Be Excellent To Each Other

It's as if humanity has branched off in a different direction. Here I am, reading G K Chesterton, and terrifyingly venal, beady eyed and sweating constructions have stolen humanity and run off with it.

And example of BBC defence with a random example, the well-praised 'In The Night Garden':



Yes, that's why it's called 'The Night Garden', because it's fun for all the family that's not meant to be shown in the evening, but any time of the day, when it isn't about to be night. Gagh.

The apprentice is awesome and i, for one, welcome our new buzzword spouting polyester clad overlords.

Seriously, some of them must have trouble crossing the road.

L is my favorite.

The mindset's alien to me too. I mean, imagine competing so ferociously AND making an arse of yourself in front of the world just to be in with a chance of being Alan Sugar's doormat.
Last night's was good, but...

I wouldn't worry about spoilers chap.

Yeah, I was surprised Lucinda lost. I wanted the pig-faced cow who was running the other team to lose and get fired. Still, I am pleased with who got fired in the end, as she spent most of the task saying 'God, we're just so ace! hehehe!' and now I don't have to look at her absurd level of eyeliner again.

There's one guy though, I don't know his name but his surname is something stupid and Greek like 'Antiphones' or something. He's incapable of talking properly. They were trying to find people to test their free ice cream, and instead of saying that, he approached two blokes in the pub and started going on about looking for 'people with discerning pallates' and other such bollocks. In every scene I see him, he's saying something long-winded and overly rhetorical. It makes him look like a twat.

I told him all this last night, but alas he couldn't hear me.

When Chinny would do it for free!

By approaching people this way, he makes them feel superior to him, and therefore positively disposed towards him, thus facilitating his sales pitch.

If I were The Apprentice, I'd imagine the setup something like The Karate Kid. With Sir Alan as Mr Miyagi.

Don't know how that double post happened, but I thought I'd just make a second unnecessary one to apologise for it.

When Sir Alan took them to the Tate Modern at the start, the other week, I thought the task was going to be to walk once around it without tripping up on "The Crack" exhibit. Seemed like a good way to get rid of 50% of them in one go.

Environmental greeting cards? What the fuck is in that ginger girl's head?

The Apprentice is awesome. For me the boardroom was win-win, I was glad to see any of the dullard fuckers gone. Yay!

But yeah, I was busy shouting at the TV for most of it. I can't stand that stupid 'Sophocles' twat either.

His exciting shouting was all kinds of awesome cringing.

As is Jenny's.

I think Alan will be putting Sara in a team manager role soon.

I want to get a look at his 'secretary' - she looks a bit yummy.

I was right!

The development name for the Amstrad PCW was "Joyce", named after Sir Alans secretary at the time. I think she left in the late eighties. As I recall she appeared in some publicity photos at the time and was the real deal, not an actress. I think, what with the boadroom being a set, that it was obvious the PA shown on the TV would be an actress. Although I use "actress" in the loosest possible set. As a role it is somewhere below Big Ron in Eastenders.

I cannot believe that daily mail article exists. They've got quotes from someone saying that hearing her say the same words is the highlight of their week. HIGHTLIGHT? Jesus pal, get out more. Also, exciting details that SHOCK HORROR SHUDDER AND GASP, she had to wear her OWN clothes in the first series, and now she has a clothing allowance. Why? We bare even see the back of her head. The adulation of millions of fans? Are they batshit insane?

Other disbelieving expletives here.

Yes, they are.

Every time I see the daily mail website I want to put it through a shredder. Literally, I want to find all of the servers its hosted on and put them through a giant destruction machine. Everything is written to appeal to the most stupid, appalling reactionary morons that will doubtlessly be captivated by the highly predictable 'shock' headlines and 'articles' that are no more than a dodgy picture and a shitload of pointless, libellous speculation. Hnnnnngh.

Spotted on Popbitch:

"An acquaintance of mine works at the design company this was based in. Apparently theyre all cunts, but hey, like thats fucking news."

Was anyone else really, really hoping that, upon exiting the building, Whatshisface tried to push the door, rather than pull it?

I was a bit disappointed with this week's result.

I am reminded, as I was last year and the year before, what a douche bag Alan Sugar actually is. He's uniquely capable of firing absolutely the wrong people leaving himself with a load of cockmunching dickfaces. He's put FOUR of them through and worse still, got rid of Lucinda, who for me was the only person worth hiring.

Sigh, Alex to win I suppose.

You kidding? She's a fucking nut job. Fine as a team leader but reduced to utter shite when a team member. She's a one trick pony who it's remarkable got this far. In no way shape or form is she an Apprentice and the interviewers picked up on that.

The job is for an Apprentice, somebody who can learn and be moulded.

And you're left with Helen (not Helene), a bulshy northern moose. Lee, who can't control his lips and lies on his CV. Miss Piggy, who has no dress sense and talks non stop, and Alex, who bemoans being 24 and just comes across as a whiney little kid.

I know who I'd rather hire.

Ha, yes! I would bet £1,000,000,000 (well, maybe a tenner) that her birth name is Helen, and "Helene" is something she's taken to calling herself to appear more "interesting".

Claire's going to win, isn't she?

The whiney kid will win. He's an Apprentice.

Actually Miss Piggy might win. Reason is that Sugar cocked up when he didn't go for Badger a couple of years ago and ended up with that woman he ended up having to "let go".

Usually the final two work for him for a few months off camera (they don't shout about this) before he makes his mind up. Lord knows how they sorted it this year. Perhaps the winning team from next week will do that. Popbitch will reveal all no doubt.

