Crisps and Cretins

God I'm hungry (and it's not quite lunchtime), which reminds me I haven't blogged yet about this week's Apprentice. The crisps task, eh? Or How To Succeed Where No Other British Crisp Manufacturer Has. Easy peasy for the boys and girls of The Apprentice, given their top-level business acumen, fantastic client management skills and all-round fabulosity (hey! A Melissa word...). Hmm. Lord Sugar has whittled the contestants down to the final eight, and if this task hasn't put them off, nothing will. So, the brief: design some new flavours of crisps, get them made, take them to Hamburg and flog them to the Germans. Okay, sounds simple enough. Unless you don't know the first thing about making crisps, which we can safely assume they didn't. Stella's team went straight in for the "Classic British" theme, coming up with roast dinner flavour and the more dodgy sounding stilton and paprika. Stilton and PAPRIKA? WHY? At least it's different, I suppose. Chris's team decided to work on traditional German flavours.... again, WHY? Surely in Germany they already HAVE German style crisps, and don't need a bunch of Brits coming over to sell them some more. Just when you thought it couldn't get worse, Christopher and Jamie fell in love with a sausage and curry fast food snack, and off they went to make the crisps to match. Yuck.

Highlights of the episode included: Christopher's revelation that he hates Germany and Germans, with no reason given (or if there was it was deemed unbroadcastable), Laura's sulking and stropping (especially when told she spoke waaaay too fast) and Baggsy's sheer brilliance at being able to count to 20 in German. Something my 13 year old son can do, and HE doesn't act like he has the genius of Stephen Hawking. My son was watching with me as it happens, and he wasn't impressed. But then, he is never impressed by anyone on the show, to be honest. It was painfully obvious, really, that Stella's team was going to win. Not only were their flavours, well, edible, but they made some good pitches and got in there first. Chris's team made a MASSIVE mistake when they were offered a 9am appointment at The Marriott but Christopher and Jamie changed it to 1pm and guess what? - Stella and Joanna have already been there and walked away with a sizeable order. Didn't see THAT one coming... As Jamie would say, "the early bird catches the birm", or something like that.

Chris, panicking now he was set for the boardroom for the umpteenth time, dragged Christopher and Jamie along for the ride. I must admit, I don't like that Christopher much (the slimeball), but did feel a bit sorry for him when he was fired. Chris and Jamie managed to wriggle their respective ways out of an elbowing, whilst poor Christopher couldn't sweet talk Lord Sugar over, being told that although he was a hard grafter, he just wasn't "entrepreneurial enough". Hmm. One suspects that what Lord Sugar meant was, doesn't talk rubbish enough. It seems to be the way forward, don't you think? Although Lord S has often decried the verbose, he seems to like them, really. Maybe there's a moral in this tale, you know. Or even two. One - don't sell German crisps to Germans... they already HAVE them. Two - Hard work is all very well, but if you can't talk the talk, walking the walk ain't going to get you far. And there's a third - Counting to 20 in German does NOT make you a brainiac.