As any successful entrepreneur will tell you, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” - so the sixth series of both these shows returned with just a few cosmetic changes. The muted opening is in tune with the times, Sir Alan Sugar is now the more ennobled Lord Sugar, the wonderful Margaret Mountford (who has gone back to her papyrology PhD) has been replaced in aide-de-camp duties by businesswoman and West Ham Football Cub executive Karren Brady, and Adrian Chiles (recently departed to ITV) by comic Dara Ó Briain. But in style, format and, most importantly, bombastic cliché by the 16 hopefuls jostling to become Sugar’s new sidekick, these two programmes remain the same. And what an utter joy both still are.
Sugar’s aides Nick Hewer and Brady were given little airtime in the opener, but what they had to say was to the point and Brady, I think, is going to be a magnificent replacement for the quiet assassin Mountford, who could demolish somebody with just a raised eyebrow to camera. Brady is fair and clearly doesn’t like treachery, and marked one upstart’s cards with a sharp boardroom interjection about his aggressive sales technique (Stuart Baggs, pictured below, who has a very high opinion of himself and will therefore provide us with much entertainment, most of it unintended).
The men - sorry, “boys”, as they are deemed here - chose the team name of Synergy because it sounded modern, without anyone appearing to know the word’s origin from the Greek synergia, meaning joint work and co-operative action. The women - yep, “girls” - chose Apollo because, as one of their number pointed out, Apollo was the first Moon mission, “and failure isn’t an option”. She got the first bit right, but was woefully underinformed about the second element - that was the phrase coined by Houston Control about bringing home the stranded astronauts of the Apollo 13 mission. Neither did anyone mention the god Apollo who, among other things, brought ill health and plagues. In short, it really was all Greek to them - sorry, but this weak-joke lark is catching as, gawd bless 'em, Sugar’s scriptwriters didn’t disappoint with their leaden boardroom put-downs to the cowering newbies (“This is sink or swim and I don’t do lifejackets,” he said at one point).
The first task was to make and sell sausages, so off to Smithfield market in London the teams went to buy the meat and then to street markets with the finished product later in the day; the boys went for the minimum meat percentage required to define the end result as sausages (using the "pile ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap" approach), while the girls went for the 70 per cent meat gourmet banger (people will pay a premium price for perceived quality). Was a producer quietly suggesting these nicely differing approaches? Surely not.
After some predictably messy sausage-making footage and the by now familiar scenes of the teams’ desperate begging of passers-by to buy their products as the clock ticked away on the task, the would-be apprentices’ weaknesses were apparent. Synergy’s team leader, sales director (that’ll be just plain old salesman to you and me) Dan Harris, shouted a lot and his über-competitive team never gelled, while Apollo’s quietly efficiently leader, Joanna Riley, who "owns" a cleaning company (a dab hand with a duster, I’m guessing), was being undermined at every turn by Melissa Cohen, a food business manager (perhaps she runs an ice-cream van, who knows?). Melissa (pictured above) is one to watch - she’ll either be dumped next week or turn out to be the hit of the series.
The difference between the two teams was just £15 in profit and Apollo won. Predictably Dan tried to blame the two people in his team that he brought back into the boardroom for the final showdown, but we knew his days were numbered when Sugar told the arrogantly slouching salesman to sit up straight. It’s pleasing to see that good manners matter.
As ever, Dan appeared to be a different bloke entirely when he appeared on The Apprentice: You’re Fired, which followed on BBC Two. He was charming, witty, self-deprecating and agreed that he should have been fired. He chose the wrong tactics and was a bully with his team, he said, leaving the invited guests of comic Jenny Eclair, journalist Mark Frith and chef John Torode with little to add. New host comic Dara Ó Briain was relaxed and full of jokes, but didn’t make himself the star of the show; it’s tough taking over a gig from a popular and talented presenter, but he has already proved himself a terrific replacement for Chiles. And there's another 11 weeks of this to go before Sugar probably chooses the wrong person again as his apprentice - what a treat.
- Watch The Apprentice and The Apprentice: You’re Fired on BBC iPlayer
- Find The Apprentice on Amazon
- Find Alan Sugar on Amazon
- Find Dara Ó Briain on Amazon
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