Ok so now onto the 8th episode of The Apprentice, which this time saw the two teams (Sterling and Phoenix) be given the task of selling artwork to customers and corporate clients.
So in the task, Lord Sugar gave the teams their instructions (via an HD TV from his boardroom!) from under a bridge with grafitti art on it to get across the point of what he wanted the teams to do. So both teams went about trying to hunt out the best artists they could find, and both of them were very interested in the artist PureEvil (great name!). However on team Phoenix, lead by Tom, who apparently had a knack of fine art and who's who in the art world, displayed a lack of passion when pitching to PureEvil, who instead went for team Sterling, mainly due to Gabrielle's very enthusiastic pitch. This lead to Phoenix having to resort to choosing pieces by another artist, James Jessop, one of his work's being a ridiculously large sized painting, which would struggle to even fit a living room! Sterling however did well by nailing PureEvil, but they did also make a bit of a mistake by not asking their corporate client about their budget, as well as being dismissive to them on the night, by not giving them anything to drink or eat, nor did they say goodbye when they left!
In the boardroom, it was soon revealed what was what, and while there wasn't much in it at all, team Sterling, once again, came out just that bit better in their comissions, totalling £4,579 whereas Phoenix only made £4,442 and this marked the 3rd win in a row for team Sterling. And its funny that for their treat they got to do a bit of action painting on a big canvas, which basically amounted to the team being dressed in protected white clothing, and throwing at each other and at a big canvas wall, in which they ended looking very messy.
However for team Phoenix, back in the boardroom, Tom recognised that he made a poor choice in painting by opting for the massive James Jessop piece (so to speak) and rued not being able to nail the deal with PureEvil. However Tom decided to bring Laura and Jade back into the boardroom with him, and Adam got off, rightly so, as once again he proved his unswerving ability to adapt to selling in different environments, and he sold over £2800 of their art pieces, well over half over their comission (even if he clearly didn't have much of a clue about what he was saying!).
For the remaining three, Tom got some recognition from Lord Sugar, for taking a risk in choosing the large sized Jessop artwork, even though it didn't pay off. However his somewhat dour demeanour in a way also cost them the artist PureEvil as well, as Tom doesn't exactly exude a great deal of charm, and if anything he also came across a little bit patronising towards the corporate clients and the artists, as if he was some great expert, telling the practioners a thing or two about art in general. Jade once again back in the boardroom in the bottom three for the 2nd week running, did come a bit under fire for being a bit indecisive, but she managed to stand her ground again. But it was Laura who came off worse, as she sold the least out of three of them, as she felt a bit out of her comfort zone in trying to sell art, and only sold £750, despite the fact that she had the most sales experience out of three of them, being the owner of a bridal shop. And for Lord Sugar this was more than enough to make his decision and so he painted Laura a picture of a spitfire and let her go (that was an Alan Partirdge quote!;-)).
Again I can't really dispute Lord Sugar's decision to fire Laura, as she did on this occassion contribute the least amount in terms of sales, which ultimately was the failure of the task. However I wasn't so keen on the way in which he spoke to her, at one point saying "maybe you're not a good salesperson, or a good business person". And that's what bugs me about Alan Sugar, he can make some pretty ignorant comments about people's abilities, based on one task or one mistake, and is too quick to judge them and name call them for that one error, which I think he did on this occassion and has done so on numerous occassions in the past.
Despite all that though Laura was the weak link on this task, and she even admitted it on The Apprentice: You're Fired show, but she did come across as a nice bubbly lass (and pretty cute too I might add) so I'm sure she will do very well for herself even without a £250,000 investment from Lord Sugar.
Sooooo that's it for another post. More to follow....
No comments:
Post a Comment