1 November 2011

The Young Apprentice-Episode 1

Overinflated public school egos, oversized suits and irrelevant shots of London skyscrapers, just for dramatic effect. It can only be a new series of The Young Apprentice.

This mini-spin off of The Apprentice relaunched on Monday, with another group of adolescents keen to impress Sugar and his homies, and it seems the contestants are as egotistical as ever. Their opening statements were all going so well, if cliched (although you get the impressions that whoever scripted them neglected to inform  Mohammed of the relevance of the words "I have a dream") with one young lady proclaiming within the opening sequence "No-one intimidates me because I know I am better than them." Little charmers.

Either Sugar is going soppy in his old age, or he really does have a soft spot for the youth of today. In his opening speech to them he declared "I love you lot" and throughout the episode went on to joke with them more readily than he usually does with the more mature contestants of The Apprentice. It was good, if slightly unnerving to see a softer side to the man behind The Finger.

The task turned out to be making and selling frozen treats for maximum profit. Fairly simple you would think? Yet the girls ended up disposing of a large proportion of their ingredients before they'd even left the factory and fluffing their maths entirely. It was shocking to see Sugar's aide Nick supporting their unethical selling method of putting toppings onto ice creams before customers had the chance to protest, then charging them for the privilege, not to mention charging for the cones.

The boys, on the other hand, opted for the more straight forward method of press ganging passers by into buying ice creams. A couple in particular were overly aggressive in their selling tactics, resembling an East End market stall. Most ingenious idea of the day was offering deliveries of ice cream to sunbathers on the beach.

Both teams ended up slashing their prices at the end of the day to sell off their stock, a move which did little to impress Sugar.

Back in the boardroom, amid a frenzy of shouting and squabbling, it was revealed that the girls had won. Off they went to frolic down hills and leave James and Mohammed to squabble over whose idea the pirate theme was, a scene which became painful and cringeworthy to watch, particularly when Mohammed refused to back down despite there being footage attributing the idea to James the bulldozer.

As it turned out, the words Essex and entrepreneur didn't bond together as well as Mohammed had hoped, as he was on the receiving end of those immortal words "you're fired". Ah well, back to satellites for you, my friend.

My early prediction at this stage would be for Harry Maxwell to win, or at least to go far. He was kept quiet during this episode, mainly drowned out by the immature squabblings of his peers, but he was seen in the background working on the maths for his team with more success than the girls. One to watch, perhaps.

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