[Andy McDandy]

Well folks, it's started again. 18 pricks in shiny suits hauled out of some of the dodgiest lettings agencies in the country and let loose to sell bad things to people who don't mind being on the telly for a bit, before being judged by Britain's most available BTL landlord.

Hard to pick between the candidates again, as they're all the same. 9 "bros" as the Americans call them, all high fives and macho bullshit like calling themselves the James Bond of business (what, so every time you do something good, the follow-up is a massive bloated disappointment?). The ladies are your standard hen party of Boots team leaders out on the razz. I tell you, Isis wouldn't stand a chance.

Last night they all went off to Antigua to sell tours. The lads went to a fort and were saved by one of them being a history buff who could do the guided tour bit. The lasses argued about where to sell tickets, then ran a piss up on a boat, but lost overall. In the boardroom, Sugar sacked the one who kept pointing out that sending the team to a deserted beach to sell tickets was a really stupid idea.

Leading wankers so far are Simba (Crap Panther), Victoria (Kerry Catatonia) and Shazia (Cosplayer Braverman). For, respectively, describing himself as a 'disruptor', for being an utter psychopath, and for getting the backstabbing going early and fast.

[satnav]

My daughter was watching it on iplayer this morning and I couldn't help thinking that the candidates are basically people who were rejected by Love Island for being too ugly.

The format is just so tired and stale. If any of the contestants took the time to watch previous series they would no exactly what to expect.

[Abernathy]

Good review of this year’s wanker festival in the Indy :

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ent ... 1672960216

[kreuzberger]

I have heard the trailers across the BBC wireless services. More like a dire warning.

Two minutes of Andy's summations are far more entertaining that those cunts could wring out of an entire series.

[Bones McCoy]

I'm extremely grateful to Andy, who watches this shitshow so we don't have to.

[Abernathy]

Hear, hear.

[Watchman]

I must admit, it’s a guilty pleasure; I can smugly stereotype them and say thank goodness I’m not that level of twat

[MisterMuncher]

Surely, even more so than all the usual "talent" reality shows The Apprentice must inherently have the least eligible candidates because those who can do the thing are already busily doing the thing?

[davidjay]

Surely, even more so than all the usual "talent" reality shows The Apprentice must inherently have the least eligible candidates because those who can do the thing are already busily doing the thing?

It does make me wonder why these thrusting business people always seem to be working for others, but I don't suppose it's any more true than a talented singer will already have been spotted.

[Andy McDandy]

At least on an early episode of X Factor or whatever, Pete Waterman explained the maths of the music industry to one hopeful, saying that it took several bland and inoffensive X Factor singers to fund one "proper" band, and that due to the way rights and income streams work, many record labels really didn't want to discover the next Radiohead or Fleetwood Mac.

[Andy McDandy]

Week 2 - go make and flog some Bao buns. Most profit wins.

We watch as the ladies fail at basic maths and cock up recipes, while the guys seemingly work smoothly and make sales. Then - surprise, surprise! - the scores are revealed. The ladies actually won! They sold more buns and made more money! Who would have seen that coming?

[Last night, in McDandy Towers, Arsedale-in-Gothland]

AM: Yeah, looks like they're fucking everything up.

AM's SO: Heh. Bet they win.

[Back to reality]

Into the boardroom, where the guys are actually better than normal at assigning blame. As the eventual fired one puts it, it's all down to how much they sold stuff for, and he was the one who made that call. So it's Kev from accounts who gets the shove. Meanwhile Shannon walks off the show, saying she's got an actual business to run and doesn't need this distraction, suggesting she's the one who actually gets what it's all about.

[Andy McDandy]

Week 3 sees the return of the Creative Challenge, that old staple where people who have spent their lives sneering at arty types suddenly find themselves in desperate need of some of that inventive spark.

This time, it's to produce a cartoon for toddlers. Yes, I can hear the laughter already. The teams get a bit mixed up so are no longer the boys and the girls. Instead they pick names that, as Rosie Jones points out on the follow up show, sound like condom brands.

Now, as experience teaches us, when they do this sort of challenge on the show, a few things are bound to happen:

1. They will produce something incredibly "worthy", but also cringeworthy in its heavy-handedness.
2. The target audience will hate it (or at least not give a shit about it).

