The Apprentice returneth

BE AWARE THIS POST HAS SOME SPOILER INFO IN IT!! (That's as if anyone would ever read this!)

So the new series of The Apprentice started last night, and its now into the eighth series of its very popular run, with a whole new bunch of candidates, once again looking to become Lord Sugar's business partner, as apparently they have done away with the "job" from the first six series.

And the first task was to create a small printing business, where they would print their own designs onto savouniers and sell them on to tourists in London.  So the guys and gals were split up into their respective sexes (or teams, i.e. guys in one team and gals in the other) with the men naming themselves as team Phoenix, and the girls as team Sterling.  The guys team, as usual in the first week had an attack of indecisivenss as to who would be the team leader, so Justin Bieber look-a-like, Nick, put himself forward for that task.  And in the girls team, Gabrielle, who looks like the dead spit of Michelle Rodriguez from The Fast and the Furious, lead the task.

The men's team came up with the idea of selling souvenier Teddy bears with the Union Jack logo on them, and bags that simply said "This is a...." with the picture a bus on them, pretty imaginative stuff really!  However the girls thankfully had Jade on their side who has been in the printing business and came up with some pretty cool customised logos.  But when it came to selling the girls struggled to sell much to the public, and despite doing well at London Zoo, they left their selling in the hands of Bilyana, who made the daft decision to try and sell the remaining stock in shops which were ages away from where they were.  When the girls finally managed to get to local shops, they went in as a group and overlwhelmed the shop owner, who was intimidated by their sales technique, and asked them to leave.  The men however did quite well with their sales, but the printing on the handbags, was pretty poor at times, and one woman whom they sold to complained that the print had leaked through onto the other bags in the pile she was given, which meant they had to refund her.

And in the boardroom we soon found out who won the task, and (SPOILER!!!!!) despite their pretty banal and obvious choice of design, the guys won the task as they took the most profit.  The girls in comparison sold very little and ended up losing the task, and in the boardroom, the team leader Gabrielle took Bilyana and Katie back in with her.  In the boardroom, Gabrielle said that while she was not present with the other team mates she had brought in, the feedback she got from the others in the team were not so good.  Bilyana did of course argue with the other team mates when they were out trying to sell on the streets, and she also wasted alot of time looking around for shops, but Katie apparently didn't do much at all except stand around and wait for things to do, which she mostly didn't.  And it looked to me like Katie would have been the favourite to go, but she did ask for Lord Sugar to give her another chance, which threw her a life line, and ultimately it was Bilyana who's refusal to shut up when Lord Sugar told her to, that cost her place in the process. 

To be honest I think Lord Sugar made the right decision, and it is difficult to make the choice of who's to go in the first week, when no one really knows anybody yet, but Bilyana did appear to be the sort of girl who doesn't really listen to anyone, and I'm sure Lord Sugar wouldn't want to do business with someone like that.  As for Katie, I am surprised that people like her apply for the show as no doubt when you go on The Apprentice there will be a lot of loud voices and big personalities to work with, so you have to shout to be heard at times.  Anyway for now she has been given another chance so we will see if Katie improves in the following weeks.

As for the guys so far, most of them seem fairly grounded, but no doubt I'm sure there will be a couple of egocentric numpties in there just waiting to be found.  Although out the lot of them black guy Duane, appears to be the most savy of them from what little I've seen in the show, but its way too early to tell who out of who is the best.  And last year's winner Tom, seemed the most unlikely to win especially as he was a bit out of his depth in leading a team, but in the end he was a very creative guy with ideas for inventions, and its all about going into business, so as the series unravels we will find out who's who.

Right on that note I'll leave it there for now, until the next episode.