the advert and the design that were to blame for the task. While assessing Harry M Sugar pondered, “Maybe you’re just unlucky,” and Harry gave a little, self-deluded nod in agreement.

Sugar bewilderingly decided that the design was the main culprit and opted to fire Gbemi, despite how blindingly obvious it was that Harry should have gone following his fifth time on the losing team.

So the Tory Youth graduate lives to fight another week, but yet another defeat must surely mean curtains.