So, the teams split into two. One half develop characters, the others work on story (WHY???? Nobody does this in reality! The two have to be developed in tandem! Anyway...). Both teams decide to do something along the lines of inclusivity, and start to fuck it up. Let's make the character a wheelchair user! And black! And let's make sure their name really underlines their ethnicity! It's at moments like this that you begin to see where the right wing clichés of black Welsh lesbian dwarves come from. Any one or two of these things are fine, but too many look like box ticking.

Meanwhile the questions start flying. What sort of "otherness" is acceptable for 2-4 year olds? Can they handle racism or sexism? No, how about heightism. Can the kids pronounce that character's name? Meanwhile Cosplayer Braverman claims that all the ideas from her group are in fact hers, while Reese (The League of Gentlemen's Legz Akimbo theatre group manager Ollie Plimsolls made flesh) and his team forget to put hands on their characters. Awkward, when hands play a crucial part in the plot.

Onto the focus groups. "We've got good and bad feedback - put it this way, they didn't hate it" pretty much sums it up. Bored tots couldn't give a shit, while parents point out that "overcoming adversity" stereotypes are just as shit in their own way as more offensive ones.

Finally, the pitch to various children's entertainment bods. As both teams bungle the pitch, we get some great reaction shots from Megan (Siobhan Vinegar), while Cosplayer disowns her amazing creations when she sees what the pitch team have done to them. She has already spent much of the episode being told ever so politely to wind her fucking neck in by team leader Avi, so this is quite funny.

The pitches can be summed up by this exchange (not too far off the actual words)

"So, are you going to call this a) short and sweet title, or b and I cannot stress enough that this is the wrong answer) longer tongue twister of a title?"

"Oh, definitely B."

In the end, Ollie Plimsolls' worthy effort loses out to Avi (Bhodi Crook) and his team's jungle-based thing. Ollie survives, while history fan Greg (bastard lovechild of Sue Perkins and Michael Macintyre) gets the boot for doing nothing but point out how shit his team's effort is. Ollie does a lot of "but we won the argument" stuff, while Greg patiently points out that they still fucking lost. Sralan fires Greg, saying that he has to be adaptable and take on things outside his comfort zone. My partner points out that if in business you're faced with something outside your comfort zone, the best thing to do is delegate it to someone who knows what they're doing.

Next week they get lost in Brighton on a scavenger hunt. Until next time, folks!

[Andy McDandy]

Week 4 and it's time to go bargain hunting. Get yer arses down to Brighton and buy some things. Lowest spending team wins.

With the fucking stupid constraint of not being allowed to use the internet, the teams are left with A-Z maps and trade directories(which I was honestly surprised to realise were still being printed). Lots of funnies as the 20somethings wonder out loud how these strange papery things work, or what a "45" record is.

Off they go. On Team Crevice, Crap Panther is in charge, devises a strategy, and promptly gets ignored by everyone else. Off they go and buy their things. They haggle over pennies. They get blindsided by the other team as the rarer items on their list get snaffled up just before they can get to them.

Meanwhile on Team Prepuce, Ollie Plimsolls spends a lot of time ringing people but not making much progress. Mark (Johnny Merkin) leads the "sub team", or as we call them in reality, the other half of the team. They spend all their time pootling around the Lanes.

In the end neither team finds all the things. They spend a lot of time chasing up Egyptian desert roses, not realising they're fossils and not flowers, and hitting the florists even when the experts in all things floral are telling them to stop wasting their time. In the boardroom, Simba's team win and as a punishment are sent to watch the Only Fools and Horses musical. Afterwards in the bar they're filmed doing Del Boy impressions. Oh for a falling chandelier at that point.

Denisha (quite likeable really) was running Team Prepuce, and brings back Ollie and Merkin to face the music. Points out that one's a loudmouth who doesn't listen to anyone, and the other didn't do much. Whatever, she's still fired.

Next week they have to make an advert. If they can out-wanker actual advertising people, they win, or something.

[mattomac]

Lord Sugar was bemoaning University education this morning on the basis of these numpties, ignorant of the fact that he chose them.

[Andy McDandy]

I'd be very surprised if many of the contestants over the years, least of all this year, went to university.

[Watchman]

And 3-2-1……it’s the university of life, innit!

[Andy McDandy]

Funny you should mention that; as the remaining wankers were summoned to their briefing at either LSE or UCL last night, several commented on how they'd never been to college, worked every day since birth, no time for that poncey book learning...

So, here's the task. Following Sweetex reading a blurb about green energy and climate change off a card, they have to market a new eco motorbike.