I was sad to see Lucinda get fired, but realise that Leatherface needs someone he can shape, mould and control, and not a free thinker wo's doing te job for a chalenge, as he could not control her.

Jeez, why does everyone like her? I couldn't be in the room for more than 3 minutes without wanting to murder her.

Now for my first use of a smilie ever!

I dunno about you but I thought she was looking rather spiffy in the 'You're Fired' prog on bbc2 straight afterwards.

Looking oddly botoxed, you mean. She had a bulgy smooth forehead that looked very wierd. Like she was morphing into the Mekon.

SILENCE INFIDELS.

She looked lovely and very 'do-able'.

I would like to say that I despise them all. Especially the round-faced girl with all the moles.

Perhaps you should have got a job as a "runner" on the show? One of them was rumoured to be "firing" a certain lady on a regular basis.*



* Source: Popbitch, natch.

From a purely objective standpoint, rather than referring to people as mooses, or whatever, he now has:

Lee: Quite raw and a bit of a twat at times, but a good motivator who's willing to learn. Fucked up with the CV thing (he should have immediately come clean in the interview, to get credibility back), but that's pretty minor.

Claire: Loudmouth and irritating, but she has improved, although Alan Sugar's perceptive question (asking whether she's just canny enough to 'change' temporarily) should prove interesting overall.

Helene: Not a single highlight for the entire series, but interviewed well. The corporate background explains here holier-than-thou project-managing earlier in the series.

Alex: Peaked early and strong in sales, but doesn't remotely stand out. Interesting to see how badly he deals with any criticism whatsoever—I guess he hasn't had too much of that.

On the basis of what we've seen, it'd be justice for Lee and Claire to win next week, with one of them taking the job; that said, last year proved surprises happen, so it wouldn't shock me if he ends up with Alex.

As for Lucinda, she was poisonous as a team-member, and firing her was exactly the right decision (something Alan Sugar really hasn't got right plenty of times this series—firing Raef instead of Michael that week was just bizarre). She seems totally suited to contracting and being effectively self-employed, frankly.

LIES AND UNTRUTHS.

(Anyways, she's out of my target demographic and I'd only be arm candy)

I'm not buying that (heh!). He didn't sell that well in the wedding episode, and in the car episode the only reason he got so much money is that he got two people to hire the Zonda, at the sort of price where if you've got that much cash, no-one is going to convince you away from what you already think. The three people that hired the Zonda in the end would have hired it if Lucinda had talked to them.

It wasn't really, I saw it coming. For all the being a hard bastard Sugar projects, he has a massive weak spot. He's really big on family and helping people out. One of the criticisms aimed at his management of Amstrad is that he employed alot of family members in high up positions and also often prefers loyalty and friendship over skill.

There's a fascinating story at The Register:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/02/alan_suagr_nostalgia/

Pages 2 and 3 are very enlightening and was a new story to me*. How Roland Perry was let go (this was their best product designer) over Sugar's long term friend. No surprise what happened next, Amstrad products started to lack the spark of ingenuity that made them famous.

Sugar took a liking to Michael. He was young, stupid, but perhaps material that you could turn into an Apprentice. Even after the chicken cock-up I couldn't see him going.




*Aside from the huge error in the first paragraph.

Oh and check out the post from "Friday 3rd August 2007 11:10 GMT" which has some corrections.

Lee: Gobby twat
Claire: Gobby Cow
helen: Northern.
Alex: Stupid Twat. And northern.

I keep hearing this, and Sir Alan said it so it must be true, and we saw a bunch of clips of her arguing with people but:

10 tasks, she was on the winning team for 8 of them. Of the two she lost, one of them was as Project Manager when everyone agreed she did a great job and it was the closest loss of the entire series (the Ice Cream task).

So this disruptive, poisonous influence was such a bad team player, that when she wasn't managing her team only won 7 of 8 tasks. I think her disruptiveness was played up in the edit and her arguing with people and pointing out when certain ideas were bad or stupid likely benefited them more than they'd admit. Sure, maybe a couple of tasks were won 'despite' her but 7 out of 8 - that's pretty damn lucky.

I'd agree, she was pretty damn lucky. Last weeks episode was a case in point. She was way out of her depth and didn't throw herself into the task. If she'd been on the losing team she would have been fired there and then.

She needs a job as an interior designer for London tossers and not a job as The Apprentice.

Well yeah, she knows nothing about cars and has never done direct sales before so does badly on a task whose only component is selling cars.
Of course, that's an issue of the format, that sales tasks are so common, and the candidates generally consist of 50% salesmen and 50% not. And when you're not selling it's a lot more obvious as it comes down to numbers, whereas when you're not managing it's a lot more fluid.
I'm not even convinced she's have gone last week if they'd lost. Okay, she can't sell - "If you want a salesman then fire me now". But the biggest error in that task came down to the PM, who knew she couldn't sell, knew she lacked knowledge about cars, but sent her off on her own when the was the perfectly viable alternative of splitting the team in a different way. And after an hour or so of watching one of them sell the car she could have picked up on the language and at least just copied what they were doing and 'got stuck in'.
Yeah she was clueless on that task, but that's not her fault - it's not like they get given time for research or swatting up. If someone stuck you in a street and told you to sell something you had no clue about you'd probably struggle too.

Yeah, but you'd perhaps read the big sign you had with you so you wouldn't confuse a Zonda with a Aston.

Or even a Zona.