The new series of The Apprentice has begun! Was it on fire? Was it firing blanks? Who got...um...fired? Stuart Heritage gives us his thoughts on all the goings-on in the first episode of The Apprentice 2012.
Oh, look, it’s The Apprentice. There are some idiots. They spend three months doing a bad job of selling things to people and then one of them wins. It’s been this way since 2005, and things aren’t about to change now. Sure, the faces are different - this year, among others, we’ve got a professional wrestler named Ricky Martin and a woman who bases her make-up on Darryl Hannah in Blade Runner - but that’s about it.
At the start of the episode, Lord Sugar - a man so constantly furious that he now has the letter X permanently carved into his face - tells the candidates that he’s looking for “The Marks to my Spencer, the Lennon to my McCartney”, presumably echoing the time that Paul McCartney gave John Lennon £250,000 in exchange for a disappointing-looking nailfile. And then we’re off.
THE BRIEF
“Print some stuff onto some more stuff and then sell it to idiots.”
TEAM LEADERS
Wiggy Nick for the boys (TEAM PHOENIX) and Gabrielle for the girls (TEAM STERLING). Gabrielle is just starting up her own printing company, so she’ll obviously win, right? Right? How could she not?
THE TASK
The girls make the mistake of leaping straight into designing without thinking about cost, possibly because they’re distracted by Jane’s constant foghorn yelps of “MARGIN!”. The boys do the opposite: everything is perfectly costed, which leaves them with about four seconds to stamp a flag and a crappy clipart bus onto everything.
Then it’s off to market, where Nick is shouted down - first by Stephen, who has ‘THIS YEAR’S STUART BAGGS’ stamped all over him, and second by an adorable shopkeeper who buys a full stack of manky seconds from them under false pretenses. The girls are let down by, variously, Katie’s lack of effort, Jane’s tardiness, Bilyana’s inability to locate any shops and the entire group screeching at another adorable shopkeeper until her husband comes out and tells them all off for being monsters. That said, the girls seem to have done terribly well.
THE BOARDROOM The girls do terribly. They’re battered by the boys, who get to lick icing off a bathroom tile as their reward. After some world-class screeching, Gabrielle quickly decides to bring useless Katie and directionless Bilyana back to the boardroom. YOU’RE FIRED In keeping with it’s proud ‘fire whichever one Stuart Heritage fancies most’ tradition, Bilyana gets the shove after launching into an extraordinary meltdown just as Lord Sugar is about to fire Katie. IMPORTANT BUSINESS LESSONS Lesson one - In business, costing is more important than design. Lesson two - If you’re walking to the shops, remember where the shops are. Lesson three - Never fall in love, Stuart. You’ll always get hurt. NEXT WEEK Inventing the bin, apparently. What did you think of this start to the new series? Did the right person go? Do you think you've spotted a winner among the hopefuls? Let us know by heading over to our Facebook page or Twitter feed (@TVOnVM)! 