Team Skidmark appoints Bradley (the North York Bore), a keen biker. He comes up with an idea based on his experience that will resonate with the biking community. The rest of the team, led by Cosplayer Braverman, ignore it. They name their bike the Zip Zap, which is apparently onomatopaeic. Remember that word, it'll come back later.

Team Santorum, led by Kerry Catatonia, call their bike "Soldier" and design an advert that seems to be a cross between a perfume ad and a dating agency. Both teams shoot adverts of shocking paucity. Then they're pitching to people from the advertising and motorbike industries.

Both get shot down. Shit brand names, shit adverts, shit research, shit messages. Why did one team abandon their quite cool idea for generic tosh? And meanwhile, Bodhi Crook learns that onomatopaeia isn't what he thinks it is (he was thinking of alliteration).

In the boardroom, Team Skidmark have lost. The NYB brings back Cosplayer and Bodhi. Cosplayer admits she made mistakes, but in that strange Tory way of "If I admit them, that's my punishment and there can't be any follow-up". Off she goes. In the after-show, she says that she made no friends on the show and that's no real surprise.

Next week they're off to Dubai. How this gels with the current economic climate I've no idea.

[soulboy]

Having watched last week's episode I was reminded of the enforced sycophancy in the board room.

Showing all the culture relevance of a Dickie Littlejohn column, the man who launched the Amstrad E-Mailer made a Triumph pun and suggested that one commercial looked more like an advert for Friends Reunited.

The young shavers on the show dutifully laughed despite, in all likelihood, the majority of them never having heard of the motorcycle brand or the prototype social network.

[Andy McDandy]

Something else I've noticed, particularly in this series, is that the "characters" keep getting the most airtime, while other, quieter, contestants tend to blend into the background. Whether this is tactical play or selective editing, I'll go with a bit of both. But as a result, any pretence the show ever had to being about uncovering business leaders of tomorrow has been replaced 110% by "let's have a laugh at these twats".

[Andy McDandy]

Week six and they're off to Dubai! They'll have to sell corporate awaydays to UAE-based companies and lay on food, entertainment, and all that palaver.

So, before we go into this, just keep the following things in mind. Dubai. Corporate. UAE residents. Desert. This isn't just a rerun of flogging excursions to holidaymakers in Antigua. Oh no, it's so much worse.

Ollie Plimsolls is there at the start, but disappears when the plane touches down. According to some sources, he had health issues. Others say he got pissed on the flight there, so either way he's out. Team captains this week are Kerry Catatonia and Rochelle (Kim Cuntdashian).

Team Atrocity lay on a speedboats and yacht thing for a beauty salon's staff. They get sick of the speedboats, and are left waiting ages for food on the yacht, as Siobhan Vinegar throws up copiously. They hire a DJ for all day, and he does a 30 minute set.

Team Bukkake run a trip into the desert for some Dubai-based country club, so objectively the worst people in the world, or at least the most demanding. Once they're out in the sands, Bodhi Crook launches into a spiel of amazing desert facts (cribbed out of the Ladybird big book of the fucking obvious) to people who fucking live there. They try to explain the intricacies of Arabic coffee culture to people who fucking live there. They serve up food, and then tell this group of very rich people who have paid through the nose for this wonderful day out, that they're limited to 2 drinks of water each.

In. The. Fucking. DESERT.

Understandably, the clients are not impressed. In the aftershow, the sacked candidate reveals that they and the camera crew had loads of water, but for some reason they didn't share it with the clients. Because obviously the rules of the contest are more important than people fucking dehydrating.

Back to London, and both teams have fucked up, but the amount of money demanded back by the salon staff was less than that by the country club people. So Team Atrocity score a technical win. On the losing side, Kim calls back Crap Panther and safari guide Joe (the Great Shite Hunter). Both were responsible for the water cock-up, but Panther is saved as all he did was relay a message, rather than make the decision to endanger their clients' lives. Off goes the GSH, looking positively relieved.

The losers bleat a lot about this being a profit task, so customer care wasn't really a major part of their plan. Fair enough, and Sralan calls them out over it. But at the same time, they could have treated their clients like absolute shit and if they'd made a penny less of a loss than the others, they'd be laughing. So apparently customer care only matters if it doesn't cut into your profit margin.

So in summary, awful people treated other awful people awfully, and now there are two less awful people in the running to work for an awful person.